Tag Archives: Central America

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Around the world in 40 years . . . Part 3. Guatemala

In April 1976, my wife and I moved to Turrialba, Costa Rica where I set up an office for the International Potato Center at CATIE – Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza. My principal remit was to develop a research program on adaptation of potatoes to warm and humid environments – the so-called tropical potato, as well as supporting the regional activities that were led at that time by my colleague Oscar Hidalgo from the regional office in Toluca, Mexico.

Very soon the focus of my work became the bacterial wilt pathogen (Ralstonia solanacearum), and this led to the identification of some interesting sources of resistance to the disease and development of agronomic practices to reduce the severity of attack in the field. And when Oscar moved (in late 1977) to North Carolina to begin his studies for a PhD in plant pathology, I became CIP’s regional leader for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and we transferred the regional office to Turrialba. And in early 1978 we began to develop the concept of what became PRECODEPA, a cooperative regional potato program funded in large part by the Swiss government. Through PRECODEPA I visited Guatemala many times. The potato scientists there took responsibility for postharvest storage technologies.


In the south of the country the mountains stretch from the frontier with Mexico in the west to El Salvador and Honduras in the west. And it’s in the mountains to the west of Guatemala City, in the region of Quetzaltenango that most potatoes are grown. Much of the country, stretching way to the north is low-lying tropical rainforest – the home of the Mayans, and where we visited Tikal in 1977.

There are many volcanoes in Guatemala, some active. To the west of Guatemala City lies the old city of Antigua, and further west still the Lago de Atitlán, with a ring of villages on its shores, each named after one of the Twelve Apostles. The highly picturesque town of Sololá lies close by to the north.

27-1977-07 Solola 09Unlike Costa Rica, which has a very small indigenous community, Guatemala is ethnically and culturally very rich, and reminded us of our years in Peru. The beautiful weavings and typical costumes can be seen everywhere, and on an every day basis.

Guatemalan agriculture is quite interesting based as it is on multicropping or milpa systems of maize, beans and squashes. In fact, multi- or intercropping is extremely common in Guatemala, and I’ve even seen potatoes intercropped with maize and other crops there – something that is quite uncommon in other countries.

06-1977-07 Comalapa 0102-1977-07 Lago de Atitlan 02

During one of our visits we met with representatives of an NGO (with several US citizens involved) in a small community, Comalapa, about 67 km west of Guatemala City and north of the provincial capital of Chimaltenango. I must have been very naive. It’s only quite recently that I became aware of the civil war that was ongoing in Guatemala at that time, and I’ve often asked myself whether we were lucky not to have come across either right-wing or left-wing groups that made people ‘disappear’.

Here are some photos that I took around Lago de Atitlán and Sololá.

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Tikal – may the force be with you

July/August 1977 (so long ago I don’t remember exactly). Destination: Guatemala.

My work with the International Potato Center (CIP) in Central America took me to Guatemala quite frequently between 1976 and 1980. We supported the Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología Agrícolas – ICTA in seed production and post harvest storage of potatoes.

Guatemala is a beautiful and fascinating country, and has a large indigenous population (unlike Costa Rica where we lived at the time). However, more of that to come in another story.

Steph travelled with me only occasionally, but in 1997 I’d planned a trip to Guatemala (visiting Quetzaltenango) and Mexico, and returning to Costa Rica with a short stop in San Pedro Sula in Honduras to stay with John and Marion Vessey (who were the witnesses at our wedding in Lima in 1973). After leaving CIP in 1974, John had joined CIMMYT in Mexico for a couple of years, before moving on to United Fruit and carrying out research on banana diseases.

And during this work visit to Guatemala it was too good an opportunity not to miss out on a visit to the Mayan ruins of Tikal, deep in the jungle of the Department of El Petén, about 190 miles by air due north of Guatemala City.


We decided on a two-day visit to Tikal, arriving early the first day, and departing in the middle of the afternoon on the second. I guess the flight (on an old Aviateca DC3 or similar) took less than an hour, landing on the rough strip not far from the Tikal ruins park.

