by Bruce Wydick
Angela was curious. “What’s so special about $1.31?”
“Well, it’s gone up a little bit over the years and will probably continue to. But this is a price level that many believe allows growers in most countries to cover their costs and provide at least in a minimal way for their families, food, clothes, schooling for children. But small coffee-growing peasants aren’t getting rich off $1.31 a pound, trust me.”
“Don’t worry, we know,” said Angela.
“I read some book awhile back about the origins of the fair trade movement,” said Sofia. “Originated back in the 1860s, a book called Max Havilar, or The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company. Focused on all the abuses of the Dutch coffee traders in Indonesia. The hero of the book, this fellow Max Havilar, was a bureaucrat who became a defender of the native people of Java working in the coffee fields under the Dutch colonial system. Seems that the book has been to the fair trade movement what Das Kapital was to Marxism.”
Gustavo added, “Yes, but the movement didn’t mature until 1997 when the Fairtrade Labeling Organizations brought certification to the whole fair trade industry. The FLO network includes TransFair, which oversees, certifies, and promotes fair trade products in the United States.”
“So fair trade has gone mainstream to some extent then,” summarized Angela.
Gustavo rocked his head back and forth ambivalently. “You have to realize that certified fair trade still makes up a very small percentage of world coffee sales, still only a few percent. It’s mainly in Latin America and not nearly as big as it could be.”
He summed up his opinion on the movement. “The problem with fair trade is that it depends too much on the goodwill of consumers. Notice I can barely sell a quarter of my crop under fair trade. A lot of coffee grown for fair trade has to go through the standard channels. A couple of big weather disasters in places like Brazil or Vietnam is frankly far more effective. The impact of fair trade is much less.”
The lunch came, roasted chicken with black beans and tortillas. It smelled delicious. Gustavo carved out a large bite of chicken and continued, explaining more about Café Justicia. “Our co-op is certified by TransFair—we are a fair trade cooperative and provide our members with a range of services. We process the cherries for some members, give them access to credit, technical training, warehousing, and we market their coffee harvest. The co-op processes the coffee cherries using pulping machines that squeeze the little beans out of the red coffee cherries. Then coffee beans are held in large fermentation tanks owned by the co-op for several days, washed over and over with a lot of water. Then the beans are dried to create ‘parchment coffee’ until just before it’s sold to an exporter. After we make an agreement with a buyer, the little parchment layer, just a thin beige skin, gets hulled from the bean by machine, and it becomes classified as ‘green coffee.’ This is the coffee commodity for which price quotes are given constantly online and at the New York Board of Trade, and for which prices appear on my computer screens. All deals that we and other exporters make with buyers are for green coffee.”
“Who buys your coffee?” Sofia asked.
“Nearly all of our bags of green coffee are loaded and sent by freighter to the United States and Europe. Some of our coffee will be imported by industrial coffee roasters who then sell their roasted coffee to retail firms. The rest gets sold to—whom we try to affectionately call”—he grinned—“the Chicos Grandes, the big boys, large roaster retailers who roast their own coffee and market it through all their famous consumer brand names.
“You have to realize that the coffee world isn’t dominated by coffee growers. Most of them are just little campesinos like those you’ve been interviewing in San Pedro Necta. Neither is it dominated by cooperatives like us. The real players with market power are corporations like Procter & Gamble, the huge conglomerate who sells Folgers coffee, and Kraft who sells under brand names like Maxwell House and Yuban. Then to round out the Chicos Grandes you add the Swiss firm Nestlé, the largest food company in the world, who sells Nescafé and Taster’s Choice, and the German conglomerate Tchibo, as well as Massimo Zanetti of Italy, who acquired the Sara Lee brands in your country—MJB, Hills Brothers, Chase & Sanborn, and Choc Full o’Nuts. We sell our coffee to all of the Chicos Grandes, some industrial roasters, and even to Starbucks.”
“And only about 25 percent of your crop is marketed as fair trade?” asked Angela.
“Yes. The market for fair trade is just not big enough for me to do any more.”
As the conversation wound down, they shook hands, thanked Gustavo for the lunch, and walked back to the bus station.
“What did we learn?” asked Angela as they walked.
