Mexico
2006
Recently, Wendy De Jong, Director of Coffee for Tony’s Coffee, and I returned from a visit with our coffee farmer friends at the UDEPOM Co-op in Motozintla, Mexico. For the past few years, we’ve been purchasing quite a bit of outstanding, high-grown (1,500 meters plus) certified organic, Fair Trade coffee from the UDEPOM Co-op.
The UDEPOM Co-op is a collective of 608 individual family farmers, each tending a small coffee farm of between 1 – 10 hectares (2 – 20 acres) of ridiculously steep rainforest in the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost State which shares a border with Guatemala.
October 2005
Last fall we arranged, with the support of TransFair USA and Royal Coffee,
to sponsor a visit from Eddie Jimenez. Eddie is an administrator for the
UDEPOM Co-op and one of its 608 farmer members.
We arranged for Eddie to tour Seattle, and interact with our customers and their customers, sharing stories, educating individuals and talking to small audiences about the way of life of a southern Mexican coffee farmer.
The entire time Eddie was with us, Hurricane Stan dumped rain in the mountains of Chiapas. Eddie frequently attempted to make contact with family and friends to find out the latest back home in Chiapas. What little news he gathered through the occasional cell phone or internet connection, was not promising.
Eddie was steadfast and stoic during his stay, but he was anxious to head home. Three anxious days after we bid him farewell, Eddie phoned us. Eddie reported that Hurricane Stan turned out to be the storm of the century. Raging rivers destroyed homes, roads, and bridges. Lives were lost. Eddie was relieved to report that all the Co-op members and their families have survived the storm, but that there was a real need for whatever assistance we could muster.
In the short time Eddie was visited with us, his sincerity, earnestness and humility touched the lives of literally hundreds of people. Many of his new friends in Seattle inquired as to the Co-op’s situation. Bob Ohly and Jack Kelly, owners of Caffe Ladro, suggested that we send a serious amount of cash, NOW. Diana Crane, public relations director, and Tracy Wolpert, CEO, of PCC Natural Markets pledged their support. Together, Caffe Ladro, PCC Natural Markets and Tony’s Coffee, pitched in equal amounts and wired $10,000 to UDEPOM to fund immediate relief efforts.
Six months later, on May 3, 2006, it was our turn to visit Eddie in Motozintla. We experienced first hand the very real scars, both physical and emotional, left by Hurricane Stan.
May
3rd 2006
Early on our first morning in Mexico, Eddie greeted us in the Hotel lobby
in Tapachula with a warm, firm handshake and a grin. During our three
hour drive from Tapachula, up and over the mountains to Motozintla the
mountain switchbacks were frequently interrupted with the remnants of
bridges, and buildings that were still half buried in mud. A few times,
Eddie quietly pointed out what had been a school, or a church, or the
home of one of their co-op members.
As we crested the highest peak at 1,800 meters, the humidity and heat of Tapachula gave way to a cool breeze. On the other side of the mountain, Eddie pointed down out the window and said “Motozintla”. It was a breathtaking, panoramic view - 360 degrees of majestic mountain peaks and some 500 meters below, and in a massive bowl was a small city.
Our
first stop in Motozintla was at the offices of UDEPOM, a modest two story
building in the heart of the city. We met a dozen or so of the members
of the co-op, including Otoniel, an UDEPOM administrator, and the co-op
President, Enaldo, a distinguished elder.
We also met Jorge, who as Eddie explained, back in October offered to drive Eddie to the airport. While Jorge was dropping Eddie at the airport, the rains washed out the paved road. Jorge abandoned his truck off the side of the road and walked home in the storm. Jorge smiled as he told us that it took him three days to hike the back over the 1,800 meter peaks to Motozintla in torrential rains, along the raging river, with nothing to eat. Everyone agreed that Hurricane Stan was the worst storm in memory.
Our
next stop was the co-op’s warehouse and processing facility, just
south of town along the river. An old warehouse sat in what looked like
the middle lane of a mud highway. Four lanes wide of rubble - rocks, mud,
trash, a lawn chair, some clothes, a sneaker, a tooth brush - snaked north
into the city and south as far as you could see into the mountains.
The
corner of the old building that faced upriver was gone. Inside, the high
water mark on the wall was obvious at about eye level. Caked mud was everywhere.
The concrete pits for their old bucket elevators were covered in mud.
Mud-caked processing machinery and their old transformer sat in a pile
of scrap materials waiting to be disposed of.
A few hundred feet away, the co-op members built a new warehouse. They spent $50,000 salvaging old equipment, replacing their transformer and constructing a new building, all in time to process the 2006 crop.
The new building, like the old one, was a basic 20,000 sq. ft. warehouse with concrete floor, 25’ high concrete brick walls and a tin roof. It was stacked floor to ceiling with sacks of pergamino (washed, fermented and patio-dried coffee cherries). The harvest was complete and the processing of the pergamino was in full swing. The operation was neat and orderly and simple. Their milling and sorting and bagging machinery sat along the far wall, a series of elevators, and hoppers and shoots, and screens and motors.
