i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

The project was called Huertos Familiares de Verano (Summer Family Gardens). Adrian
found out about this project through his wife’s nephew, an agronomist for UNAG.
We applied fertilizer to very young cabbage plants. This meant working several
rows of ground-level, back-straining monotony. Each plant needed a small semicircular
terrace/trench dug and then filled with a large pinch of 16-4-8, a chemical mixture of
nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium that costs 300 córdobas ($25 US dollars) per quintal
(100 lbs). This aids the growth and development of the plant. As I applied this product to
several rows of cabbage plants, Adrian used a backpack pump to apply Manzate directly
to the small tomato plants. Manzate is a foliar and chemical fungicide used to prevent
tisón (fungus) and chamusco (leaf wilt).
We talked about Augusto Lazo, a técnico from Santa Cruz, Estelí, who worked in
the Agrarian Reform and acquired extensive property in Bálsamo-Francia. Bálsamo-
Francia is an expansive coffee finca and hacienda in the northwest part of the Bálsamo
valley, north of San Juan del Río Coco. He worked with credit and farm loans for
MIDINRA during the Sandinista Revolution. He is also a very hardworking and
productive farmer, according to Adrian. He knows many different crops well and the
proper treatments for pests or weeds. Lazo worked closely with Don Amado, Adrian’s
father, during the revolution.
That afternoon while weeding and fertilizing his cabbage rows, Adrian and I
talked about Augusto Lazo’s arrival in San Juan in the 1980s. Adrian mentioned his
family’s relationship with Lazo while discussing the chemical composition of a particular
nitrogen-based fertilizer.
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