Support Sustainable Livelihoods in Rural Guatemala

It was hard to say goodbye to Las Diez Rosas, the all-female beekeeping collective that wrapped up their partnership with Pueblo a Pueblo in July. However, we are thrilled to announce that a new group of beekeepers has already gotten started with the support of our team! The Apicultores Ecológicos (the "Ecological Beekeepers") are a brand-new collective based in San Pablo La Laguna, one of the many small towns situated at the edge of Lake Atitlán.

The ten beekeepers have a lot in common—many of them are parents or grandparents, and all grew up right in San Pablo—but most of all, they are all members of coffee-growing families. This means that they have all experienced the instability and hardship that comes with coffee farming—the long hours of physical labor with little reward, the constant worry that drought or disease will wipe out their hard work, and the “thin months” that come when the income they make during the once-yearly coffee harvest runs out.

The Apicultores Ecológicos fight for the economic security of their families every day, and they have come to see beekeeping as a way to improve their situation. Beekeeping requires far less time and energy than coffee farming, especially when tasks and responsibilities are divided up among members of a team, so it is a good way for families to supplement the unreliable income they make from coffee.

This past month, the group came together for their first training as Pueblo a Pueblo partners. Genaro Simalaj, Pueblo a Pueblo's Beekeeping Senior Project Technician, began the session by asking the group to share their goals for the day’s training and their expectations for the project. He then invited each group member to reflect on why they had decided to participate. The new beekeepers shared their dreams for the future: they spoke about building a more stable, more secure life for their families and providing their children with an education. Many expressed hope that working together through beekeeping will help them achieve those dreams together.

Ana Maribel Quiacain Ujpan is the group’s president and the mother of a young son. She is interested in both the practical and theoretical knowledge necessary to a successful beekeeping enterprise—the physical work she will do with her hands as well as the organizational work she will do as the group’s leader. Maribel sees beekeeping as a valuable form of embodied knowledge that she will one day be able to pass down to her son. Beekeeping will become a valuable kind of inheritance for generations of Maribel’s family still to come.

Each member of the San Pablo collective is part of a family. Their families will benefit from the income they make through beekeeping both in the short term and into the future—both now, when Maribel is leading the group and checking on hives, and later, when her son may very well do the same.

Links:

• Beekeeping for Coffee Farmers at Pueblo a Pueblo