Defusing Crisis

Olivia's calm smile says a lot about her life today. However, just a few months ago, the situation was a lot different.

For many years, Olivia's husband worked for low wages on a farm near Balbatzul, Guatemala. Although the family - Olivia, her husband and their three children - could barely scrape by on his meager income, they managed to make ends meet.

When coffee prices suddenly took a sharp decline in 2000, Olivia's fortunes changed for the worst. The farm her husband worked on went bankrupt. The landowner allowed the farm families to stay on his land in return for working without being paid. However, without land of their own to grow crops on, families like Olivia's soon ran out of income, and then out of food. There was just so much she and her children could forage to put on the dinner table.

Faced with hungry children and an uncertain future, Olivia's husband and his fellow workers secretly met and decided to take over the land. They knew that their move would be a risky one that could escalate into violence and threaten their families - but what else could they do?

One of the farm workers had an idea. He'd heard that Mercy Corps was working in the area, helping families resolve land conflict issues. As a result, the workers contacted Mercy Corps' local partner, the Association of Lawyers for Legal Development (JADE). Mercy Corps and JADE got the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission involved in the matter and, soon, the farm owner and workers were at the bargaining table.

Mercy Corps and JADE successfully mediated the conflict, and the owner ended up giving the thirty farm families involved parcels of land in return for months of unpaid work. Each family ended up receiving about two acres of land to live on, plant their crops and raise their families.

Olivia has taken some of the small profits from her family's farm and bought a telephone office in Balbatzul. The additional income they receive from this small business is helping them gain some measure of security for their future.

"Because of Mercy Corps, everything worked out for us," she said.