Local Initiatives for Self-Development

Cooperatives like S.S.S. Mut Vitz are positive examples of the level of local initiative that exists and that is prepared to work for change in terms of true respect for Indigenous rights and human dignity in Chiapas. In this case, the producers hope that by gaining direct control over the processing and sale of their coffee, they will be able to actually improve the standard of living and general well being for their members and communities.

The main objectives of the cooperatives programs for agroecological production and organizational development include:

• increasing the local knowledge of appropriate, alternative technology for the organic production of their coffee.

• improving the potential of the cooperative members to sell their coffee at "fair prices" both nationally and internationally.

• improving the basic infrastructure for each of the cooperative members in order to guarantee a strict quality control, and reduce the physical burden of wet processing of the coffee.

• improving the overall, collective infrastructure for the dry-processing and transportation of the coffee.

• improving the overall economic and social well-being of its members.

Mut Vitz producers are enthusiastic -- in spite of the enormous political and financial challenges they currently face. Autonomous cooperative members find themselves under constant attack by state and federal government forces. Since early 1995, beginning with the military invasion in the Lacandon and continuing with the on-going counter-insurgency warfare now underway in many areas of the Jungle and Highlands regions, organizations autonomous of the official party line and their physical structures suffer recurring attacks. This has created a variety of serious, unexpected obstacles to any kind of consistent development plans in the communities. However, the members have not been dissuaded from their organizational nor economic goals.

The principal economic challenges that the cooperatives have identified include:

• Providing credit to the producers- during the production process, producers need cash credits in order to be able to contract temporary hired labor in order to complete soil conservation practices, pruning, and the actual harvest and processing of the crop.

• Providing credit to the organization during the process of gathering the coffee from coop members; the organization needs cash credit in order to pay producers at least a minimal down-payment on their crops until money from the actual purchase arrives.

• Providing credit and/or development grant money to the organization - in order to be able to pay for initial small infrastructure, technical training, processing plant and heavy infrastructure, and to cover the costs of inspection and organic certification.

Two members of the Mut Vitz Collective (who were trained by the Chiapas Media Project) have produced a half-hour video which details the challenges of producing coffee as well as the benefits that have come to their communities from Fair Trade distribution to organizations such as Cloudforest Initiatives.

A History of Coffee Production in Mexico

The producers associated in the cooperative Mut Vitz are well organized and working hard to enhance the quality of their coffee. They recognize the importance of improving and strictly controlling the production practices for high-altitude, high-quality organic coffee, if they are to gain access to an international market that offers economic advantage to their members -- as opposed to continuing along what has been the tragic, historical tradition in Chiapas of demanding hard work and offering low pay for the coffee grown and sold by campesino producers.

For example, coffee exports in Mexico generate approximately $700 million in national income. But for the majority of small-scale farmers, the earnings from their coffee harvest remain nothing short of miserable. Earnings from this labor-intensive crop do not cover even the minimal costs for their basic needs -- food, housing and health -- much less do they represent the capital necessary in order for the small-scale producer to consider personal or community development.

Coffee in Mexico, as in many countries, was originally cultivated on huge plantations. With the colonial politics and economic "incentives" offered to foreign capital during the reign of Mexican President Porfirio Diaz, the expropriation of indigenous lands for transnational plantation coffee production was essentially guaranteed. The indigenous people who had been cultivating corn and other basic grains for their own subsistence were simply thrown off their land; and in order to survive without this basis for production, farmers were forced to convert themselves into (poorly) paid labor as coffee pickers for the plantation owners. It was not until the Cardenist Agrarian Reform 1934-1940, that land redistribution finally turned in favor of the local indigenous population.

With the reform, the panorama began to change dramatically. The expropriation of plantation lands provoked the expansion of small-scale, or campesino coffee production. Today approximately 200,000 of the 283,000 coffee producers in Mexico, are indigenous campesinos with land holdings of approximately 2 hectares. But these campesino farmers have learned that simply having acquired a little piece of land is not enough to escape the economic traps they historically have confronted. In 349 of the 411 municipalities in Mexico where coffee is currently being grown, the farmers themselves continue to live in a state of acute poverty. Essential elements, such as production credits, coffee processing infrastructure and access to international markets, had been kept in the hands of the government and other big business.

