July 5, 2014

Dear Friend,
Weve all been hearing about the record flood of unaccompanied children from Central
America who are crossing illegally into the U.S. This is certainly is a troubling problem. Ive
met a number of teenagers in my visits to the Tierra Nueva program area who have
attempted to make the harrowing journey through Mexico alone. Some of them have
terrifying stories to tell and return back traumatized by their experiences. Yet that doesnt
stop others from trying. Its an adventure that takes them out of their sense of boredom
and hopelessness with the promise, if successful, of enough money to not only help out
their families but to also have some of the things they wish for. In many cases the gang
related violence and pressure on young people to support the gangs is pushing them to
leave their homelands.
Its not only part of the conversation here, but most Hondurans Ive spoken with are
concerned about it also. They have their own opinions as to why so many young people are
willing to make the dangerous journey. The reality is that until there is social and economic
justice that provides opportunity for these young people, this is a problem that will persist.
Even in the remote rural areas of Central America everyone is more aware than they were
in the past of the economic disparities between the poverty found in their homeland and
the opportunities that could be attained here in the U.S. The two worlds, though having
radically different realities, are much more connected than in the past because of the
technology we have now.
Obviously, the roots of the problem have to be addressed something all of us who have
worked for social and economic justice in countries such as Honduras have been aware of.
End of the coffee market project
As you probably know, for years our focus was on developing the direct trade coffee
market. With the downturn in the economy and consequently the restructuring of the
coffee roasting business that was buying our coffee, we lost our market. The unfortunate
thing was that we were just getting to the point where we had some infrastructure to
provide a very high quality coffee bean. The next year coffee prices sky-rocketed, and it
would have been hard to get farmers to take the extra steps to produce the quality our
buyer was looking for since they could get great prices for very low quality coffee anyway.
A year and a half ago I took a trip with my daughter, Deanna, to meet with the eight Tierra
Nueva promoters who have been running our projects for many years now. I asked them
what things concerned them the most.
Trees
Several years ago, high coffee prices motivated coffee farmers globally to plant more
coffee, and the San Luis area was no exception to this. Farmers were looking for new land
to plant more coffee in hopes that the coffee prices were going to stay high. Consequently,
the concern to the promoters was the major deforestation of pine trees to extend coffee
farms. Pine trees had always been protected, but with political unrest, enforcement of
these protections wasnt happening.
As one Tierra Nueva farmer said, Streams are drying up, habitat is being destroyed, soil on
steep hillsides is eroding and the trees we all use to build our houses are being cut and left
to rot or being burned. As long as a farmer doesnt try to sell the wood, he wont get
caught for cutting down the pine forest.
So what do you think you can do? I asked.
We need to plant more trees to replace the pines, but they have to be trees that wont
disturb the coffee.
That way we can help mitigar el problema, said Polo.
Where did you learn that word, Polo? I asked. Mitigate. I dont hear that around here
often.
You know, I like to read. I read anything I can get my hands on.
Polo grew up in extreme poverty and still struggles. He doesnt have good land for farming
and recently had to desert what little land he had to flee the gang violence in his village.
But Polo has always had a very curious mind. Had he been raised where there were
educational opportunities, I think he would have done well. Since he is more literate than
the other promoters, he has always served as the groups secretary writing the minutes of
each meeting.
There is another incentive for planting trees. The Honduran government lifted a long
standing law that trees on a farmers land, as long as they were planted by the owner of
the land, could be harvested in the future. They set up a certification system that
documents the trees planted.
So, for the last few years weve been supporting the farmers who would like to diversify the
shade systems of their farm. The promoters who have chosen to work on this have started
small tree nurseries on their own farms to share with the farmers they visit. This last year
we started close to 20,000 trees to provide to coffee farmers to plant in their coffee farms.
Most of those are different varieties of timber species that will tower above the other trees
in the coffee farm creating a three tier shade system -- coffee below, medium height
nitrogen fixing shade varieties and fruit trees and then appropriately spaced timber species
above that. This will help to create a micro climate for healthier coffee plants, provide
habitat for birds and other animals, take carbon from the atmosphere, provide some
firewood from the pruning for cooking, and in the future, provide high quality lumber for
harvesting. Perhaps in twenty to thirty years when the trees are large there will be
incentives for the farmers to not harvest the trees. The farmers have been doing a
phenomenal job of planting and caring for the trees drawing attention to our work from
other Honduran agencies.
In addition to the timber species, weve been planting grafted fruit trees. This year weve
grafted about 2000 orange and avocado trees.
In the last few years, weve started and planted with farmers about 50,000 trees at a cost
of less than twenty cents a tree. So far this year about 100 acres of trees in coffee farms
have been certified.
