“Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields cry out ... and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts”

James 5:4

With these words of scripture, our Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) delegation recently confronted officials of the Nestle Corporation in Tuxtla Gutierrez, capital of the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico and asked them to buy the 272 kilograms of raw coffee we had purchased at a fair price from small indigenous farmers in the highlands.

Delivered as part of a liturgy conducted at the entrance to the Nestle plant, with the public and media present and large banners exclaiming “Try the Taste of Justice” and “The Justice of a Good Harvest Is a Fair Price for Coffee,” our proclamation also read in part:

“Whereas coffee production is a primary cash crop which provides for the livelihood of the indigenous people of Chiapas; and whereas coffee prices have dropped dramatically, making it impossible for indigenous producers to make a living wage; and whereas we have heard their stories of suffering under current economic conditions as we have worked and shared with them in their homes and fields;

“And whereas we come from North America and are major consumers of coffee and recognize economic justice as central to Christan practice; and whereas Nestle’s is a leader in the coffee industry: we come forward this day in an act of repentance, worship and solidarity. We challenge the Nestle Corporation to take a leadership role in the Fair Trade Movement; we call on the international community to make fair trade and just pricing a reality for indigenous producers, and on our fellow consumers to buy only from companies which pay a fair price. Therefore we have purchased coffee from indigenous producers at a fair price, offer it to Nestle’s at our cost, and invite them to join with us in this act of worship.”

When the Nestle manager rejected our offer, claiming their buyer was not there that day, we proceeded with our liturgy, which included songs, candle-lighting, praying at the four corners, and kneeling to recite the Lord’s Prayer, and concluded by slitting our five large coffee bags and letting the coffee pour onto the pavement as a “gift” to Nestle’s and an offering to God.

This action was the culmination of our 12-day sojourn in Chiapas, during which we learned about the history, life, and struggle of the Mayan people, past and present, through visits and interviews in the small colonial city of San Cristobal de las Casas, and by living for six days in the campo (countryside), where we walked and rode in the back of pickups, slept on the floor in several communities, ate beans and tortillas three times a day, heard people’s stories of oppression and suffering, and came to a profound appreciation of their quiet dignity, gracious hospitality, artistic skill and deep piety.

We also were greatly moved by a mass in the village of Acteal, incorporating both Catholic and traditional Mayan elements, which commemorated the 1997 massacre by the paramilitary of 45 members of Las Abejas (the Bees), a pacifist Christian group of Ttelzal and Tzotzil Indians who were killed while praying for peace in their rude mountain chapel.

It was shortly after that that the Abejas, along with the Catholic diocese, invited CPT (See Footnote 1) to come to Chiapas to shield them from violence and persecution by the government and military, live in their refugee camps after they were driven from their lands and homes, participate in their acts of protest, and advocate for their demands for justice and autonomy to continue in their traditional way of life. They share the same goals as the better known and more colorful Zapatistas — justice, democracy,and freedom — but bear no arms and reject all forms of violence as means to achieve them.



Resistance to NAFTA

To recap a bit of recent history, in 1993, in response to demands from the United States in relation to passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico removed from its constitution a land reform measure which had protected communally held indigenous lands, called ejidos, from being privatized or purchased by foreign interests.This change, plus new NAFTA rules which removed tariffs and subsidies protecting small farmers in order to serve corporate interests and foreign investment, soon impoverished masses of rural Mexicans. Deliberately timed to coincide with the inauguration of NAFTA on Jan. 1, 1994, the Zapatista uprising captured the attention of much of the world with its ringing declaration:

“Today we say enough! We are a product of 500 years of struggle .... We have been denied the most elemental education so that others can ... pillage the wealth of our country .... We have nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a roof over our heads, no land, no work, no health care, no food, and no education. Nor is there peace and justice for us or our children.” (Footnote 2)



The struggle of the indigenous of Chiapas, both Zapatistas and Abejas, is to create a just society. Locally, this involves assuming control of their lives by setting up their own form of sustainable economic development, keeping and farming their communal lands their own way, and maintaining traditional social, political, and religious customs. But their goal is also to raise awareness of cultural and economic oppression and to build a civilian base for a just, inclusive, and democratic society throughout Mexico and beyond.