Thanks to Café Campesino for the above information.

Interview with Lucio Gonzalez Ruiz of Mut Vitz Coffee Cooperative

March 4, 2000

My name is Lucio Gonzalez Ruiz. I am from a small village called Colonia San Miguel, in the autonomous municipality San Juan de la Libertad, or El Bosque. I am the President of the board of Directors of the Association of Coffee Producers Mut Vitz. I will leave this post by the end of May, when a new directive will start.

We started to organize this cooperative or association of coffee producers for several reasons. The main reason is that we have to deal with middlemen, called "coyotes". They set the price for our coffee and the manner of payment; they cheat us when they weigh the coffee; they won't pay the full price because they claim the coffee is not dry or it is spotted. Right now the price for coffee is extremely low. We get 9 pesos a kg for coffee if it is dry and clean, 7 pesos if it has spots. Our coffee is not spotted, we know spots are yellow or black, and our coffee is not like this and it is not fermented; it is good. The buyers say it is bad only to pay the lower price of 7 pesos.

We also have expenses: we pay workers for helping at harvest time. Landless campesinos or those who come from areas where there is no coffee come to help us with the harvest. But we hardly can make it with the little price we get for our coffee. The coyotes make good money: after harvest, they buy a new car or build a second story to their house. The coyotes are getting rich while we are getting poorer because the price is so low. We cannot even buy a depulper or build a yard to dry the coffee beans.

So we decided to organize into a coffee producers association in 1997. We got together with autonomous small coffee producers from Chenalho, San Andres, Bochil, Jitotol, San Juan de la Libertad and Simojovel. We asked all the producers if they had the same problems with coyotes, with the low price, with the unfair practices, and they all did. We decided that it was better to form an association and to try our luck exporting our coffee in the fair trade market. We formed a board of directors and thought of names. We decided to call the cooperative "Mut Vitz," because our meeting place is at the foothills of the highest mountain in the region, called Mut Vitz. This mountain is a resting place for thousands of migratory birds who fly-in from the north during the months of October and November. Our grandparents used to celebrate the arrival of the birds and they named this mountain Mut Vitz, which in Tzotzil means Bird Mountain. So, we named our association Mut Vitz.

In 1998 we were able to register our association of coffee producers. That same year we got our export permit. Since 1997 there already were international buyers interested in purchasing our coffee: people in US and Italy.

As soon as we got our export permit we thought it was important to help the producers with technical assistance. We noticed that some farmers were still using chemical fertilizers and herbicides in their plots. We know that our soils have become increasingly depleted and they don't produce corn and beans as they did before. We know that it is the chemicals that are damaging the soil, and as an association we have decided to recover all of our soils. We helped and motivated all the producers to recover their soils. We told them, if you continue using chemicals, your soil will die, and your children won't be able to produce corn and beans. The soil will be dead, dry, sandy, and it won't produce anything at all. We taught the farmers how to make their composts, their organic fertilizers, how to recover their soils. We have been applying compost in these damaged parcels for the last three years. Most of our parcels have been organic for 10 to 15 years. In our bi-laws it states that chemicals are not to be used in any members' parcels; not only for their coffee, neither for corn, beans, vegetables or whatever. No chemicals at all!

Years ago, a government coffee institution, IMECAFE, gave away chemical fertilizers to the small producers and encouraged them to use it. The farmers used it in their plants that first year, and the plants looked very pretty and they produced very well. The following year the fertilizer was no longer for free. Still, some farmers went ahead and bought it. The third year the price for the fertilizer went way up, and the farmers could not afford it any more. So, many coffee plants died in this process. The plants got used to the chemicals and they suffered without it and dried up. We realized that the chemical is good for only one year; that for only one year the plant produces coffee, but not after the second year. Then the coffee plants die, and even if we plant new ones they do not produce because the soil is already damaged with the chemicals. For this reason we are doing organic work in all the parcels; we are growing only organic coffee; we are using shade for our coffee plants and we are diversifying our shade trees; and we are also using compost in our corn fields or milpas.

