Farmers generate own electricity in El Salvador
Electricity arrived when they decided to build their own hydroelectric dam together, not only to light up the night, but also to take small steps towards undertakings that help improve living conditions in the village.
JOYA DE TALCHIGA, El Salvador: In Lilian Gomez’s house, nestled in the mountains of eastern El Salvador, the darkness of the night was barely relieved by the faint, trembling flames of a pair of candles, just like in the houses of her neighbours. Until now.
Electricity arrived when they decided to build their own hydroelectric dam together, not only to light up the night, but also to take small steps towards undertakings that help improve living conditions in the village.
Now she uses a refrigerator to make “charamuscas” – ice cream made from natural beverages, which she sells to generate a small income.
“With the money from the charamuscas I pay for electricity, food and other things,” the 64year- old Gomez, head of one of the 40 families benefiting from the El Calambre minihydroelectric plant project, told IPS.
This is a community initiative that supplies energy to La Joya de Talchiga, one of the 29 villages in the rural municipality of Perquin, with some 4,000 inhabitants, in the eastern department of Morazan, which borders to the north with Honduras.
During the 1980-1992 civil war, this region was the scene of fierce battles between the army and the then- guerrilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party, in power since 2009 after winning two consecutive presidential elections.
When the war ended, the largest towns in the area were revived thanks to ecotourism and historical tourism, where visitors learn about battles and massacres in the area. But the most remote villages lack basic services, which keeps them from doing the same.
The El Calambre minihydroelectric power plant takes its name from the river with cold turquoise water that emerges in Honduras and winds through the mountains until it crosses the area where La Joya is located, dedicated to subsistence agriculture, especially corn and beans.
A small dike dams the water in a segment of the river, and part of the flow is directed through underground pipes to the engine house, 900 metres below, inside which a turbine makes a 58-kW generator roar.
La Joya is an example of how local inhabitants, mostly poor peasant farmers, didn’t stand idly by waiting for the company that distributes electricity in the area to bring them electric power.
The distribution of energy in this Central American country of 6.5 million people has been in the hands of several private companies since it was privatised in the late 1990s.
During the days IPS spent in La Joya, locals said they own the land where they live, but they lack formal documents, and without them the company that operates in the region doesn’t supply electricity. It only brought power to a couple of families who do have all their paperwork in order.
In this Central American nation, households with electricity represent 92 per cent of the total in urban areas, but only 77 per cent in rural areas, according to official data released in May.
Without much hope that the company would supply power, the residents of La Joya set out to obtain it by their own means and resources, with the technical and financial support of national and international organisations.
One of these was the association Basic Sanitation, Health Education and Alternative Energies ( SABES El Salvador), which played a key role in bringing the initiative to La Joya, where it was initially met with reservations.
“People still doubted when they came to talk to us about the project in 2005, and even I doubted, it was hard for us to believe that it could happen. We knew how a dam works, the water that moves a turbine, but we didn’t know that it could be done on a small river,” said Juan Benítez, president of Nuevos Horizontes, the community development organisation of La Joya. —