It has already been almost one hundred years since our ancestors began the cultivation of coffee, the majority of them farming at an elevation of between 800 and 1200 meters above sea level.  Today, we also sow corn, beans, chiles and vegetables as well as several varieties of fruit trees such as orange, sweet lemon, banana, avocado, small zapotes, black zapotes, mammey, mango and others that we use exclusively for our own needs.

We have always had difficulty with the sale of our coffee.  In the past, we sold our coffee to private merchants who would ride up the hills on their animals and offer us very low prices.  Since we had no other buyers and had no means of transporting the coffee ourselves to the city of Ixtepec, we had no choice but to sell our coffee to these merchants.

Several years later saw the arrival of exploitative logging companies who built roads in order to take out much of our high-quality wood, paying us very low prices.  This went on until 1977 when we succeeded in ousting them.  With the logging roads now being open, coffee buyers were able to travel in much more easily, as well as representatives of “INMECAFE” (the Mexican Institute of Coffee) who opened reception centers.  This new activity brought slightly better prices for our coffee.  We were also given advances for our labour in the form of fertilizers or cash, but these amounts were often discounted for various reasons such as damp or stained coffee bags.  We were also told that we should begin to work with banks and get credit accounts.   But, often, the money we would make selling our coffee wouldn’t be enough to pay our debts to the bank.  This was mostly because of the interest rates, as well as the fact that those in charge were often dishonest and would overcharge us.

And so it was – we worked on, discouraged by our debts to the banks and struggling to make a living on the money we made from our coffee.  Finally, we fell victim to a common coffee plague which destroyed much of our crops and made our work that much harder.

In the season of 1982-83, we sent a huge amount of “pergamino” dried coffee to the National ARIC plant in Mexico City.  ARIC paid us better than INMECAFE, although we had to wait a long time to be paid – until October of that year.  This waiting time was sometimes a problem – some of our members became discouraged when they didn’t see their money sooner.  They weren’t aware that ARIC had to first sell our coffee before they could pay us.  But although the wait made it hard to make ends meet, in the end we benefited:  we were receiving 1000 pesos more per 46 kilo bags than we had with INMECAFE.

For almost four more years we continued with this inadequate system.  Some of our members left, and went back to selling their coffee to INMECAFE or to any other purchaser.  Most of us, however, decided to stay:  even though we had spent a lot of money in the effort to ship our coffee to Mexico City, and had lost a lot of work time with the task of transporting our coffee ourselves, sometimes having to wait for public transportation, we didn’t leave the organization because we saw the value in what we were learning and in our struggle as a united group.  We wanted to continue blazing a trail – dropping out seemed like a step backwards.  It wasn’t always easy to continue on, but we did it with the hope of becoming legally registered and having the power to export our coffee directly by ourselves.

Little by little, we learned to weigh and test our coffee, to write receipts, to purchase packing sacks, to contract vehicles that could transport our coffee down to Ixtepec, and from there, to hire trailers.  Some had even conquered the fear of taking their coffee all the way to Mexico City, while others were calling by telephone.  However, we were still missing the most important element:  the commercialization of our coffee.  This was a challenge for us, since most of us had never used a more complicated machine than our little depulper or our small coffee mill – some had never even been to Ixtepec.

We knew we would have to organize ourselves better.

Each month, the delegates held an assembly in Santa Maria Guienagati where they would make decisions based on the traditions of our ancestors.  All decisions were made by consensus.  The decisions made were to be taken back to the communities, where there were sometimes problems of a lack of help from all members.  We held these meetings to hear, discuss, and analyze issues of interest to all.

In 1983, we pushed strongly to be a legal organization, a Union of Indigenous Communities.  Accompanied by a missionary and lots of papers and forms, our delegates made many trips to and from legal offices in Oaxaca and in Mexico City until we obtained our Agrarian Registry number.  With that, we had officially joined forces among 17 communities and their ranches and plantations.

Our next step was to obtain an export permit.  This caused us a lot of headaches and we often lost patience and hope.  But, thanks to God and the efforts of our delegates, especially the Administrative and Supervisory Council, the officials involved finally gave us our permit.  It wasn’t necessarily because of their willingness, but more because of our insistence and perseverence.

During this time, several foreigners from Holland and Germany came to visit.  These visitors had great interest in helping with our struggle – they were representatives of solidarity groups that buy coffee directly from peasant farmers.  Their movement was made up of all kinds of people, including youth, students, and housewives, and they called the organization “The Alternative Market”.  Their goal was to purchase products without intermediaries and with prices decided upon with the producers.  They also strived to inform consumers about the conditions of the “free” market, which really isn’t free for the poor and exploited.