Santa Anita Historical Memory Project

Brief project description

This is a collaborative project through which the Santa Anita community will
be able to tell their story by documenting their transformation and progression from guerrillas into fair trade coffee farmers.  The eventual goal will be to distribute the resulting documentary, thus spreading their story to others.  All proceeds of the showings will be going to Santa Anita.

Project background

   The main issue being concretely addressed here is the low level of income. However, this project also
acts as a transformative tool for the Santa Anita community to appropriate their history by finding a way to create, understand, and share their own story.  Multimedia methods, including video and sound equipment, mural paintings and collective story telling, will be used to implement the project.  All interested members of the community are being targeted.

Thus far, it has been interesting to see how the folks from Santa Anita negotiate their history. The community now has video equipment, so they are learning to document their community and work the technology.  More importantly, they are learning to understand what makes their community experience unique, and how to spread their accumulated knowledge and history to others.

The project was completed in 2007 after a year of hard work. To see the final results, click here.

Details

Producer group information:

Name of group: ACMPASA (Santa Anita)

Name of point of contact in producer group: Rigoberto Augustin Ramirez

Country/Region: Guatemala

Number of members in cooperative/size of corresponding affected community: 33 families

Number of cooperatives in umbrella group: 1

Current allies:

Cooperative Coffees

Current collaborators

 
Students from UW-Madison have been involved in:

Organising, brainstorming, committees

Communication with producers

Research (materials, methods, sources for completion…)

Financial aid/ funding applications

Administrative tasks

On the ground

Follow-up

Just Coffee Cooperative would be interested in receiving support from other roaster in all of these aspects of the project as well…and they would also be willing to provide updates to supporters on how the project is developing

Contact information

matt@justcoffee.coop, eva@justcoffee.coop

Producer group: ACMPASA

Learn more by visiting the Just Coffee website:  here