Mexico Report - 2007

During our whirlwind visit through Chiapas and Oaxaca, Oct 20 - 30, Chris Treter and I we were able to visit with community representatives and coop leaders from Maya Vinic, Selva Negra, Yachil and Mut Vitz in Chiapas. While Chris went on to Guatemala to conduct roaster trainings with St. Anita, Loma Linda and APECAFORM, I traveled to Oaxaca to visit with our newest producer partner in Mexico, Yeni Navan - MICHIZA.

 

Topics for each of these coops included:

• Their updates in this “pre-harvest” season around quantities, expected quality and producer engagement.

 

 

We’ve got some serious organizational and logistical challenges going into this harvest in Chiapas. The Southern states of Mexico have been shrouded in the mists and mud of unseasonal rains for a full month prior to our visit. Roads and bridges have been damaged, communities isolated and in some cases landslides have swept both homes and coffee plots downstream.

 

Mut Vitz is definitely in a complicated, legal bind. Their bank account continues to be frozen and their recently constructed warehouse and processing plant is shut down in the face of an enormous tax-fine and impressive interest charges. We’ve heard different of how and why things have gotten so bad, before anyone seemed to have come to attention - varying from their original advisers not registering the coop properly (and putting Mut Vitz in an inappropriate tax bracket), to a calculated sabotage attempt by the Mexican government to destroy their coop, to simply having hired an accountant who didn’t know what he was doing. A lawyer from the Fray Bartolome Human Rights Center in San Cristobal is working with Mut Vitz on this…. and there is some hope that a debt-pardon deal can be struck for at least a portion of the bill. The federal government has recently announced a program of debt relief on defaulted government loans, and apparently this situation could fall under some category of this program. There is a window of opportunity between now and the beginning of 2008 to apply for this support. It all sounds a bit far-fetched and haphazard. But since this is Mexico, anything is possible.

 

However, with the harvest upon us, the possibility of Cooperative Coffees contracts in 2008 with Mut Vitz looks bleak. It is most likely that Mut Vitz will not export as a coop this harvest. And if they can export their coffee at all, the most likely scenario would be that Mut Vitz gather the pergamino from their members, then contract another organization to process it and export under a separate export license. This however, would probably not go as certified organic coffee (and would also keep Mut Vitz’ name off of it).

 

We met with representative of the former BoD and from the BoD before that in Oventic. Despite the fact that they are the ones who could be held responsible by the government for charges of tax evasion (if the situation were to come to that), they were surprisingly non-assertive in finding a solution. The current BoD was nowhere to be found.

 

Meanwhile, Mut Vitz producers are very concerned about losing all that they have invested into the coop as well as all they have invested in becoming organic certified.

Upon our arrival in the Highlands, everyone was commenting on the enduring rains and wondering about how they may impact total harvest quantities and the quality of the coffee once it comes off the trees. 

 

Chris and I got a small dose of that when we attempted to visit Maya Vinic in Chenalho... the situation only got worse when we returned to the region a day later to meet with Yachil (see below).

Since then Tropical Storm Noel has continued to plague the region. We remain attentive to reports back from our producer partners regarding the impact on their communities.

 

Maya Vinic is currently comprised of 380 active members.  In 2007 they exported 2.5 container organic certified to  Cooperative Coffees and 1 container of organic transitional coffee to Japan.

 

Despite the abundant complications facing small coops like Maya Vinic, Chris and I continue to be inspired by the positive attitude and accomplishments we find at Maya Vinic. With a new directive (since August), energy is high and the coop is moving ahead full speed.

 

Between now and the harvest season (which begins in early December), Maya Vinic expects to:

 

Challenges facing Maya Vinic include:

We left with four signed contracts of organic certified coffee.  Jose Perez Vasquez, the newly elected president of the BoD, is planning to visit each community to listen to their concerns and reassure them that Maya Vinic has solid commitments with its buyers, good contracts, and that they will do all it can to get best pergamino prices per kilo and services to members.

 

Back in San Cristobal, Chris offered Maya Vinic a day of roaster training to improve practices and quality. It is always impressive to mention the volumes that Maya Vinic continues to roast and sell to the national market.

 

In 2007, Maya Vinic sold all its second grade coffee in the national roasted market - approximately 2,000 kilos per month! The sale of this coffee covers all of Maya Vinic’s operating costs for the processing, transport and administration of their commercial office in San Cristobal.

