Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

"What happens if I can't make it up this hill?" I asked, half-joking. "I guess you stay here," said Jose. To get to his coffee bushes he must first climb down from the refugee camp to the distant valley below. After a full day's work he usually needs to carry coffee back up that incredibly steep incline, on his back. I think I would die.

For his labours he might make three or four dollars. Lack of easy access to their coffee bushes makes farming particularly difficult right now. Normally they would maintain a regular routine of pruning their bushes and the needed shade trees, as well as removing the underbrush and using it to create organic fertilizer. Presently they are only able to do the bare minimum, and subsequently the yields are down significantly.

Coffee prices have plummeted worldwide. A farmer might make 30 cents on a pound of coffee that sells for $5.50 in the U.S. Six years ago he made $1.25 on that same pound of coffee. The last decade there has been a steady 'liberalization' of coffee-trading so that the only control left is 'the market' itself, while individual countries are discouraged from supporting their coffee farmers in times of over-supply. The International Monetary Fund, and now the World Trade Organization have become involved with coffee distribution in recent years, pushing prices down for the producers. People are going to be hungry this year in Chiapas.

Two weeks ago, CPTer Scott Kerr and I joined two board members of the Abejas coffee cooperative in attending a Chiapas state level conference of social justice organizations in a city near the Guatemala border. A hundred campesinos gathered to share their stories and to discuss the effects of low agricultural prices on their lives as farmers. Much focus was on the incredibly low prices being paid to the producers and the resulting emigration of many coffee growers to Mexican cities or to the U.S.

After several hours of small and large group meetings, the attendees came up with a list of the common demands from their varied organizations. While many of these focused on requiring their own government to attend to this crisis, they also included demands for supports for organic farming and for traditional medicine, as well as for a return to Mexican constitutional protection for communal ownership of rural lands. This constitutional protection was removed at the insistence of the U.S. and Canadian governments as a prerequisite to Mexico's entry into NAFTA.

The following day nearly a thousand others joined the conference participants for a protest march. While Scott and I had brought a banner, we decided in the end that we didn't want to risk having the media focus on 'the meddling foreigners' instead of on the legitimate demands of these courageous people. Our friends from the Abejas coffee coop decided to carry the banner, which read in English, 'COFFEE DRINKERS: BUY FAIRLY TRADED COFFEE.' It is a banner that we plan to use again in coming weeks to try to get the internatioinal press to bring the story of unjust coffee prices to the attention of the coffee consumers in the first world.