Toasted

Medium Toast

Forget the chocolate covering. You have not enjoyed coffee at its finest until you have had freshly roasted, still hot, coffee beans.

I have spent the last two days in the office here in the city warming myself by the roaster, sneaking a handful of hot beans (here and there), conducting interviews and sitting in on the prep for the certification renewal that is due to begin on Monday.

The Toastador

Cafe oro spinning in the roaster

Freshly roasted and on to cooling

Cooling

Cooled

A sample of the state

From the east side of the Templo de Guadalupe

I have often commented that I haven't really been much of anywhere in Chiapas, as my fieldwork takes me to very specific sites, which I continuously visit--my main travel experience being from point A to point B.

With Joe here (finally!), I got to take in a little bit more of Chiapas (including new foods, different ruins and abrupt changes in weather). Although we did take one day to visit the coffee cooperative and Joe got to meet the guys I have been hanging out with and take a tour of the bodega.

Our plans were never firm and changed as we negotiated the vicissitudes of independent travel. More than once I recognized why people prefer to pay for guided tours--if only to be shuttled from one form of transportation to the next without having to hunt it down.

Joe enjoys an elote, San Cris style (w/mayo, lime and chile)

Mostly though, for us it was about soaking up some togetherness and experiencing new sights, smells, tastes and so on. I've made an album of trip photos here.

We started on familiar terrain for me--taking in the city--I took Joe to my favorite spots and uncovered new places at the same time. I also got to experience the city after dark:

With the cathedral at my back

On the Guadalupe andador

Joe expressed an interest in seeing the ruins, and the NGO I am working with asked that we make a trip to see the governing council close by, so after a couple days in the city we headed north. It was drizzly and overcast most of our time in the town and while at the ruins, which offered respite from the 90+ temperatures and also gave the everything a different look.

Overlooking the palace

It was very different coming back in the middle of the week and at an 'off-time.' There were far fewer people (vendors and tourists alike) and there were different parts of the ruins open for exploration that had previously been closed. So we got to wander through some of the dark hallways under the palace and so on. Also, there were lizards!

Rio Ucumacinta, facing Guatemala

We then headed south to a less traveled, island ruin, which can only be reached by boat and is situated on the Ucumacinta River that divides Mexico and Guatemala. It is difficult to convey the absolute sense of creepiness I felt at this particular ruin. We had spent a few hours just getting to the boat launch that morning and thus arrived at the ruins later in the day; our boat was one of two on the beach.

Silence.

There was one other family there receiving a guided tour, but otherwise we were alone in a forested, ruined space. This ruin is far less visited and thus has more open to the public - to reach the main plaza we wended our way through the dark hall of the 'labyrinth' building.

Exit from the labyrinth

There was an energy and a stillness all at once. But after an hour or so, the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up. It gave me an inexplicable sense of unease. Although it was quite the experience, and the ruins were amazing, after a couple of hours of exploring I was glad to be on the water again. The boat ride was beautiful and I kept wanting to reach out and touch Guatemala.

The town that is the jumping off point for the island also had 'taxi' boats that you could hire to take you to the border crossing. There was something somewhat romantic to me about the idea of arriving in another country by boat. Also, the geographer in me was considering how borders are drawn and such...

This way to Guatemala (bridge crossing)

We considered it at length, thinking of rounding out our trip with another famous ruin. But the amount of time we had, the vagaries of the border crossing and the thought of 8 hours on a bus led us to head back to the center of the state to see about some lakes. We did see other entry points as we traveled south on the border highway, but they were mostly unmarked. However, we were constantly reminded of our proximity as we passed through a dozen or so military check-points. We were stopped and searched at the one closest to the city, and Joe and I had to present our passports. I must remark here that the border highway is not the only place that such checkpoints exist. I have been stopped a number of times--the militarization of this space seems to be more a campaign of intimidation (something I will discuss in more depth in my dissertation).

The temperature change moving from the border back into the valley was jarring and the rain, while not entirely unpleasant, did make our trip much shorter. Also, our frustration with the combis made it less desirable to continue to hop from one lake to the next--for example, upon boarding a combi in town I say: "We are going to the Lake of Colors." After passing the turn for the lake, the combi driver says: "No, no, you will like this other lake much better, I will drop you there." And no amount of protest changed the fact that instead of going where we wanted, we were dropped on the side of the road elsewhere.

Cinco Lagos (not the lake of colors...)

It was awfully rainy and cold, which led to us being the only tourists in the area. We had hoped to rent some kayaks and explore the blue waters, but we instead opted to head into the city and enjoy a warm meal.

Enjoying a beautiful day at the Lakes

We spent our last full day together back in San Cris, doing some shopping and watching futbol. And now I have approximately 32 days and 19 hours before I wrap up this portion of my trip and head back to the states for some conferences and classes.

"Pure Coffee"

Cafe oro

To me, un-toasted coffee beans taste like sunflower seed husks, to the socios they taste like "pure coffee." Just in case you were wondering....

It has become my habit, along with the workers at the cooperative to chew a few green coffee beans here and there throughout the day.


The last couple of weeks have been a lot of time at the beneficio and talking with folks as they deliver their coffee, or visit the cooperative store to buy household items and a treats. On Wednesday they fired up the processing machines and I got to take photos and video of the dry-process method. I've included some of the videos here (beware of noisiness--machines are loud....).

This is a coffee seedling

I think as time goes by people are becoming more cognizant of what coffee looks like before it gets into their mug (or 40oz thermos, or whathaveyou). But I really enjoyed documenting the process and I look forward to using these shots/videos in my classes. Also, this day was more than just a day with the beneficio workers, it was a day of training and learning about coffee standards and quality for a new generation of coffee farmers (the majority of the young men processing this harvest are the sons and brothers of the leaders in the co-op). So, once again it feeds into my work, which is based on how small producers are staying  on their land. This generation has had different opportunities than their parents, more consistent school, some training in the Spanish language--they wear jeans and have cell phones, they listen to Spanish rock music or music from the U.S. (one kid was even wearing a tag adorned with Justin Bieber's name)--but at the same time, they all are starting to tend their own coffee and corn plots, they want to stay on the land and they want to work with the coffee cooperative.