 
Of any cooperative we work with, Maya Vinic has been one of the most successful at capitalizing upon the value-added market to the benefit of their members.

 

Recognizing the difficulty that Mut Vitz would have in supplying us –  or any buyers within the Zapatista support network – suddenly put renewed pressure on Yachil Xojoval Chulchan to supply a greater portion of the demand for this particular niche of politically charged coffee.

Yachil at its highest production levels would have had the capacity to export some 10 containers of coffee per year. But due to the chronic lack of infrastructure, the coop has had difficulties in maintaining those levels. In the past years, export capacity has remained in the 5 to 6 container levels. Chris and I got up early to travel back across that muddy and increasingly deteriorated route from San Cristobal to Pantelho, in order to meet with the community representative to see if one of those limited lots would be designated to a Cooperative Coffees contract.

We were met by 16 Yachil representative - between past and present BoD members and community delegates - to discuss with them our interest in keeping Zapatista coffee available in North America. We described our roaster/members, explained our structure and described the projects that engaged roasters (like Higher Grounds) maintain with the solidarity network via coffee sales. Finally we discussed the contract we had in hand... and agreed to make some adjustments in timing and terms.

As we talked, between long intervals of internal discussions in Tzeltal and Tzotzil amongst members, it became clear  that  we could and we should be able to come up with a better way of supporting these farmers. Of all the groups we work with, the Zapatista farmers appear to have been able to do more with less... and against all odds. With virtually no external supports, Yachil and Mut Vitz have developed systems for internal quality control, organic inspection, and communications across a broad geographical region. They are also paying  some of the highest pergamino prices in Chiapas: at 22 pesos per kilo for Yachil; and 23.50 pesos per kilo for Mut Vitz. Yet these coops also have their limits.  And in these past years, those limits have become painfully apparent.

At the export level, there is a chronic lack of support to help farmers walk through the arduous step by step process of moving coffee from pergamino in the communities to export grade green on a boat in Veracruz. Neither has there been sufficient support in helping them to understand the difference and importance of choosing the appropriate certifications, nor in the financial management of their coop.

In a long day of meeting and waiting in Oventic, the Zapatista headquarters for the region, we discussed with the "Junta del Buen Gobierno" about some of the frustrations that come with the ever-difficult communication with Zapatista coops and the trickle effects in our businesses of never knowing whether our contracts would ship on time, or even ship at all.

Again, there seems to be interest in training a local support team to help with the export of coffee and other Zapatista products. And again, there seems to be a dire lack of local resources to make this happen.

This will certainly be a proposal to discuss within Cooperative Coffees and also with the broader international network to determine how and to what extent we can dedicate efforts to keep these coops afloat. Meanwhile, the practical challenges are evident.



In the course of our day's meeting alone, the only road from the Yachil (and Maya Vinic) coffee regions had further deteriorated. With the incessant rains, chunks of road had literally dissolved; and the provisional  bridge had been swallowed by the swelling river.

To date we have no reports of major physical damage in Yachil communities. So for now, our major challenge at hand is one container on the books with Yachil and about four months time to figure out how to make the transaction happen as smoothly as possible.

Federation Selva Negra Zoque is a small coop of 180 members, of which 60 are women, located in what is called the “Selva Negra” (Black Forest) of Chiapas. We purchased our first container of Selva Negra organic certified coffee from the 2007 harvest. In 2006 we purchased via Royal coffee a container of their coffee to decaf in the Veracruz water.

 

Selva Negra has received some support via Equiterre (an NGO in Quebec and our initial point of contact many years ago) to receive technical and outreach support. Since their founding in 2001, they have been accompanied by  ICSUR, an independent team of agronimists located in Tuxtla Gutierrez. My first stop in Tuxtla was with ICSUR director Arturo Tello, who would also be my guide to Selva Negra. ICSUR has existed for 10 years, working from contract to contract and offering support in organic production and marketing in coffee, and also in promotion of eco-tourism projects.

 

Early the next morning, we start the long drive to Pantepec. Due to the prevalent landslides, we are forced to take the “safe but long” route via Bochil to Pantepec. After a four-hour drive and a quick stop for a plate of scrambled eggs, we were rolling into town.

The recently elected board of directors and a number of coop members were waiting for us in a small, compacted earth block house (the site at some future date for an organic demonstration plot and a cooperative, technical training center).

 

We did a quick round of introductions and discussed some of the plans Selva Negra has underway – and on the drawing board – as well as discussing the challenges they face.

