The coffee plantation is called “La Esperanza” and the coffee grown under the same name is marketed under a cooperative regime by a group of ex-combatants who have taken advantage of the social and labor reintegration program, included in the peace plan signed between Colombian government and different guerrilla groups. The Queen has visited, this Wednesday, the plantation whose transformation from wasteland to productive land has been financed by the Spanish Cooperation Agency. An idyllic landscape, in the Cauca Valley, a kind of arcadia, in which just over a hundred people have been able to come back to life, after years of being immersed in violence from which it was impossible to escape.
The Queen took an interest in the lives of some of the members of the cooperative, who at the time received the necessary training to become coffee growers. They were all part of a guerrilla and all, without distinction, accepted the reinsertion plan. Some boys explained to the Queen that they joined the guerrilla after the paramilitaries killed her parents; all the interlocutors had behind her a tragic story and thanked the Queen for the visit that serves to visualize that it is possible to achieve a dignified life.
The farm that the Queen has visited was seized by the Colombian government from a drug trafficker who is currently serving a sentence in the United States and the AECID took over the conditioning, converting abandoned land into a coffee plantation. During her stay in the coffee plantation, the Queen has prepared a filter coffee, she has drunk it and has accompanied it with some sweets that, according to what they have explained to her in Colombia, are called “brazos de reina”, the cake known in Spain as “brazo de Gypsy”
Spain is one of the countries that supports Peace in Colombia, which, in one of its points, contemplates managing the return path of ex-combatants to civilian life. Many were recruited by the FARC and other guerrillas when they were barely teenagers, for years they only knew violence, for which they were also responsible, and their social reintegration depends on their inclusion in the labor market. The reconciliation process in Colombia also involves helping the victims of both the guerrillas, the paramilitaries, and drug trafficking, a triplet that, with the complicity of the oligarchy, filled Colombia with violence and poverty. Spain is committed to helping Colombia in this process, examples of which are both the “La Esperanza” cooperative and the program of economic autonomy initiatives for women.
After touring the coffee plantation, Letizia, already in Cali, met, at the facilities of the Workshop School that AECID has in the Colombian city, some of the women beneficiaries of the projects launched, such as the Association of Women Craftsmen of Straw toquilla that they showed him one of the hats (the famous Panama) that they make; or those responsible for Zamgua, who make cosmetic products with plants and ancestral recipes. Also curious is the Quilombo initiative, which prepares kitchen products that tell stories and vindicates the gastronomic heritage of Valle del Cauca, or the Cuincau Association, which produces and sells fabrics using artisan techniques typical of the area with modern designs.