Behind me is the co-op's nursery for seedlings

Eventually I will have pictures of the whole process--the cooperative has a toaster in town and they toast beans for their cafe in San Cristobal and also for sale around town and beyond (Chiapas, Yucatan, Tabasco). But for now here is a primer on what is happening with the coffee harvest in the highlands.
 
What follows is what I've been able to capture about the process--I have many other stories to tell, but this one seems the most relevant right now--

One of the varieties of coffee grown in the highlands

Coffee picking

Mature coffee on the plant

Red is mature, Green is not

Coffee de-pulping

Coffee drying

Gathering the dried coffee

Dried Coffee - Pergamino

Prepping the costales (69 kilo bags)

Delivered coffee - going to storage

Mountain of pergamino awaiting processing

And here is my chronicling of the processing--some things to keep in mind: Those are 69 kilo bags (that translates to 152 pounds for those of us not fluent in metric); also the beneficio processes cafe pergamino (dried/green coffee beans still with parchment) in lots of 400 bags. 400, 69 kilo bags will become 280, 69 kilo bags of cafe oro (without parchment, ready for export)...that's a lot of parchment weight processed out. The videos are following the coffee beans through the process--they're very short--5-20 seconds each.

I don't have video of the coffee going from pergamino to oro, because this is me up on a ladder against the machinery, so just a couple of pictures of this. There are many places in this stream of coffee beans where the export ready are separated from the non-export grade--for every 5 bags of 'good coffee' there is a bag of 'bad coffee.' The non-export grade coffee will stay in Chiapas and be toasted and sold in Chiapas and surrounding states. They also offer their organic Mexico-grade coffee in the cafe in town. 

This one is for Joe, because I know how much he likes automation

 

This is the parchment dust getting blown out of the the building--a mountain of parchment

Painting the lot number

Topping up to 69 kilos of Oro

Ready for export

How I feel about my data right now...

Alice**

I expected that fieldwork will make everything a jumble in my head--it has. Full stop. Data analysis will be an adventure to say the least.

**One of these days I'm going to have to splurge and buy this--maybe for my office, when I am a proper professor.

This is where I work...

Ejidos

...isn't it beautiful?

I've spent the last few days doing what would be considered hiking at home - trudging up and down muddy hills to different cafetales and milpas. Corn was recently planted in one of the communities I work in and the green is such a nice sight after all the dried corn stalks in the other communities I have been in for the past two months.

milpa

I really enjoy being in the fields. It is a different sort of conversation and it is a different sort of version of life...it is almost majestic. But the lives of these plants strike such a contrast with the lives of the people who tend them. And as Tia Irma said "you cannot eat beauty." You also cannot eat coffee. And so I continue to be amazed at the amount of scarce land that is taken up by coffee plants.

Ripe coffee bean

It's just about the end of the coffee harvest--the farmers usually do 4 different pickings and most folks I've talked to are somewhere between 'cutting' 2 and 4. In a few weeks there will be no more beans on the plants, the green coffee will be in sacks or be cafe oro (ready for shipment) and there will be a little bit of money in the hands of the farmers.

Coffee plant

Shade plot - cafetal

This year, the price that this community is receiving for their fair trade, organic certified coffee is 30 pesos per kilo. That works out to be about $1.09 a pound (with the conversion from metric to stupid and pesos to dollars). I know that the price of coffee is an old story, but seriously, this is insanely low for the amount of labor hours spent in the cafetal. In this community most farmers have between 1/2-2 hectares of coffee (and it's not contiguous land, some plots may be as far as an hour walk from their home and from other plots they work--did I mention hiking??). So, depending on the climate (which is changing, to the plight of farmers worldwide) and thus the harvest, farmers may get 200-300 kilos of beans depending on how much land they hold. Assuming even the best, 300 kilos will be sold for 9000 pesos this year. For a year of work in the cafetal that's about $720.00 at 30 pesos a kilo and converted at the average rate right now, which is about 12.5 pesos to the dollar.

Coffee is the second most traded commodity after oil. Despite the beauty of the cafetal, there is something very wrong with this picture.

The elevator version - Ixim

Without trying to bang out an abstract for part of my dissertation here is a little about what I've been up to in the last few days. Elevator style - er let's call it a 20 floor run, eh?

Due to circumstances beyond my control I actually did not end up on the caravan tour of coffee cooperatives that is now wending down through Guatemala. Instead, I ended up doing a series of interviews that will lend strength to the backbone of my dissertation argument.Very basically, my argument is that food is an essential element of building autonomy.

So even though I came here to talk to some farmers about this:

A 'frenchly' pressed Maya Vinic coffee

What I am really interested in is this:

Dried corn and beans just harvested

Dried corn

Ixim - Maize - Corn

But both taken together are the bulk of the agricultural systems in autonomous communities in the highlands. And why? You might ask. Because resistance is made up of agricultural acts, both those that contribute to the household in the form of edibles and those that contribute to the community in terms of cash income and solidarity networks.

"Then instead of grieving the rebel seeks other ways to build. Another world is possible."

And the upside is....

I feel good about what I'm getting done here. Let that be clear. But I hate being away.
However, today I am reminded there are apparently upsides:

I am still at roughly the same altitude though...

Tomorrow I'm off with the coffee roasters, who are chronicling their longer trip here (sadly I will not be tagging along on the rest--but it is mighty tempting).