"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).

Feliz Navidad...

Well, it's definitely not a white one, but perhaps a bright one instead.

I am reminded, as I am every year, that this day means many different things. For me, right now, it's about home, and for a long time it has been about honoring the spirit of something in our hearts all year, and not just on one day.

Yet, these things are especially brought home to me today.

'When the world ends'

I couldn't help but hum this song over the weekend. I really had no intent to be at the so-called "ground-zero" of the Mayan day of apocalypse, but the NGO I work with had need to be in the north, so north I went. Through no fault of my own I arrived at Palenque--the largest ruins site in the state of Chiapas--where an enormous number of people were gathering (not all with the same intent or purpose) to witness the Solstice.

I am not overly fond of the roads in Chiapas. Some are very poorly planned and are subject to consistent landslides and other mass-wasting events, some are cut through hills with hairpin turns that boggle my mind, and all of them are marked with a extraordinary amount of 'topes' (or speed bumps). The trip from the city to Palenque is about 130 miles, but it is a 5-6 hour meandering bus ride (I dare you to take the "3D tour" on gmaps). So I descended from the highlands at almost 3000 feet into the jungle, which is about 200 feet. It was warmer and sticky. There were bugs, but since it is the dry season, they were fewer and almost no mosquitoes.

Despite the enormous number of people that had descended upon the site, the town, and every inch of possible 'campable' space, it was a moderately successful research trip. Harder, was trying to explain why we were there, if not for the rainbow festival or to pay homage to the red queen (both the one of archaeological interest and the modern incarnation who was accepting rejected rainbowers into her fold). BOT folks will understand though, that as I walked around the loose gathering of huts where we stayed and heard rumors and whispers of where the rainbow was off to next, I couldn't help but giggle. The place was positively overrun with folks trying to make new acquaintance or to find someone sharing/selling something euphoric. However, because we work in communities in resistance, we try to keep a low profile. It really was incredible how many tourists of different shapes and sizes (to not put too fine of a point on it) flocked to the area to find something. The farmers I spoke with about the coming of the sixth sun said that it was of importance to them, but that the end of the calendar/world was a tourist gimmick. The optimist in me hopes that everyone found some meaning...

I did have a couple days off while we were there. The first I used to check out the ruins and the second I spent writing up field notes, reading, and listening to the thundering sound of dry season rain.

I really didn't know very much about Palenque, but I was within walking distance of the site, so it seemed as though I should probably pip over there and see it. I took a number of pictures, and I don't want to lengthen this post overmuch, so here is a link to a slideshow (or you can go to the site where they are housed: PalenqueatSolstice).

Before I left, people asked me about what I thought about the impending world's end and I generally replied that I would be with the Maya, so it would be spectacular. And it was. There seems to be a generally held suspicion that the Maya don't exist anymore. Something that perhaps lends an air of mysticism to apocalyptic tendencies and is no doubt assisted by the fact that they are the most under-served population in the states they inhabit. The ancient Maya abandoned their cities, but the contemporary Maya are carving out a space in urban and rural areas alike.

Of or relating to food:

My experience with food this time round is very different as I have a kitchen (and fridge!) and I can cook for myself rather than relying on prepared foods or dining out.
I am still in shock over the bounty of fresh food I can bring to my kitchen for less than $5. I prefer the outdoor market (no surprises there) and I try to spread out my purchases when I can.

However, I've encountered some interesting food-related advertising in my daily walks in the city and I thought I'd share a couple of the ones I was able to capture on camera.

This first pair of photos boggles my mind (the content, not the pictures); it appears that this company is trying to get farmers to put this gel in their soil to retain moisture (it seems similar to the stuff you can buy at craft stores in the US that holds candles...)

This one is for UJ - the man who wanted a bucket from Phuket...FUD

Wonder = super bread!

Home beer delivery service

A period of adjustment

When I picked my dates for 'going to the field' I had a few very specific things in mind. Namely, the end of fall quarter, the start of the coffee harvest (and dried corn harvest in the highlands), and tagging along with the NGO I'm working with on a delegation of tourists that was being taken to 'see the harvest.' Where I work, an individual asking questions is suspicious, but a group of people is perfectly appropriate. So I rarely venture into the communities by myself. This has several benefits and more than a few drawbacks, as you can probably already surmise.

True to form I have already encountered a drawback in my method: the NGO I work with had to cancel their delegation. Damn. Turns out though that we couldn't have gotten anywhere near the highlands as the road is being blocked by a protest over a violent land dispute. So it goes.

So instead, I have a whole week to re-adjust to my surroundings, instead of a couple days. Plus. Minus.

I tended to my end of term duties (read: grading/submitting my own work) and I decided to play tourist in the city yesterday. I am still slightly hesitant to get my camera out for some things---I just feel like an asshole turning people's places and lives into spectacle.

But first, I must gloat over my living situation:

My view (Templo de Guadelupe)

My door

When I open my door--house

Urban milpa, just a few houses down

The only downside to living in the city is the noise, and you can't get away from that anywhere, each barrio has its place of worship, and each place of worship lights fireworks on a fairly consistent basis. And this is just one example of the noise--there are totally different sound 'pollution' boundaries here that would drive some people I know (like myself) crazy. Some of the noise-related stuff is logical--you can hear the water truck or the gas truck and be outside in time to flag them down to by a garrafón or whathaveyou. But I find it amusing that folks will turn on a song on their phone and then put their phone in their pocket and walk around with it blaring. It reminds me of this bus scene (but with fewer piercings).


The festival of the virgin has been especially noisy and at all hours (although church bells are not so terrible to be awoken to, even at 5:30am). Plus it is such a scene over there right now:

From the church, looking down into the city

About face--the front doors of the church

Inside the church; note the neon x-mas border lights

The festival, this is about 1/10 of what's been set up

There are also some fun--let's call them cultural--things that I noticed too:

This boggles my mind in a city where refrigeration is, well different

It's not just slow food, it's very very slow food.

I like this variation on the shawl as carrier, I think it might mean she's sold a lot of shawls...

And...this is a super interesting project that has been up in the zocalo:

The panorama is not the best, sorry.