My hope would be to shift our focus more on grafting fruit trees. However, this requires
more budget and infrastructure to accomplish. This year we are planning to start a couple
thousand more grafted orange, avocado and mango trees. A coffee farm with avocado as
part of its shade system has the potential to earn as much from the avocados as it does
from coffee. Another organization has offered to help the farmers in one area where they
are planting the fruit trees to market the fruit. Evidently, the prices for fruit are better than
they were in the past.

Encouraging news concerning violence in San Luis area
Recently, I have received news that the violence that had shackled the San Luis area is
under control. For the past several years, Honduras has sadly earned the rating as the
country with the highest homicide rate in the world. Even more striking is that for the past
year, San Luis has been the area in Honduras with the highest homicide rate. Fortunately,
things are getting safer in the San Luis area. Unfortunately it took an ongoing heavy military
presence and the loss of lives to achieve this.
Drug use and drug trafficking had never been a serious problem for Honduras. In the past
decade and a half, thousands upon thousands of Hondurans have been emigrating to the
United States in search of better work. Some of these eventually ended up involved in
gangs and were deported back to Honduras. In Honduras, theyve built powerful gangs that
are using the vastly undeveloped areas of Honduras as a means to channel drugs from
South America to the eastern seaboard of the U.S. The violence in Honduras is a result of
the fighting going on between the different gangs.
Because of a few local ties to these powerful gang networks, the mountains around San
Luis became a hotbed of violence. Two gangs were fighting it out and hiding in the
mountains sleeping in different houses every night. They would rob travelers passing
through and small businesses for money. They would run farmers off of their farms and
take their harvests especially coffee. The violence extended into a complicated mix of
gang rivalry and family feuding. Family members of other alleged gang members were
being robbed, killed, run off their land and in some cases, their houses burned down.
When Joni and I lived in Honduras, we spent a lot of time in the Tablon area. It was a village
with a lot of needs and a lot of social problems. Even when we were there, the area was
known for its violence and family feuding. Organizing groups was often difficult because of
this. Id sometimes hear about the tension in a meeting or course because one of the
participants had murdered a family member of another participant, for example.
Tablon was the center again of this gang violence. It has been disheartening to find that all
of these years later after our efforts to unify the community -- doing bible studies with
them, playing non-competitive games with almost everyone in the village present, teaching
conflict management, working on the problems of poverty and malnutrition by improving
the production of their farms and giving courses with the women, bringing the community
together to build roads and a water system, encouraging them as they built a church
together and developing life-long friendships and relationships with them -- to find that
because of the violence, the village has been all but abandoned. Many community
members were killed including the pastor of the church they built. Only a few families
remained in the area. The others travel back and forth doing what they could to salvage
something from their abandoned farms. Their abandoned homes have been looted and
used as hide outs for the young people armed with AK47s involved in the gang war -- some
of them children or grand-children of the very families we worked with.
Recently Ive learned that people are apparently beginning to return to their village in
hopes of rebuilding their homes and farms.
2014 Budget, womens groups, and climate change education
At this point our program is completely out of money. We had enough to get started with
our plans for this year but at this point we need about $2500 dollars to get through the
year. Weve always been provided for in the past and trust we can get through this year.
Our budget is small usually around $4000 a year.
Our work with womens groups had been going really strong. Maribel has a number of
groups organized. With the coordination and wonderful support of the other promoters,
shes been growing vegetable gardens with the women as well as giving sewing, cooking,
and nutrition workshops. Weve brought groups of women to see her small farm and learn
how she is raising chickens, pigs, vegetables, fruit and fish for market and consumption on
a very limited amount of land.
With the violence, the work with the womens groups has slowed down. The promoters
were very nervous about Maribel traveling on foot through some of the areas with the
worst violence. Maribel herself, though nervous about it too, seemed less so. She said, Id
see the gang guys all of the time. They know who I am and greet me by name. They know
that I wont bother them. They know Im just trying to help the people, so theyd let me
pass through and didnt bother me. Nevertheless, she didnt accomplish as much this last
year. I dont know what the decision will be for the rest of this year from Maribel and the
promoters.
The farmers want courses on global climate change. They tell me theyve heard the term
but they know very little about what it is and what causes it. We have plans for a course by
a Honduran organization on this important issue . They are already seeing some of the
effects of climate change as the climate becomes more erratic. Hopefully, theyll feel a little
more empowered to know that they can do their small part by continuing to plant trees
where the trees have been taken out.
Support
We appreciate the support we have had from you. Were a very small effort, but we need
some funding to be able to carry on the work.
Peace to you,
Larry
To donate: Make checks out to Tierra Nueva. On the bottom MEMO line put HONDURAN
PROJECT, SAN LUIS. Send the checks to Larry Sell, 23471 Petite Lake Rd., Lake Villa, IL
60046. I will record then send the checks to Tierra Nueva in Washington state, and they
issue letters for tax deductible donations at years end.