“Too many sellers and too few buyers,” commented Sofia. “The millions of growers have too much of an incentive to overproduce and lack the institutions to regulate supply. Poverty keeps the children of coffee growers uneducated, which keeps them in the business of growing more and more coffee because that’s all they know how to do. Greater supply means that prices stay low.”
“A vicious cycle of the Prisoners’ Dilemma.”
“Yes, I think that prisoners is a very good way to put it,” said Sofia.
And they hopped back on the bus.
CHAPTER 19
It was just over a year ago now that Alberto had come to the village, thought the young woman. They had given him tortillas and beans and she had let him sleep in the shack behind her family’s house where they kept food and hay for their animals. They had filled the shack with wool blankets over the hay so he would be comfortable, and he had been grateful for the help that she and Mildred had given him.
But one night after Mildred had left, the young woman stayed. She and Alberto talked long into the night. She lay down and they rested in the comfortable blankets over the hay as they talked. It was there that he told the young woman that at night he would dream of her beautiful face.
The young woman had never been told such things by someone as handsome as Alberto. And as the moon shone through a gap in the wall of the shack on Alberto’s face, he drew his head close and whispered to her that he wanted her. Tomorrow he would walk back to his platoon and to battle, he explained. But soon he would come back for her and Father Dias would marry them. He promised this to the young woman. She was awed by Alberto, for he was brave and important. As his lips touched hers, she felt a fire of powerful emotion rise up inside her. And as his hand moved slowly and softly above her knee, she acquiesced to him.
And the next morning he left.
It was only a month later when a member of Alberto’s platoon arrived one night in the village bearing news. Alberto had died in an ambush by government troops, the messenger explained. It happened at night when they least expected. He was a hero, standing shirtless in his underwear outside his tent, firing his pistol into a nest of machine-gun fire. As he held off the attacking government troops, many in his platoon had escaped. If one of their company should die for the revolution in battle, he explained, a chosen member of close kin would be notified by a surviving member of the platoon. Alberto had chosen the young woman to be informed.
And it was less than a month after this that she realized she was carrying Alberto’s baby. She considered the situation and understood this would be a shame upon her, on the child, and on her family. Father Dias would be disappointed.
But there was one solution that would prevent all shame.
A boy named Domingo had been courting her for months, even proposing marriage to her. Now she would accept, and Alberto’s baby would be his baby. And although she did not love Domingo in the way that some women loved their husbands—at least when they first married them—Domingo would be an honorable husband. He would provide for her and she would be faithful to him. In this way she would remove the shame that her family and this baby never deserved to experience.
Domingo was elated at the young woman’s change of heart; they were married within weeks. When she told Mildred of her secre
t, Mildred vowed to keep it to herself. She hoped that Mildred was not disappointed or jealous. But even Mildred had agreed that to marry Domingo was best under the circumstances. And she and Domingo and their baby had been a contented family—until today.
Distracted by a distant motion outside, the young woman peered outside through a crack between the boards. A woman from the village was pacing toward the barn.
It was Eva, the wife of Adolfo, one of the leaders of the civil patrol, in whose barn she hid. Had Mildred told Eva of her hiding place? She knew that Mildred would do this perhaps only under a great threat, perhaps only a threat of death. Because the young woman was now standing, she was vulnerable and could be seen. She looked down at the hay. If she moved quickly to hide herself in the hay, she would make too much noise and might be seen at a short distance through the cracks in the barn. Instead she tried to stand as still as possible, hoping to blend with the shadows. As she pressed herself into one of the corners of the barn, the baby began to stir. No, the baby must not awake. In movements that were as subtle as possible, she tried to soothe it with the most imperceptible degree of motion. Even so, the baby unclutched from her nipple and began to murmur little noises. She quickly switched to her other breast, so that the child might continue nursing. The baby must not cry.
But for a single moment, it did.
A wave of panic rushed through the young woman as she saw Eva raise her face up to the barn in response to the noise. As the young woman stood motionless, she watched the silhouette of the middle-aged Eva silently move past the slats of the wall of the barn, pacing steadily toward the entrance. At that point there seemed no choice but to seek refuge behind a nearby hay bale. Perhaps Eva’s own footsteps through the weeds would muffle the sounds of her own movement. She prayed that they would, and she prayed that Eva had some other reason to come to her barn. Had Eva been at the river washing with Mildred when she had told the women some of Alberto’s secret stories? They washed in the same location, so it was possible.
