Percolating justice

Mexican coffee grower cooperative stems migration through just practices

By J.D. Long-García | Sept. 3, 2009 | The Catholic Sun

AGUA PRIETA, Mexico — If it weren’t for the coffee, Daniel Cifuentes would have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally years ago.

Cifuentes runs a coffee roaster just south of Douglas, Ariz., where he and another employee prepare beans for Café Justo, a Mexican grower cooperative founded to address the root causes of migration out of the country.

“We’ve actually seen people go back to Chiapas from the United States,” Cifuentes said, referring to the Mexican southern state where Café Justo coffee is grown. “They come back because they realize something has changed.”

Cifuentes, one of 13 children, comes from a family of Chiapas coffee growers in the town of Salvador-Urbina. Chiapas produces most of the coffee in Mexico.

For years, the price of coffee tumbled — from $180 for a 100-pound bag all the way down to $35. Cifuentes and other coffee growers searched for more lucrative jobs elsewhere.

“It stayed at this price for a long time,” Cifuentes said. “People didn’t want to leave their lands, but they couldn’t wait for the market to get better.”

Ten years ago, Cifuentes moved to Agua Prieta and started working for $40 a week in a maquiladora, a factory that imports U.S. materials for production and then exports the final product back.

“Some came here to work, but then decided to cross,” Cifuentes said. “When I arrived in Agua Prieta, many offered to help me get across.”

But he didn’t take them up on it.

After a few years he met Mark Adams, a Presbyterian minister who heads up Frontera de Cristo, a bi-national ministry. Together with Tommy Basssett, a Catholic and a former maquila manager, the three developed the idea of a coffee cooperative seven years ago.

“To me, [Café Justo] is the solution,” Bassett said, “because what we’re really talking about is poverty.”

Rather than sell coffee to a large company, the cooperative — Café Justo, or Just Coffee in English — would mail coffee directly to customers. This way, the coffee growers would get fair wages and be able to expand operations. They also wanted workers to have health care.

The strategy worked.

Since being established, Café Justo has grown enough to buy an additional building in Salvador-Urbina for meetings. They’ve received organic and fair-trade certification thanks to support from the Presbyterian churches of Mexico and the United States, which provided the initial loan, and Catholic Relief Services.

Coffee grown in Chiapas is sent to an Agua Prieta roaster, ensuring the coffee is as fresh as possible. Each bag is tagged with the name of the person responsible for growing the selected beans.

“The vision is to reduce the number of growers that migrate to the United States,” Cifuentes said. “We think this is the best way to keep them in Mexico. With Café Justo, many families could stay.”

Some 40 families now produce the coffee in Salvador-Urbina, and Café Justo is establishing another cooperative in Chiapas and a third in Vera Cruz.

“Without this business, I would have probably joined the other migrants crossing into the United States,” Cifuentes said.

Café Phoenix

While customers can buy Café Justo online, most purchase it at their local church. Protestant and Catholic churches make the coffee available to the faithful across the country on the weekends.

“By actually paying what coffee is worth, we help sustain the community there,” said Jozef de Groot, who heads up the Café Justo ministry at St. Patrick Parish in Scottsdale.

“A lot of the coffee grower families’ kids came into the country illegally. Now they’re able to go back and work on the farms,” he said. “It rights one little cog in what’s a much bigger issue, obviously.”

Parishioners started selling coffee after weekend Mass after going through Just Faith, a social justice program organized by Catholic Charities. Last winter, they were selling $1,400 worth of coffee a weekend.

Debbie DiCarlo, who organizes fair trade events at St. Paul Parish, told a similar story about a Just Faith group there.

“As they heard these stories about the coffee farmers and the coco farmers, their heart became moved to work toward educating the parish about being moral consumers,” she said.

“We have this obsession for low prices, getting the most we can for the least,” DiCarlo added. “We are responsible for the impact our money has. We have to open our eyes and realize that we have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters throughout the world.”

Café Justo is also available at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Scottsdale, Ascension Parish in Fountain Hills and at All Saints Newman Center and Holy Spirit Parish in Tempe.

A group from the Newman Center traveled down to the Agua Prieta roaster this summer. A few Catholics from the diocese also made the journey to Chiapas.

“Any place in the world where’s there’s economic disparity, you’ll see migration,” Bassett, one of the founders, told the Newman Center group. “It’s not a problem, it’s a phenomenon. It’s just a matter of perspective.”

Fair trade and migration

Yet it isn’t clear if fair trade actually stems migration, according to Trinitarian Father Juan J. Molina, fair trade and advocacy program coordinator for Catholic Relief Services.

“We get ambivalent results out in the field. It really depends on the social, political and economic context,” he said, adding that Café Justo is the exception. “The more coffee Café Justo partners and cooperatives are able to sell, the more migration decreases.”

Still, Fr. Molina stressed the value of buying fair trade products all the same.

“When people of faith start buying fair trade goods they are sending a message to the market that they do care about the producers of those particular goods and that they’d like to see more,” he said.

“So even though fair trade doesn’t change an entire trading system or an entire economic system, it does make a difference for the people making the goods,” he added.

Catholics, by buying fair trade products like Café Justo at parishes, are standing in solidarity with their “brothers and sisters overseas,” Fr. Molina said.

“If we do care about the goods that people produce and we care about the people who produce those goods, we will be willing to pay more for them,” he said. “Fair trade, especially as it is sanctioned by the Church, is a good example of how consumers can vote with their pocketbooks.”

Solidarity

A coffee flower smells more like a citrus plant. Once ripened, field workers in Salvador-Urbina handpick the red coffee cherries — which look more like berries than beans.

When enough beans are gathered — usually around 70 pounds worth — the worker hoists the bag on his back and walks it up a steep hill. The worker uses a strap around his head to support the bag.

Workers then clean the coffee cherries in water — the ones that float are thrown out. Later, the bean is hulled from the berry and eventually sent to Agua Prieta for roasting.

Whole-bean or grounded, the coffee is then shipped to churches and households across the country. Given the increase in sales, customers in the Phoenix Diocese seem happy with the quality.

“Globally, people are connected by their buying decisions,” said DiCarlo of St. Paul Parish. “Here’s a way to put your money where your mouth is and help these people in these communities feed their children, make a living, live with dignity.”