Dow Jones Newswires
May 29, 2001
By Maja Wallengren

MEXICO CITY --Serving as grim proof of the severity of the social crisis in Mexico caused by low international coffee prices, most of the immigrants found dead in the Arizona desert last week came from coffee-producing areas.

Fleeing the crisis in Mexico's second largest producing state of Veracruz, six of the 14 dead were identified as small coffee farmers, some of the thousands who have been heading to the U.S. to try their luck as illegal immigrants.

With coffee prices at around 60 cents a pound not covering the cost of production, farmers are abandoning their farms or selling them to raise the money to pay smugglers to take them into the U.S. For the farmers who stick it out, the mass exodus leaves them without labor to harvest their beans.

"It's an indication of the level of desperation in the coffee areas, which is triggering a massive migration from all areas, and the cost of this social crisis is enormous," an exporter in the Veracruz coffee town of Xalapa told Dow Jones Newswires by telephone from the Gulf Coast state.

Veracruz state produced about 1.56 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee in the 1999/2000 record harvest cycle, or roughly 25% of Mexico's total output in that harvest cycle, according to figures from the Mexican Coffee Council. This year's crop is likely to be markedly lower.

The major flight from coffee-growing areas started to explode in October and November when harvesting of the 2000/01 crop started.

With neither cash nor financing available to pay for harvesting, with international prices at an eight-year low, the labor force left early to try their luck as illegal immigrants rather than wait for work which may not materialize.

"The situation in the coffee areas here is extremely difficult now. The labor has all gone because there is no money and no jobs around, small producers have also left their farms, and most of them are migrating to the U.S.," said Leo de Gario, an independent producer himself from the Veracruz coffee area of Huatusco.

Dead Immigrant Producers' Families May Lose Land

In the deadliest border crossing ever recorded in Arizona, most of the 14 Mexicans who were found dead last week were directly or indirectly dependent on the coffee industry in Veracruz, either as producers, workers, or from families of coffee farmers.

"Coffee is an important part of the Veracruz economy," said a local official in Veracruz. "It's a real bad social problem, and it's sadly not surprising to hear that many of these immigrants were coffee producers or coffee workers."

Of the Veracruz group, at least seven were identified as producers from the small coffee villages of El Equimite and San Pedro Altepan in the northern part of the state. And six of them died in sweltering heat in the Arizona desert after being abandoned by their smugglers without water for five days, the Associated Press reported from Veracruz.

Others in the group have been identified as coming from Veracruz' top growing region of Coatepec, and areas surrounding the coffee town of Xalapa, according to local news reports.

But for the families of the dead producers left behind things may turn a lot worse still.

The going price in Veracruz for the smugglers, locally known as coyotes, is up to $2,000 for the organization of the illegal entry into the U.S. That's a huge amount for any ordinary Mexican, and most of the Veracruz group turned to local money lenders.

In return they handed over land titles for their small 1-2 hectare coffee plots as guarantee for the loans, and the relatives may now lose the land to the lenders, relatives of the immigrants told reporters in Veracruz this weekend.