By the morning of our second full day in Barquisimeto, we have visited two of Cecosesola's three ferias: La Feria del Centro, which is next door to the escuela and dormitorio where we are staying, and La Feria Ruiz Pineda, where we are today. Unlike the other two ferias, which are only open Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday, La Feria Ruiz Pineda is also open on Tuesday mornings. Like OFC's Westside store, this one is close to a residential neighborhood and gets a lot of foot traffic, and was the first feria Cecosesola opened. Outside the store, a group of young men, los viajeros, wait astride a fleet of ingeniously-constructed tricycle-wagons, and Ricardo tells us that they are street kids, who Cecosesola helped organize into a cooperative, who now attend meetings, plan budgets, and share decision-making with the rest of the collective.
Also like the Westside, La Feria Ruiz Pineda is often too small for the number of people who want to shop there. When we visit the accounting team's office, they are running projections for a construction project in process: a new kitchen and dining room for the workers, along with an expansion of the feria space. Inside, we stock bags of sugar into displays up over my head. We fill bins with napkins and stack six-packs of Malatin, a malted soft drink that I'm told tastes like medicinal root beer. During el fin de semana, there will be three or four times the the number of people bustling through the aisles as there are today.
Like the other ferias, this one is a large warehouse space full of murals of dancing vegetables (especially carrots, which might be Cecosesola's mascot, if they had such a thing. On a side note, my favorite carrot mural is on the outside wall of the Feria del Centro, and features a family of carrots out grocery shopping, with the smallest sucking a pacifier). The sales floor is divided into several different areas, which work like their own stores, in that they have their own entrances, exists, and cash registers. The largest area is for viveres--the kind of items that make up OFC's grocery and taxable sections, like the aforementioned drinks and sugar bags. Next door there is a space for vegetables, a fruiteria, a carniceria, a mini-drugstore, a space where pet food is sold in bulk. Out front there is a cart for fororo, a thick, warm roasted corn drink, the sales of which have helped Cecosesola build and staff the health center we'll be visiting this afternoon.
Several shelves around the store are dedicated to products made by Cecosesola's affiliated co-ops. These include spices, coffee, a coffee alternative, whole grain flours, sauces, cleaning products, vanilla glycerin, and more. They tend to be natural and pesticide-free, so while many of the products Cecosesola sells are those you would find in any supermarket, the cooperative is bit-by-bit growing the market for natural foods in Barquisimeto while also assuring fair wages, cooperative process, and direct sales though their relationships with and support of co-ops within their network.
That afternoon we visit El Centro de Salud Integral, one of Cecosesola's newest projects, a truly gorgeous modernist building near the Feria de Ruiz Pineda. For several hours we talk with our hosts, Javier, Ricardo, Snaeda, and Conchi, and we meet other compañeros along the way. We walk up glass staircases and onto long balconies, and we stand in rooms with decorative concrete block walls that are open to the breeze. The hospital rooms, empty at the moment, have cheerful teal-painted walls and gauzy curtains.In Cecosesola's case, integral means that both allopathic and alternative medicines are offered at the health center, with an emphasis on preventative care. Radiology shares a floor with hydrotherapy, and you can get acupuncture a floor below. Cecosesola's workers pay a fee of 5 bolivares per week (around 50 cents U.S.) and receive free health care at El Centro de Salud. (They also sell certain products in the ferias to raise money for this fondo). People from the community are able to access the center's services, at prices much lower than a traditional private hospital's.
At the end of the day we say goodbye to our kind hosts, and Javier takes us back to our dormitorio. In the morning, our first meeting awaits!
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