CPTnet
27 July 2009
COLOMBIA REFLECTION: The sweetness of working together

by Carol Tyx

[Note:  Tyx sent the following reflection to her support community during her recent stint in Colombia.]

Today I have my first taste of raw sugar cane, sweet and delicately flavored.  My friend Umberto,* who has been my host for the past few days, takes his machete and peels the bark off an eight foot rod, then notches the pale interior so it’s easy to break off small pieces.  I take a chunk in my hand.  It looks like pale wood, slick with sap.  I take a bite, chewing the pulp, and juice drips from my mouth.  It is almost clear, incredibly sweet and reminds me of thin honey.  I spit out the woody part and toss it on the pile of outer husks that will help fuel the fire for the next round of making panela, hard cakes of sugar.

My compañera Gladys and I are visiting a rural panelero project, a community-owned operation in the municipality of Puerto Rico—about a day’s travel north from Barrancabermeja.  The panelero is a long trough of a building, with a metal roof and open-air sides.  Inside it buzzes with activity.  Two young men mix cement with long shovels.  They carry the heavy buckets to an older man, who smoothes the cement with a trowel.  Umberto explains that they are extending the floor to have more workspace.  

On the other side of the building, mules come in loaded with cane.  Men guide the mules to the growing stack of cane stalks and pitch the stalks higher and higher, then guide the mules back into the lush green valley where cane grows, just outside the panelero.  Tomorrow, Umberto explains, when the cane is stacked to the roof, they will start the fire under the long hearth.  Community members will run the cane through a mill to collect the juice, and then boil it in large metal bowls until it is thick and syrupy.  Finally, they will pour it into molds, where it will harden into the cakes of panela used in households.  

Umberto takes off in the truck with someone from the community.  They return with a load of wood to augment the dried cane stalks.  (The truck is on loan to transport us; they are trying to maximize its use.)  I try to imagine the fire burning all day tomorrow.  Today, already the heat is intense; the young men mixing the cement drip with sweat.  

Rural life in Colombia has many hardships.  The physical conditions are tough:  barely accessible roads, swarms of mosquitoes, and often no running water.  Most work is done by hand, without benefit of power tools.  The state provides little in the way of services, education, or health care.  And the economic challenges are immense.  Often campesinos work the land without official titles, risking displacement, and receive little cash value for their produce.  But these are industrious, resourceful people who know the importance of working together as a community.  This is the real sweetness of the panelero.