May
4th, 2006
On day two, we headed out to the coffee farms. We were up early and piled
into the bed of 3-ton 4x4 Ford truck. I was happy to see that Jorge was
going to be our driver for the day. We were warned that it would be a
bumpy ride. We were standing, open air, leaning against a beam running
the length of the bed. The sun was shining and it was hot.
We left the paved Tapachula/Motozintla highway and traveled on a narrow dirt road. This was the lifeline, the umbilical cord, to the rest of the world, for the hundreds of families living out in the mountains. The road was an endless ribbon of switch backs cutting through the rainforest. There were occasional small mud walled cottages along the road, and a few livestock roaming the mountainsides.
A
few miles in, we rounded a bend, and eased through a stream running across
the road. We stopped abruptly. There had been a small landslide and a
huge boulder sat in the middle of the road. We unloaded to survey the
situation. The idea of moving the boulder was quickly dismissed, it was
massive. There was not nearly enough room on the cliff side to squeeze
between the boulder and the 100’ foot drop off. There was not quite
enough room on the mountain side of the boulder. So, we got to work! We
started digging out the mud and rocks. A dozen set of hands can move a
lot of earth in 20 minutes. Jorge gunned the engine and eased the big
truck between the mountainside and the boulder. It scraped a little but
got through. We all loaded up and continued on.
There were constant reminders that this dirt road, the lifeline for hundreds of families, was always only a serious rainstorm away from being severed.
We came upon a backhoe shoring up another bend in the road. A few other trucks were parked off in the shade. It appeared that the folks had been waiting around for some time. Another 15 minutes and then the machine slowly backed away to a wide spot in the road and we rumbled on by.
This was no place for the impatient. Here, transportation was a privilege not a right.
We
bumped along for another hour and a half deeper into the rainforest. We
passed through a small village called Ojo De Agua. It consisted of a school,
a church, and a dozen homes around a large patch of grass, which served
as school yard, soccer pitch, town square, and apparently an emergency
helipad. With our donation in the fall, UDEPOM hired a helicopter to drop
food and water in the pueblos that were cut off from vehicle access for
weeks. We were told this was one of the drop sites.
We were in the heart of coffee country. The road cut through endless mountainsides of coffee trees, all bursting with white blossoms. We climbed to a ridge, the spine of a mountain, with a row of buildings on either side of the road. This was another small village, Berriozabal. Here we stopped and had lunch in a building that serves as home, post office, general store, and restaurant. We were served chicken in mole, and fresh tortillas off the oil drum wood burning stove. Delicious.
After
lunch we walked down to the school. Kids pasted their faces to the windows
of the classroom to catch the rare sight of visiting foreigners. At recess,
we kicked the soccer ball around with the kids, and shared digital photos
of them with our fancy cameras.
We
walked to the far side of the school yard and onto the farm of a co-op
member. We descended into a thick canopy of shade trees - some lemon,
some banana. There were thousands of coffee trees. We had really hit the
jackpot with the flowering. Coffee trees flower just two or three days
a year. It was a spectacular fireworks show of white star blossoms. There
was a sweet, pungent perfume in the air, an intoxicating mix of gardenia,
jasmine, honeysuckle, vanilla, hibiscus, lemon, and orange. Through the
trees, the views were spectacular, 180 degrees of mountain peaks, river
valleys, clouds and rain forest.
The
majority of the members live in simple huts with a tin roof built on the
flattest part of their land. A concrete patio is the centerpiece of the
home. Each farmer tends the few thousand trees on his land. On average,
each farmer produces about 3,000 pounds of pergamino per year which is
about 20-25 sacks. That makes the annual revenue from one of these farms
approximately $3,500 per year.
On Luis Perez Mejia’s patio we stopped and gathered around as he described how he picks, washes, de-pulps, dries, bags, and hauls his pergamino to the road for the Co-op to pick up and transport to the processing facility. Luis shared how much work, how much care, and how little money is involved in the effort. The discussion was heavy, earnest and emotional - the trauma of the previous year, the appreciation for our donation, our shared interest in having them produce such wonderful coffee, and working together to create a greater appreciation of, and market value for their product.
One
by one the farmers spoke their mind. A couple of the younger men spoke
frankly about doubts they have for the future of coffee farming. They
questioned whether it’s worth all the physical difficulty, the lack
of control, and the meager wages.
So there it is. Is the production of high grown coffee sustainable? Are consumers willing to pay enough to make it a worthwhile pursuit?
I know I am. The coffee is too good, and the people who grow it are too special.
Todd P. Elliott,
President and CEO
Tony’s Coffees & Teas, Inc.
May 2006
Special thanks to Tony Konecny for providing us some of his great photographs!