Honduran Hippies

A few days ago some of us aspirantes were talking about the predominant machismo culture in Honduras. We were wondering what would it take to change things for women here, and someone said jokingly “it would take a lot of hippies”. We all laughed and ended the conversation with no apparent solution to the situation at hand, but the comment has kept me thinking. Where are the people with radical change ideas? Why do people seem so content with so little?

It is true that there are very few people here with revolutionary change ideas like the hippies in the 60’s in the US, but we’ve met a few amazing women that have stepped out of the stereotypes and done amazing things. They might not be hippies in the true sense of the word, but to me they are in many ways strong agents of change in this country… hopefully the beginning of something big that will change gender relations in Honduras forever.


Tajaditas Del Racimo

In a small aldea about 45 minutes outside of Danlí, there is a group of five women that run a business of 19 employees, named Nueva Esperanza, and are the sole provider of jobs in their community. This is a huge deal in Honduras… these women only have a 6th grade level of education. They told us their story.

About five years ago, a Swiss organization came to their aldea, Quebrada Larga, and taught a few members that they could start planting plantains instead of just corn and beans. This would increase their income significantly since the plantain market is not as saturated as the basic grains market. They had the land, and everyone in the families (men, woman, and children) were capacitated to grow the crop. They started working the fields, but the work was hard for the women. They were working with machetes, and carrying heavy sacks of fertilizer and heavy plantain clusters. One of the women decided that it was too much work for her. She was already older, had raised several kids, and the work in the fields was more than what she could handle. She decided to communicate the situation to the Swiss organization representative that visited the community every now and then to provide technical assistance. He suggested the women form a group and sell something. That would provide the income needed to pay workers on the fields.

That’s how Nueva Esperanza started. Another woman in the community had been selling plantain chips that she made with the scrap plantain that couldn’t be sold in the market. The five women got together in one of the houses and started producing more chips to sell in the community. They were taught how to negotiate product, how to keep simple accounting books, and were given juridical personality. The business was small, but they were all wanting and would make it work.

For six months they worked with no salaries… every penny earned was re-invested into the business. Their husbands started opposing the idea. They complained the women were now spending all day hanging together and neglecting their families. “Women belong to the house and the kitchen”. “You better have my food ready when I get home” “You’re not making any money” were some of the comments they had to endure. But they persisted and the business grew.
Today they have a bigger facility where they produce up to 2,500 bags of chips a day. Instead of selling the product in clear plastic bags, they have their own label, with printed bags and other signs. They went from selling to their neighbors in the community to selling to small stores all over the municipality. Since their aldea is so far from Danlí, they have a distribution center, with two employees that distribute to local stores in bicycles. They have now traveled to Perù and Chile, telling other groups their story and selling the product. Those illiterate campesinas traveling!!! The youngest one went back to finish high school and all their kids can now afford to go to school. And the husbands… they are now ok with their wives working, as long as they cook before they leave the house in the mornings.

When we asked about their plans for the future their faces brighten with ideas. They want to keep growing, their husbands can no longer produce enough plantain to meet their demand and they are urging the community to start planting. They want to raise the standard of living in their aldea by providing direct and indirect jobs. They already have bigger bags to sell to bigger supermarkets, they want to buy a car so they can deliver to the capital and start selling there, they want a computer to keep their books, they want to travel more and want their kids to go to college. They are entrepreneurs in the full sense of the word.

By the way… the name of their product is “Tajaditas del Racimo”.


Colina Verde

Similar to the women in Empresa Nueva Esperanza, we met a group of women that work in Danlì producing and selling organic compost. They went to one of the multiple run-down parks in town and fixed it up. They made agreements with the local market to collect their organic refuse every day and take it to the park… and then they got to work.

What was interesting from this story is how much they’ve had to endure to be successful. First there were the jokes from people in town calling them “trash workers”, neighbors complained about their presence in the park, the media got involved. Their husbands were not happy… they wanted their wives staying home, they were embarrassing their families. Some of them had to endure verbal and physical abuse from their husbands, one of the women there had her finger broken by her husband. She told us this time she hit him back. Some of them told us how their husbands want to leave them and how they are not afraid now that they have the means to sustain themselves and their children.

Their business is still relatively new and small and it is yet to be seen how successful it will be. However there has already been a transformation inside them. They are no longer victims, they know they can take care of themselves and their kids, they know they can do anything they set out to do.

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When you read these stories they might seem small successes in your eyes. Let me tell you something, this is huge. It might not be a Honduran hippy movement like the one that happened in the US in the 60s, but it is a start of women being empowered. It is huge that they are thinking about the future (that rarely happens in this country… specially in the aldeas), that their kids are going to school, that they no longer depend on their husbands to support them, that there are new, real role-models to the girls of this country. In that sense they are to me hippies…