Resisting government control, they have established autonomous communities on communal lands throughout Chiapas, refusing all government aid and services, which they suspect, with good reason, of being intended to seduce and corrupt them. Instead they have organized their own governing councils and alternative education, health care, and cultural centers, supported in part by NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) from Europe and North America. Their aim is not to take power but to empower themselves and all indigenous people everywhere.



Low-intensity warfare

In response, the Mexican government, supported by training and arms from the United States, has launched a counter-insurgency war on these indigenous communities to try to force them to conform to the provisions of NAFTA and join the global “free trade” economy. This “low-intensity warfare” has brought 60,000 troops, 681 military camps, a hard-to-estimate number of armed paramilitaries, and billions of dollars in tanks, helicopters, and high caliber weapons into Chiapas to repress the indigenous and “maintain order.”

Under new President Vicente Fox, the omnipresent military checkpoints  which used to harass, detain, and prevent the free movement of people  have been removed. But the troops are still there, housed in camps near every village and constantly patrolling the roads. In the community of Los Chorros, where we bought the coffee, a public security post had been established just across the tiny plaza from the church where we stayed, and police stood with arms at the ready to watch our every move.

This invasion of indigenous communities has brought intimidation, terror and disruption of the traditional way of life. Women are afraid to gather firewood and men to go to their fields. The presence of the military has turned schools into barracks, women into prostitutes, and youth into paramilitary recruits. Trees have been cut down to build army camps, the rivers polluted, leaders corrupted, and communities divided. Nice, concrete-block homes — many built by Habitat for Humanity — have been destroyed, many families are now reduced to living in makeshift shanties with leaky roofs, dirt floors, and no chimneys for the smoke from cooking fires to escape.

Thousands have been driven from their villages into refugee camps where the soil is rocky, sanitation poor, firewood scarce, and hunger and poverty are rife. Only now are some beginning to return to their ancestral lands — carrying their belongings, bringing their animals, and often accompanied by CPTers on long walks along steep mountain roads and rocky, muddy trails.



A Return Without Justice

But fear remains high. Some of the paramilitaries responsible for the Acteal massacre and other acts of terror – torture, rape, disappearance, and assassination of community leaders — remain in the communities, armed and threatening. At one point we shifted our itinerary to spend two nights in a community where people were afraid of retribution because four paramilitaries whom they had identified and thereby caused to be convicted had been released from prison after serving only four years of their 26-year sentence. And all the time, both Mexican and American governments have denied the existence of the paramilitaries and the displaced people, and claim that “all is peaceful in Chiapas.”

There was hope after the election of President Fox and a new, progressive governor of Chiapas, Pablo Salazar, that this dire situation would improve. But after the celebrated Zapatista caravan to Mexico City to speak with Fox and the Mexican Congress, the legislators refused to ratify the San Andres Accords granting most of the indigenous demands, which had been signed by the previous administration. So the Zapatista leadership, feeling betrayed, broke off the talks and retreated into the Lacandon jungle to continue governing their autonomous regions and await further developments. Gov. Salazar, sympathetic to the needs and desires of the Mayan people, is blocked from implementing his progressive goals by a state legislature still controlled by the corrupt, elitist PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) which had ruled Mexico for 70 years prior to the Fox victory in the 2000 election.

La Jornada, a Mexican newspaper, said in 1998: “One of the strategies to wear these people down is to generate fear, to make those men and women who are conscious of their dignity, and who want to transform the injustice and the exclusion which they suffer, feel the weight of the power which confronts them and understand that the price for challenging this domination is death.” (Footnote 3)



Drop in Coffee Prices

Compounding the devastation is the catastrophic condition of the world coffee market.The lot of coffee farmers, both in Chiapas and worldwide, has drastically worsened in recent months due to market depression, increased competition, drought, Third World debt, and unavailability of loans. After two successive years of drought, Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, this year has had a bumper crop. The World Bank funded large coffee plantations in Vietnam to give a boost to their economy without any thought of how this additional flood of coffee would affect the world market.

In some countries, many small farmers are losing their land to big producers and flocking to the cities to live in shantytowns and look for jobs, which are very scarce. As a result, they cannot afford health care, school fees, decent housing, or even subsistence food, and their families are near starvation. In Chiapas, small indigenous farmers and cooperatives are forced to sell their coffee for much less than it costs to produce it. Last year, Maya Vinic, the Abejas coffee cooperative, burned their coffee crop in protest against the low prices.