Buses took us to the Jungle Inn where we would stay – basically bamboo huts, rather rudimentary, but adequate for just one night (but has certainly gone up-market in recent years). From there it was a short walk through the forest into the ruins.

1977-07 Tikal 01

At first there was not a lot to see, but as the forest opened up somewhat there were tantalizing views of masonry among the trees, and walls disappearing off into the distance. And all of a sudden, there they were in all their magnificence, the tall temples that the Mayans had constructed centuries earlier.

There’s so much to see, and a huge number of pyramids and other buildings that (in 1977 at least) were still hidden under swathes of vegetation. But the principal temples have been uncovered, the central plaza and surrounding sites opened up to reveal the true majesty of this important Mayan site. No doubt, however, that the two pyramids facing each other across the main plaza are truly impressive – and steep!

And the views from the top are particularly striking, with tops of other ruined temples peeking above the trees into the distance.

All around are the reminders of what a sophisticated civilization the Mayans had. There’s even a ‘football pitch’ – well, a court for playing a game with a rubber ball made from the latex of local plant (but not the rubber tree – that’s from South America).

There’s so much to see and explore that time passes quickly. One advantage of an overnight stay is that you can visit the ruins very early in the morning, as we did on the second day. I don’t remember too much about our night there, except for the constant hum of mosquitoes.

All too soon our visit was over, and our DC3 was lumbering down the airstrip and lifting off into the late afternoon sun towards Guatemala City.

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And of course, Tikal was featured as the rebels’ headquarters in George Lucas’ first Star Wars movie (Episode IV) released in 1977 — just before we went there!

We’ve been fortunate to visit several other iconic sites in our travels: Machu Picchu, of course, in southern Peru; the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon at Teotihuacán, just northeast of Mexico City; and Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We’ve seen some of the most impressive native American sites in Arizona and New Mexico, and would love to visit all the sites of ancient Egypt, and Petra in Jordan – if only the political situation would settle down and permit safe travel. One day . . .

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PRECODEPA – one of the CGIAR’s first research networks

Establishing a regional program
In April 1976, CIP opened an office in Turrialba, Costa Rica, hosted by the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE). My role there was to support the regional office based in Toluca, Mexico, and to carry out research on breeding potatoes to tropical conditions, and once we’d realized the problem of bacterial wilt, searching for resistance to this insidious disease.


In July 1997, the regional leader, Ing. Oscar Hidalgo (a Peruvian bacteriologist) departed for his PhD studies in the USA, and instead of transferring me to Toluca, the Turrialba office became the regional headquarters. And in doing so, my responsibilities changed considerably; I became CIP’s primary link with the national potato programs in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

I was supported by my boss in Lima, Dr Ken Brown, who had joined CIP in early 1976 to support the Outreach Program, and soon becoming the head of the Regional Research Program, replacing Dick Wurster. Ken was a cotton physiologist, and had spent most of his career in various parts of Africa, especially Nigeria, and just before joining CIP had headed a cotton research project in Pakistan. Ken was a fantastic person to work with – he knew just how to manage people, was very supportive, and the last thing he ever tried to do was micromanage other people’s work. I learnt a great deal about program and people management from Ken.

Towards the end of 1977, Dr John Niederhauser, proposed the idea of a cooperative regional network among several countries. I worked closely with John over about six months developing and refining ideas, and travelling together to meet program leaders (and even ministers and vice ministers of agriculture) in six countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. In April 1978 a meeting was held in Guatemala City to launch the Programa Regional Cooperativa de Papa – PRECODEPA, with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

PRECODEPA

The inaugural meeting of PRECODEPA in Guatemala City, April 1978. L to R (sitting): Ken Brown, me, Richard Sawyer, John Niederhauser (CIP), Carlos Crisostomo (ICTA-Guatemala), unknown. I don’t recognise/remember the two gentlemen standing in the rear.

The SDC was just the right donor agency – one with a long-term commitment. Although I’m not able to determine the current status of PRECODEPA, it was supported by the SDC for more than 25 years, and expanded from the initial six countries to 10 or more, with French and English-speaking countries participating. Of course the original members were all Spanish-speaking – one of the major advantages of this regional program in its early years.

