Auditing in Chile

I'm out in Chile auditing right now

Every time I go to out the country I come back full of the enthusiasm which the producers show me.
I'm seen here as a visitor rather than as an auditor who'll explain my job to them. And, it is easy to see since several of them told me on leaving ... come back and visit us again, little one“ or „next time you take a trip out here, make it longer so we can talk more“

That they opened their house doors (and also those of the chemical storing sheds) with such openness made it possible to interview them without them feeling pressurized, which led to them answering freely.

Trying to check out the working conditions criteria, I turned the conversation towards the harvest, and there came answers like these: „listen, my little one, I do the mingaco on Sundays...I can't pay for harvesting, so when it's like that I also go off to other's mingacos.“„And....?what's mingaco, anyway?- driven by curiosity I just had to ask.
„Mingaco is a party“ she replied. „ All the kids, grandchildren, neighbours, amigos, and they work for free and instead get food for the harvest.“

Mingaco is a party.....I try to probe a little deeper.

Without wanting to, while several producers describe the mingaco to me, I picture the scenes that their stories create: that they prepare breakfast, they kill a pig, they prepare the beans, all of which has to be had with wine.... and on the inside I was dying to be at one of these events.

„And of course, if it is a rainy year the mingaco gets started on Saturday and carries on into Sunday, if it is a dry year, then only on Sunday“.

Of course, we're in a dry wine grape growing area. And one in which the concept of neighbourhood still exists even though there are long walking distances between neighbours, where there's still romantic producers who say....“yeah, young lady, I do mingaco, even though deep inside I know it would be cheaper to pay harvesters and even to pay them the fees (insurance, obligations to the state)... I have to work more, animals need to be killed, and food prepared, but ?Who'd take our party away?“

„On these days harvesting is more fun and it is nothing but the task of all“ he said. He added „I also do mingaco by cutting, although I know it doesn't come naturally to me because old guys, 60 year old men, including some of my 11 older brothers, who don't like how we cut, come up to me and tell me that they were born able to cut well and that I, a 44 year old, am never going to teach them how...but, you know, I am also not going to deprive them of mingaco...?

don't you think?

I loved the word, that's why I have written it several times.
I loved the meaning, it was great to hear it straight from the participants themselves, who take from this solidarity, the brotherhood which comes from happiness with the year's work when the final harvest comes...

Written by Maria Laura Bardotti, FLO-CERT's Auditor living in Argentina