Selva Negra is located in the highest mountains of Chiapas. This remote, northern corner of the state feels like a region unto itself – lost somewhere between Chiapas and Tabasco. There are few organized groups in the region, and very little supporting infrastructure.

 

With very steep slopes, producer plots can vary from 1,200 to 1,600 mts above sea level. But because of micro-climates in their region, harvests in communities considered “tierra caliente” run from early December to January; while the harvest in communities considered “tierra fria” can run as late as April to early May. For a coop of only 1 to 2 containers in production for export, this creates a special cash-flow dilemma.

 

Selva Negra has established a good working relationship with Root Capital. But in order to have the funds available to cover both these harvest cycles, Selva Negra needs to request special financing terms. In order to support the early harvest producers, Selva Negra needs financing soon - funds that they hope to be able to recycle internally. They are considering a collective sale of some of the early pergamino at a negotiated price with local coyotes, and would use the money earned in that sale to support farmers in the later harvest. Alternatively, they might just request higher levels of pre-financing and be prepared to pay the extended interest expense. This decision must be rendered shortly and their financing request submitted to Root Capital ASAP.

 

Selva Negra representatives identify their primary challenges as:

• Improving yields above the current level of 7 to 8 quintales per hectare; and

• Increasing the total number of members in order to export more than 1 to 2 containers.

We visited the field of BoD secretary Genaro Cruz Aguilar. His coffee plot is planted predominantly with the bourbon variety, which is fast-growing but short lived and generally considered not to be the most compatible with organic production. His fields, nevertheless, continue to produce with yields between 7 and 8 qq per hectare... but  will soon need to be renovated - hopefully with more sustainable and enduring typica varieties.

Because of its size and total volumes, Selva Negra cannot afford to apply to FLO for certification (the cost of certification would effectively gobble up any of their additional Fair Trade earnings). We did discuss IFAT as an alternative. They believe it is important to have this kind of association and validation by an international network and are very interested in learning more.

 

Yeni Navan (Permanent Dawn in Zapoteco) was founded in 1985 with a small group of farmers and support from the local church – working under liberation theology bases. After visiting and learning from the UCIRI experience the Mixe, Chinanteco, Chatino and Zapoteco farmers created the original network. Some years later, Cuicateco farmers joined Yeni Navan and the name was changed to MICHIZA – representing the initials of these five indigenous groups.

The first container was exported to Germany in 1989. Today MICHIZA exports between 10 to 12 containers annually to Germany, Austria and now the USA and Canada.

Membership is stable at 936 members, of which 266 are women, in 42 communities. Approximately 95 percent of their members are now organic certified by CertiMex.

The primary objective of my visit to Yeni Navan - MICHIZA was to get a better understanding of their structures, capacity, relationship between their marketing office (with which we have had almost exclusive contact) and their member communities, and ultimately to determine the potential for a stable and long-term relationship. We also needed to understand their production potential, organic practices and quality control, and review our proposed contracts for 2008.

 
I started with a visit to their office outside of Oaxaca, where I met with their newly elected producer BoD president, Hermengildo Garcia Perez, marketing and sales manager, Araceli Rojas, and MICHIZA accountant, Flor Garcia.

It was interesting to see a stack of producer contracts on Araceli's desk. Much as we require roasters to sign a contract for the number of bags of coffee they commit to purchase from the coop, MICHIZA requires producers to sign a contract for what the number of bags they commit to supply. We discussed their challenges and expectations for this coming harvest season. Araceli was in the process of reviewing producer commitment contracts and determining the total number of contracts they could safely sign at this point. We reviewed some of the issues discussed at our AGM – including the big Fair Trade questions and the difference between the FLO and IFAT models.

 

A FLO Moment: MICHIZA has been “cited” by FLO for the lack a special women's program. However, from my observations – at least in San Juan Yagila – women are considered the most active, most respected and hardest working members in the community. In addition, Araceli (9 years with MICHIZA) and Flor (7 years with MICHIZA) are the only two permanent staff and essentially run the commercial office. Nevertheless, MICHIZA is currently searching for an additional project that the women could become involved in and comply with FLO's request. This seems to be yet another example of FLO micromanaging its “qualifications check-list” and losing site of the bigger picture.

 

MICHIZA operates under the premise of maintaining a small but effective office, with rented services for processing and export. They have been using the company Galgera Gomez, but are finding that the plant is becoming increasingly saturated and because of that have suffered shipping delays. They are considering experimenting with at least one container for processing and export with a new CEPCO facility located outside of Oaxaca City.