For the next three years, much of my time as CIP’s regional leader was spent supporting PRECODEPA and contributing my own work on bacterial wilt and seed production. However, I have to say that my role during this period – especially during the inception design and development phase – has essentially been removed from the record. And for reasons I could never understand, John Niederhauser chose not to recognize the important contributions that CIP (and me) made to the overall success of PRECODEPA.

Why was PRECODEPA needed, and what did it achieve?
While potato was an important commodity in most of the countries of the region, it was never in the same league as other staples such as maize and beans. Mexico had (and still has) the largest area of potato cultivation in the region, but even this pales into insignificance compared to maize. While agriculture ministries supported potato production, this crop was not a top priority, nor did the countries have the resources (both finance and staff) to support and maintain a fully-rounded potato program. Thus the principal idea behind PRECODEPA was a distributed research effort among the member countries, with each taking leadership in one or more areas of potato research and production which had a high national priority, and sharing that expertise with the other members of the network. This also facilitated support from CIP in that CIP specialists were able to meet with their counterparts from one or two countries in the region rather than all of them, and then the national programs supporting each other, as explained earlier.

Thus, Mexico took a lead in seed potato production and late blight research (Phytophthora infestans; some of the pioneer research funded by the Rockefeller Foundation was carried out in the Toluca valley); Guatemala concentrated on post harvest storage, Costa Rica on bacterial wilt (Ralstonia solanacearum), and Panama on potato cyst nematode (Globodera spp.) After 40 years I cannot remember the lead activities for Honduras and the Dominican Republic. With support from the SDC and back stopping from CIP each country developed its capabilities in its lead area, offered training and technical support to the other members, and in turn received support from the others in those areas where it was ‘weaker’.

Among the first national members of PRECODEPA were Ing. Manuel Villareal (Mexico), who had once served as CIP’s regional leader for Region II, Ing. Alberto Vargas (Vice Minister) and Ing. Fernando Cartín from the agriculture ministry in Costa Rica, Ing. Roberto Rodriguez (IDIAP) from Panama, and Ing. Polibio Vargas from the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately, after 38 years, I am unable to remember the names of the Guatemala (ICTA) and Honduras representatives. In 1979, I think it was, Peruvian scientist Dr Jorge Christiansen was appointed to PRECODEPA and based in Guatemala.

The fact that all original members spoke Spanish was a huge advantage. This greatly facilitated all the nitty-gritty discussions needed to achieve consensus among the members about the advantages of working together – as equals. The fact that the SDC supported PRECODEPA for so many years is one indication of its success. On the SDC website there is this succinct assessment: PRECODEPA’s achievements include increases in yields, output and profitability; substantial reduction in the use of pesticides – representing savings for Central American farmers and reducing the impact on the environment and consumers; the beginnings of a processing industry (French fries, crisps) – meaning regional products entered a market previously dominated by their powerful northern neighbours; production of quality potato seed and the development of a regional potato seed market; and training for thousands of farmers and technicians.

I’m proud to have been part of this innovative program – one of the first such research networks or regional programs established by the centers of the CGIAR.

CIP’s direct involvement
CIP contributed specifically in a couple of areas. In an earlier post I have described the work we did on resistance to bacterial wilt. Some of those resistant materials found their way into the Costarrican seed potato program.

Seed production through rapid multiplication techniques was another important area, and I supported in this by seed production specialist Jim Bryan who spent a sabbatical year with me in 1979-80. We developed further (from Jim’s initial work in Lima) the techniques of stem, sprout and single-node cuttings [1], bringing these to the field to produce disease-free seed potatoes, and help establish a vibrant seed potato industry in Costa Rica.

Since I left CIP (in March 1981) PRECODEPA increased in size, and the members continued to share the coordination of the program among the members. As the information on the SDC website indicates, PRECODEPA was indeed the blueprint for other regional programs on maize and beans, and for other collaborative programs around the world. It was a model for the various consortia that have developed among the centers of the CGIAR and national program partners.

[1] Bryan, J.E., M.T. Jackson & N. Melendez, 1981. Rapid Multiplication Techniques for Potatoes. International Potato Center, Lima, Peru.