This year, we were told, the prices have sunk even lower. “Coyotes”  the exploitative middlemen who gouge the small producers by buying the raw, “peregramino” coffee cheap, refine it to the next “oro verde” (green gold) state by removing the hulls, then sell it to the large multinationals like Nestles, Folgers, and Starbucks at a tidy profit — were currently paying the equivalent of five cents a pound, thereby forcing the small producers into a cycle of poverty and debt. Where farms are owned by the wealthy local elite or these large companies, pickers are seasonal, receive exceedingly low wages, and are unemployed except during the coffee season. These large industrial farms cause pesticide pollution, deforestation, and the extinction of songbirds.

In the community of Los Chorros, where we spent two nights to support the Abejas who were afraid of the released paramilitaries, we worked one morning in a coffee field — weeding around the bushes with large hoes and machetes. It was back-breaking work in the hot sun. Our Mayan host worked circles around us, but good-naturedly expressed appreciation for our efforts. We asked him what a fair price would be for the peregramino beans, and he said 20 cents a kilo — four times what the coyotes were paying! So we bought a couple of kilos from him at that price to bring home for show-and-tell.

That afternoon we discussed with Juan, the Abejas leader, the possibility of buying a much larger quantity and trying to sell it to Nestle’s in the capital as a symbolic gesture of solidarity with them and confrontation of the coffee industry. He liked the idea, consulted with his community, and a deal was struck. We would buy two kilos of beans from each Abejas farmer — which ended up being 272 kilos in all.

So, beginning at 8 p.m. that night, and continuing until 1 a.m., the farmers in their traditional costumes — men in white, women in colorful embroidered blouses and shawls, over which they had labored for as long as three months — drifted into the village plaza in twos and threes, carrying their bags of coffee to be weighed and poured into large, 50-kilo sacks. The long wait was enlivened by the community musicians singing and playing their traditional songs, and by school children entertaining with songs and dances, in which we joined. When the sacks were full and sewn shut, we arranged them in the middle of the plaza, lit candles around them (a traditional Mayan ritual), and the Abejas conducted an inspiring prayer service offering their coffee to God. The next morning they helped us load the sacks into a van we had rented, and we began the journey to Tuxtla for the action at Nestle’s.



Fair Trade Coffee

One way we North Americans can help bring more justice into the lives of the indigenous Mayans we met is to buy and drink Fair Trade Coffee. The coffee we buy in supermarkets comes from large coffee fincas (plantations) owned by multinationals or local wealthy absentee landlords, paying the abysmally low wages and prices mentioned above. Fair Trade importers, on the other hand, were paying $1.26 a pound for ground coffee regardless of the volatile market price. They work with organized democratic farmer cooperatives who have control of their own marketing and provide credit at low rates which helps small farmers keep their land. They encourage long-term relationships directly with the farmers, who provide safe and healthy workplaces, pay a fair and living wage, are open to public accountability, and use sustainable techniques — 85% of Fair Trade coffee is organic and shade grown. It carries a “Transfair” label certifying it as such. (Footnote 4)

(Dr. Douglas E. Wingeier, now living at Lake Junaluska, is emeritus professor of practical theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and a reserve member of Christian Peacemaker Teams. He is editor and author of Keeping Holy Time: Studying the Revised Common Lectionary, Abingdon, 2001.)

(1) Christian Peacemaker Teams is a faith-based organization that engages in violence-reduction efforts around the world, including Colombia, Vieques in Puerto Rico, Hebron in Palestine, New Brunswick in Canada, and Chiapas in Mexico. CPT has roots in the Mennonite Church, the Church of the Brethren and the Society of Friends, and includes members from both Protestant and Catholic traditions. The writer has been a reserve member since 1998.

2) Quoted in Teresa Ortiz, Never Again A World Without Us: Voices of Mayan Women in Chiapas, Mexico (Washington DC: EPICA, 2001, p.228).

(3) Quoted in ibid., p. 230.

(4) Fair Trade coffee is available from, among other sources, Global Exchange in San Francisco (800.497.1994; Email info@globalexchange.org), Equal Exchange in Canton, MA (781.830-.0301; Email info@equalexchange.com); Cloudforest Initiatives in St. Paul, MN (651.592.4143; Email cloudforest@hwpics.com; and this writer in Waynesville, NC (828.456.3857); Email dcwing@dnet.net).

 

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