The Dreams of Three
Latin American Female Entrepreneurs

Weavers of Pachamama S.A. in Mañazo, Peru, weaving garments for export to the United States. Photos: María Elisa Bernal.

Lourdes Saavedra Pilco, an indigenous peasant from the south-eastern Peruvian region of Puno, realised her dream of sending her two children to university.

Catalina Sánchez Jiménez, from the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca, is still pursuing hers: to create a source of income so that her migrant family can come home. She has already brought home her husband and one of her children.

For her part, Victoria Quispe, a Peruvian indigenous, and other women set up an enterprise for hand-woven alpaca wool, which earned enough to fund a community kitchen for children and older adults.

These three women are strong and proud of the economic autonomy achieved together with their communities. Their success stories have a common denominator: the ability to join forces in order to overcome poverty and boost their cultural identity.

This is particularly admirable considering that indigenous people are the poorest group in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the lowest level of access to education, employment, health and basic services, despite the fact that they represent almost 10% of the regional population, according to ECLAC studies. Ethnic inequality is a constant feature in the region.

Lourdes, Catalina and Victoria are participating in three projetcs presented to the contest Experiences in social innovation, which is organized by ECLAC with the support of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation since 2004. The scheme rewards social projects in the areas of community health, basic education, youth, nutrition, income generation, rural development, social responsibility and volunteering.

They are particularly creative and innovative. They did not invent something new, but simply continue to do what they always did, while modernizing their traditional activities to improve their quality of life.

Prickly pear of nostalgia

Oaxaca is one of the poorest states in Mexico and has one of the highest numbers of migrants living in the United States. The women who remain use the arid land to farm prickly pears, which is a highly nutritious cactus that is widely consumed in Mexico, and survive on the remittances sent to them by family members.

This was the life of Catalina Sánchez and her neighbours until they decided to make productive use of the remittances and process the prickly pear. “We sold the prickly pear in the street, but we did not earn much and a lot was wasted”, she recalled.

With the help of the Foundation for Productivity in the Countryside, they set up a factory to package this plant, along with “mole” (a sauce) and chocolate, and became associated with a migrants’ association in California. They now export culinary nostalgia products.

They recently signed a contract with a wholesale Mexican supermarket and hope to do the same with a United States chain. The production of prickly pair, which used to be a marginal activity in their kitchen gardens, now takes place in an industrial and organic way that generates employment. “We will not stop there, we want to bring all the migrants back to their community, their people and their country”, stated Catalina.  

Quechuan women’s woollens

Like many indigenous women, Victoria Quispe only sold her woollens to tourists in the district of Mañazo, Puno. With the help of a nun, however, a group of women including Victoria set up an enterprise for hand-woven alpaca wool: Artesanías Pachamama S.A. They get together to weave during the sunny days on the altiplano.

A few years ago, one of the members travelled to a trade fair in the United States to display the products. According to Victoria, “she sadly realized that many of our sweaters did not sell and they were downhearted because the garments were not good quality”. 

They requested the assistance of the Puno-Cusco Corridor Project, implemented by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the National Social Compensation and Development Fund, and received technical assistance to improve the quality of the garments and adapt them to consumers’ taste.

“We have stayed firm in good and bad times. Now all the products we send do sell because they are good quality”, Victoria assured us.

Each woman earns U$ 25 per garment, they have an accountant, hold weekly meetings to distribute work and earn enough to fund a community kitchen for children and older adults. They are thus realizing their dream.

Store cattle on the altiplano

Also high up on the Peruvian altiplano, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, Lourdes Saavedra tells another success story in a Quechuan community. “We have suffered considerably from poverty, we depended on grain harvests, and when the hail came we had nothing to eat”, she explained.

Lourdes is part of a project supported by the international development organization CARE Peru, which has trained 3,000 families in fattening and selling livestock. “It used to take two or three years, but now we do it in three months. We do it in our huts with balanced ground feed that we produce ourselves using barley, beans and peas”, he explains.

Nowadays, each family sells between 8 and 15 animals per year in the markets in the capital Lima and in the southern department of Arequipa. The community remains organized.

“I am from the countryside and I was short of money, but now we can cover the costs of my two children, who go to the National Altiplano University”, states Lourdes.