Background

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Graciela Lea Jaen, a 26-year-old single mum, certainly has her hands full. She works three days a week, attends college in the evenings and sits on the board of the new worker’s cooperative as well as bringing up two young children on her own.

With short hair and a masculine manner, Graciela has a boyish look. Having experienced dominant, aggressive men in her life, she has emerged fiercely independent and self-sufficient.

Graciela is hopeful that the recently established workers’ cooperative will help her and other workers to secure their own land.

At home

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The plantation is divided into three distinct farms: Caimito, Caucho and Tamarindo. Most of the houses, which all have running water and electricity, are built around a big grassy quadrant in each of these areas.

Graciela lives in a relatively big house on Caucho quadrant, close to the office and near the main entrance of the plantation. This was where her father lived. He is a former member of the cooperative that runs the plantation and he owns the house. He stood down after he was injured in a lorry accident.

Flanked by similar wooden houses either side, Graciela has front and back gardens. With their banana trees and wild plants, the gardens have been left to grow unchecked.

The ground floor is dark and roomy with a kitchen out the back. Two friends and Graciela’s older daughter, Shannon, huddle together watching television, while we sit at a table far enough away not to be distracted by the noise. Upstairs, Graciela’s small bedroom is cramped, just big enough for the bed. A picture of Shannon hangs on the wall, textbooks are neatly stored away and a drawer is missing from an old chest of drawers.

Her past

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Graciela, the daughter of one of the founding members of Coopetrabasur, was born two years before the cooperative was established. She grew up with two older brothers and a younger sister in a house almost identical to the one she lives in now.

As a child Graciela liked taking part in cultural activities organised by the school. She lost herself taking part in plays and traditional dances. Because she was a bit of a tomboy and had short hair she used to get the male roles, which she didn’t mind. Her mother remembers her being very involved in this world of theatre.

It certainly provided a distraction from home life, which wasn’t so happy. Her father was a bully and was always fighting with her mother. It frequently turned violent and on one such occasion young Graciela got involved.

‘It was really awful because Dad used to hit Mum for stupid reasons, insignificant. He had his tempers. And one time when he was hitting her I went for him. I grabbed him. Well that was horrible.’

Soon after, her mother had had enough and went to live in Puerto Limón and her father started living with another woman. From the age of eight Graciela spent most of her time with her mum.

‘I always missed having a paternal role model, I always missed my Dad, but my Dad is very macho, very macho. He was impossible.’

Perhaps seeking to fill that role, Graciela fell in love and became pregnant at 17. Her partner prevented her from continuing with her studies as he had finished with his. It turned out he was ‘another very macho guy.’ A few years, when Graciela was more grown, up she left him and started to study again. Having left school at 10 she had a lot of catching up to do.

Sixteen years later and Graciela is still going to school. Now she attends night school in La Cuesta, the nearest town. She has permission to leave work a little early so that she can get to college on time. Inspired by the birth of both her children she is keen to continue her studies. Although her second daughter was unplanned she feels no less protective and devoted to her. She describes her girls, as her treasures.

‘I live for them, and it was for them more than anything that I took the decision to study - to give them a better future. To give them what I wasn’t given.’

Daily activities

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As is common amongst members and workers of the cooperative, Graciela gets up between 4.30 and 5 every morning. She then gets the children up and gives them breakfast. On Saturdays, Mondays and Tuesdays she goes to work in the packing house. While there she is given various jobs depending on the priorities for the day. She is one of the few who can label or select bananas one day, box and weigh another day. She has learned to do a number of tasks, at the advice of her father, as a way to make herself more useful. As a result her boss considers her a good worker.

While she is at work her children are taken care of by a relay of relatives including her sister, aunt and grandmother. When at home she catches up on housework, prepares meals or studies. She frequently does homework with two close friends from college, Mauricio Corales and Rosa Sanchez.

Like many employees she would like to work more days because she needs the money. Unfortunately there isn’t enough work to go around.

Every afternoon from Monday to Friday she goes to night school, half an hour’s bus ride away. She gets home at around 10.30pm and spends the rest of the evening doing housework or homework until she goes to bed at around 1am.

Bleary eyed, she starts all over again at 4.30 the next morning.

Fairtrade and bananas

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Since Coopetrabasur started to sell bananas to the Fairtrade market there have been many changes. They have improved health and safety procedures, and general working conditions and reduced any harmful environmental impact. In the packing shed, where Graciela works, employees have been given protective clothing and trained on the importance of using it. Natural buffer zones have been built to prevent chemicals seeping into living areas, walkways and streams. The workers acknowledge and are grateful for these improvements, but still don’t feel happy with
their lot.