In March 1999, after our 98-99 harvest, we had our first export sale. We sold a container of coffee to two buyers in the US: Half a container to each buyer. This was good for us, it helped the cooperative and it helped the producers. At this time the price for coffee in Bochil was of 12 pesos a kg, and Mut Vitz paid the producers the guaranteed price of 18 pesos a kg.

Also we had leftover money for a small fund. Plus, we received a special price from one of the buyers for our good organizational work. We added this money to the fund. We had an agreement among all members that this fund was to be used to purchase typewritters, computer, fax and some furniture for our office; and also as an emergency fund for the members. The members of Mut Vitz can borrow money from this fund for an emergency like illness or when they run out of corn, and then pay it back later with the coffee harvest. We recover this money so that others can use it and we do not charge any interest. This fund is only for Mut Vitz members.

We have some problems. As in every struggle, there are a few obstacles in our road. For example, when we come to San Cristobal we have to go through several military checkpoints. The soldiers stop us, request that we show our papers, ask a lot of questions, harras us, waste our time. There are up to five checkpoints from San Juan de la Libertad, where we have our office and warehouse, to San Cristobal. We have to wait in every checkpoint and we waste so much time. For this reason we're late to our meetings and appointments in San Cristobal, and we return home very late at night.

Another problem is that some people are spreading false rumors about us, saying that we receive government aid, and this is not true, of course. The international fair trade delegations come to Chiapas to investigate and we take them to our communities, to our coffee parcels, to our office, to our homes. They see that this is not true. They see how we work; they eat with us in our homes; they work with us picking coffee. Many people in Europe and the United States who drink coffee have never seen a coffee plant. We take them to the fields so that they learn how much work goes into producing the coffee they drink: from working the soil with the compost, working with the plants, harvesting the beans, and all the drying, washing, depulping, processing, roasting. For us it is good that they learn.

Finally, I need to say that members of Mut Vitz have been attacked. The first incident was last January, after the producers had brought their coffee to the warehouse. Martin, one of the producers, was ambushed when he was returning to his home in Chavajeval, municipality of San Juan de la Libertad. He was walking with his young son on a dirt road when four men with masks on assaulted them. They shot and killed Martin, but they did not steal his money. His son was able to run away. We don't know who were the assailants because the young boy could not identify them.

In February, it happened again: after bringing their coffee to the warehouse and when they were going back home, four producers were attacked in the same road and in the same manner. Three were killed, only one survived. This time the assailants were detained and are in jail. They are pri people from the area. The rumors are that these killers are paid by the local government, but I am not sure of that. The rumors come from other pri people.

The third attack was in March, in Bochil. A member of Mut Vitz went to town to buy a small motor for his coffee depulper. He didn't return to his home after he bought the motor, he disappeared. We found his dead body 12 days later. He had been killed 2 or 3 days before we found him and had signs of torture. We don't know who killed him.

Why are they attacking our compañeros? Well, we don't think it is because they are attacking our coffee cooperative. No, it is not because of the coffee, it is because we are Zapatista supporters. This is what we think: that it is political, because we are Zapatistas and because the government wants to finish the Zapatista "problem". Instead of attacking us with the army, they pay local thugs to kill us, and then the army doesn't look bad. We have denounced these killings, both with human rights organizations and in the radio. We are not afraid. No. It is just a dirty war. We are not going to be hidding in our homes. We have lots of work to do!

And we are successful. We started with 500 members in 1997. For the 98-99 harvest there were already 750 members. In 1999, we were 850. This year we are 1300 to 1400 members of Mut Vitz. All members are autonomous or Zapatista bases of support from six municipalities in the highlands.

We are growing in membership and also we are growing in marketing. For this year's harvest, we are exporting three containers of coffee: two to the US and one to Switzerland. We sell the coffee that is not export quality in the local Mexican market. Last year we sold 1,000 kgs in San Cristobal. There is much competition here but buyers look for good quality. This year we will sell about 8,000 kgs in the national market. We have orders from Merida, Cuernavaca, San Miguel Allende, Mexico City, Puebla, and here in San Cristobal.

Thanks to Cloudforest Initiatives, which sells coffee from Mut Vitz, for this interview.