 

With their social funds, they are looking to buy a piece of land for the construction of a central warehouse and offices, and eventually install dry processing equipment. They have also begun experimenting with roasted coffee in the local market and are installing a roaster and have members training for quality cupping in their current location.

 

I was also introduced to the producer BoD treasurer Patricio Bautista Valdez, organics program coordinator Faustino Pablo Ramos, and driver, coop historian and able guide Jorge Cruz Vazquez, -  with whom I would travel to the Zapoteca community San Juan Yagila the following day.

 

Faustino and Jorge picked me up at the hotel 6:30am sharp. We were headed to one of the closest communities – 140 km from Oaxaca City. From the looks of the good roads I’d seen in Oaxaca up until then, I figured the time estimates of “up to 3 hours” were generous - if anything. Nearly 5 hours of twisting turns later, we were finally rolling into town!

San Juan Yagila is a town of some 100 families; 22 of those families are MICHIZA members. Interestingly, this community is universally committed to organics. The town counsel voted to make Yagila a chemical free zone – not allowed on coffee, not allowed on personal milpa (corn and beans) plots, not allowed on fruit trees.

Faustino, who lives in Yagila, said that they had to convince a couple of families to convert their production to all organic. But once the long-term benefits were clearly explained, they too were in agreement.

 

We met in one of the member’s living room. I described Cooperative Coffees, how we are structured, and the terms of the three contracts we just signed in their commercial office. Producers were VERY enthusiastic, and were eager to lead me up the hill to show me their coffee plots.

Hilaria Ramos Hernandez, a 72-year-old widow with four grown children (3 of whom have moved away from the community), works her coffee plots alone. When asked how she feels about coffee – she gave me a mischievous grin and said: “Me ENCANTA el corte de café!” (I’m enchanted with the coffee harvest!). This is the time of year when Hilaria reaps the benefit of her long year of hard work. “This is the only work I have to sustain my life here,” she added.

 

She asked if I was ready to visit her land. Of course I said, “Yes!” So Hilaria grabs her machete and nimbly leads us up the mountain, whacking at the underbrush to clear our path as we go.

Hilaria does not look like someone planning to slow down any time soon, and has been renovating her fields with new trees these past years. She takes us to a section of picture-perfect, 3-year-old trees. Planted in clear lines along the contour of the slope, her trees are full of plump, green berries. I didn’t stop to try and identify all the varieties. But in my traipsing could attest to trees well spaced and healthy, covered with staggered layers of shade cover, from nitrogen fixing Guajiniquil and Leaukaena trees and a number of fruit and hard wood. Depending primarily on the leaf fall of her shade, Hilaria proudly shows off the amount of organic material in her soil.

 

Within two months the majority of Hilaria’s coffee should have turned crimson red, and she will be in full swing harvest mode. Hilaria expects to bring in 4 quintales from her hectare of land.

 

Paula and her husband are not members of MICHIZA, but generously offer us ample servings of Tapache – a mildly fermented sugarcane juice. 

Paula tends the boiling and fermenting pots of sugarcane juice to make panela (unrefined brown sugar blocks) and Tapache, respectively, while her husband leads the cattle around the mill pressing more juice to process.  




It was encouraging to see the community spirit transcending organizational lines. San Juan Yagila is an old, established community with extended family links. Communication appears to be easy and the local atmosphere is friendly.

That was evident during our break. Here, for example, everyone lends a hand at keeping baby Estefani entertained.

Next we visited the plot of Epifalia Pablo Castillon and her husband Arnolfo. Again the soil looks rich and the trees look healthy. Epifalia and Arnolfo’s land is a bit steeper and they have worked diligently to construct stone, wood and living retaining barriers.

One of the criteria MICHIZA uses to determine a potential new member’s level of interest in joining is the number of these back-breaking retaining walls the applicant is willing to construct. Epifalia and Arnolfo must have passed with flying colors!

 

Again, the shade is varied and plot will also provide for basic foods. Epifalia shakes down some chayote off the vine and offers them to me. Dreading Canadian customs, I encourage her to keep them for her supper.  

 

Before heading back that long and winding road, Faustino invites us to “taquitos” of cheese and beans and a fried chunk of meat. I was told it was a “kind of local, wild pig”. It was delicious… and I didn’t ask for more details.