Graciela explains how she feels: ‘Here we work from necessity, not because we want to but because there’s a great need. The great majority of us who work, we do it for our children. It’s very tiring work as much for men as for women, but you have to do it. So you dream of having a job that earns you more, but there’s nothing to choose from.’

And relations with management have been strained at times. ‘The great majority of the production is done by us, the workers. The members [of the cooperative] as managers and coordinators do a small part of the work. The greater responsibility is with the workers. But they earn more than us.’

Discontent

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The Board of Coopetrabasur has had to make some unpopular decisions in recent years as they have weathered the most difficult times the industry has ever faced. Both members and workers have had to tighten their belts in order to secure the future of their cooperative. Such measures made more sense to the owners of the cooperative as a means of securing their future. However employees, who don’t own anything and don’t stand to benefit from future profits, started to feel resentful.

Both groups have been considering ways to address this issue. To this end a national organisation has been helping the workers set up their own alternative cooperative to contract services to Coopetrabasur. Graciela is on the board of the recently established Coopservsur¹. Instead of just being employees, the workers will own and run the operation of harvesting and packing the bananas. Any profits they earn could be used to buy land on which they could plant and grow their own bananas.

[ ¹ ] Cooperativa Servicios del Sur - Cooperative Services of the South

It’s early days yet and there is a lot of work to do to get the coop up and running, but Graciela is hopeful that this is the way forward. It will certainly provide an opportunity for them to build up their own capital and security and to take more control. Of course this will also mean increased responsibility for all of the workers, particularly those on the board, so Graciela’s life is set to get even busier.

Bananas and quality

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In the meantime she is passionate about the work she does and the importance of doing it well. She explains the first part of the process. ‘The first thing in the selection process is to get hold of the big [uncut] bunch. Check it over, see if there’s anything bad on it. There’ll be bad ones, so you get rid of those, and then you cut the branch. You divide the big bunch into hands; into sixes, sevens, eights, depending on what’s needed.’

If there are any problems with quality Graciela’s boss soon hears about it from the European buyer. ‘If, for whatever reason the quality is poor, they get in touch with us to tell us that they had crown rot or problems with the packaging. And they phone us and we have a meeting about it, and we have to take our part of the responsibility, because it is our responsibility.’

Graciela was trained to recognise the signs that indicate a banana is going to deteriorate. It could be faint speckling or an apparently insignificant mark that gives clues about problems that will develop as it ripens. She explains: ‘We didn’t really pay attention before, and the quality wasn’t as high. Now we’re getting better. I feel I’m doing a good job. My boss sees I do a good job, and that I’m careful. He’ll classify me as a good worker. I try to put my whole self into the job when I work.’

The future

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Graciela could become a supervisor in the new cooperative because she has experience of the different tasks that are carried out in the packing shed. This is traditionally a male role but as Graciela says: ‘The coordinator’s job isn’t physically exhausting. It’s more in the mind. It’s a job working with numbers and it is about dealing with people. There are a lot of workers who are lazy and you have to deal with them. It’s definitely a job a woman could do. In fact women are more ordered, better organised.’

Whether or not she becomes supervisor, Graciela has a dream of getting a different job and plans to continue studying to achieve her goal.

‘I hope to finish my studies and become a psychologist one day and probably change jobs. I’d have my very own house for my daughters and me. And why not carry on studying? That way you learn more and, who knows, one day I could go for a holiday to another country!’

She has learnt about Spain and is captivated by the architecture so she would love to visit. On her currently salary it would take six month’s wages to buy a return ticket, but with her ambitious career plan she may one day realise this dream.

For now she is a banana worker and glad of the opportunity to talk about the work involved. She is keen that the people who buy bananas know a little of what goes into producing and packing them.

‘I definitely hope the consumers carry on buying Fairtrade. Sometimes people come from different countries and they are surprised by the process; the care we must take to make sure the bananas arrive in good condition at the supermarkets. It’s not just about going and cutting them down; it’s a whole process and the care that goes into it. You have to look at what goes on behind the scenes to understand.’

Ends

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Graciela Lea Jaen was interviewed by Julia Powell for the Fairtrade Foundation on 16 October 2003.

Family details:

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Graciela Lea Jaen, 26
Her daughters: Shannon Graciela, 9 years and Valery Paola, 10 months

Photographs available:

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Graciela Lea Jaen at home with her children
Graciela Lea Jaen watching television with friends
Graciela Lea Jaen chatting to a colleague on the board of the new cooperative
Photography by Zed Nelson, October 2003

Further materials:

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A Profile of Coopetrabasur - a banana grower’s cooperative in Costa Rica
Julia Powell, January 2004

A Profile of Coopetrabasur - a banana grower’s cooperative in Costa Rica
Julia Powell, January 2004