Peace Offering

Dusty and footsore. Ulises Mejia trudged through the jungles and over mountains, straight across Honduras. At last he reached his goal, knocked on the door of the famed horticulturist, Dr. Wilson Popenoe, head of the School of Pan-American Agriculture at Zamorano. The school was not scheduled to open for two months, but Ulises had come to beg for admission. Last week Ulises, now a prize pupil, was receiving the best training in farming that Central America offers.

Costing $750,000 to set up and $150,000 a year to run, the Zamorano school is a princely gift from the great United Fruit Co. to the restive people of its banana empire. Tuition is free. So is everything else, including clothes and elaborate dental work. Most of the 122 students come from poor Central American families of Indian blood, who could not possibly afford a U.S. education for their sons. Said one father of a successful applicant: "It was like winning the lottery."

The school's purpose is to turn ignorant but promising country boys into efficient up-to-date dirt farmers who will take the gospel of modern agriculture back to their native villages. At the end of the three-year course, the students get no degree, but they know how to farm. Says cagey Sam Zemurray, head of United Fruit: "If we give them degrees, they'll go into politics. We want them to stay on the farm."

From Fruit to Rice. The boys get up at 5 a.m. for classes and practical farm work. They experiment with nearly every standard crop, many new introductions. Emphasis is on dairying, a crying need in the milk-poor tropics. But other courses, run from fruit-tree grafting to rice cultivation.

The boys take their work more seriously than average U.S. students. But not all their time is spent at work. They hike and hunt, play baseball and football. One baseball team is called the Lechugas (Lettuces); another the "Guernseys." The smallest class member is nicknamed "Atomic Weight."

During vacations the boys carry seeds, plants and knowledge back to their parents' farms. One Nicaraguan youth took a look at his father's rice field. "No, papa," he said sternly, "agriculture is not like this any more."

Keenly aware of the distrust with which it is regarded throughout Central America, the United Fruit Co. leans over backward to keep the Zamorano school above suspicion. It has announced that it will not employ the graduates in its plantations. The school does not teach banana culture, admits no students because of political connections, markets no surplus produce for fear of being accused of exploiting the students' labor. Said one relieved staff member, long a United Fruit employe: "We feel as pure as missionaries here."

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