She lay behind the hay bale, the infant nursing at her side. Sweat was pouring off her forehead. In the moment she could hear only two noises, that of her own heartbeat and the footsteps, slowing as they approached the back door. She shut her eyes, nearly unable to bear the sound of the barn latch sliding open. For a brief moment she opened her eyes and saw a short pitchfork lying a few feet from her, and the terror of the moment stirred a horrible thought in the young woman’s mind. She would have to kill Eva. She was younger and stronger; if she did it quickly she could hide her body in the barn and it would not be discovered until later. Perhaps the soldiers would be blamed. She had never remotely considered killing another human being before; Father Dias had always told them all killing was a sin. But it was not something she needed to be told. Yet her mind recalled Eva’s deliberate pace through the center of the village to the barn, unthreatened. This was not the action of one fleeing. It was that of one who had been granted freedom in exchange for helping those who would kill. And if she were killed, her baby might be killed. This thought was too much to bear. Her hand slowly reached over to the pitchfork and she drew it to her side next to the baby.
The footsteps continued slowly and quietly across the floor of the barn toward her, rustling through the hay. Then there was an agonizing silence. And more silence. Perhaps Eva had gone. Then a wrinkled face appeared suddenly over the hay bale. The closeness and appearance of the face shocked her and she flinched, terrified. Eva looked down, face devoid of surprise; only a cold, blank expression met the young woman lying in the hay. Eva’s finger was flush across her cracked gray lips. “Shhhhhhh,” the older woman whispered slowly. “You stay. Your secret is safe with me.”
In a momentary decision that she knew would affect everything, the young woman’s fingers loosened on the pitchfork. And just as quickly, Eva was gone.
Angela
Sofia asked Angela if she would like to stop to visit a friend from her department on the way back to San Pedro Necta who was also doing fieldwork. It was about an hour north, off of the Pan-American.
“Who is your friend?” asked Angela.
“Her name is Jennifer and she is working on a microfinance project near Chichicastenango. Want to go?”
“Sure. I’ve always heard a ton about microfinance, but never seen it in action. What do you think about it?”
“Well, the number of growers involved with fair trade coffee is dwarfed compared with the number of borrowers in the world with a microfinance loan.”
“Does it work?” asked Angela.
“Well, that’s something that people like Jennifer have been trying to find out. We know that people keep borrowing and repaying, so borrowers must find the loans beneficial at some level. But it’s not as easy as one might think to answer the impact question.”
They took the chicken bus for three hours from Guatemala City and got off with their backpacks at Los Encuentros, another diesel-caked intersection along the Pan-American where people change buses. Then they got on another bus headed north on a twisty, one-and-a-half-lane road toward Chichicastenango. On the way Angela relayed something she had learned from her mother back home.
“Sofia, I got an e-mail from my mom yesterday.”
“Oh yeah? What’s new in LA?”
“Said that she wrote the adoption agency in the capital to see if she could find out exactly where I’m from down here.”
“And?”
“They’re not positive, but they think it was either Huehue or Quiché province. Think any of the coffee growers look like my cousins?”
“Pretty much all of them, actually.”
Angela laughed. In some ways it was true. But she couldn’t get the thought out of her mind. It dawned on her that for the first time in her life she was in a place where nearly everybody looked like her.
A ways into the journey, Sofia called Jennifer on her cell phone about twenty minutes before she thought the bus would arrive, so she was waiting for them when the bus pulled into the center of Chichi.
“Hola, amiga!” A short, spunky woman with freckles and short, light brown hair wrapped Sofia in a bear hug the moment she stepped off the bus. Sofia introduced her to Angela, and she gave Angela an enthusiastic handshake. Jennifer was about as American gringa as they come, pure Wonder Bread from the Midwest. It was clear that she also had a Midwestern sense of welcome and hospitality, and was a power-packed little ball of energy. “Angela, you can call me Jen,” she effused. “Would you guys like to hang out here in Chichi a bit before we head up to my place? It’s market day today.”
They strode onto the main square of Chichicastenango. It was a Thursday and the market was in full swing. Adjacent to the market was the impressive Iglesia Santo Tomás, a large white cathedral facing the main square. On the steps of the cathedral, Mayan priests were carrying out some sort of ritual in which they waved canisters of burning incense. Angela had never seen anything quite like it. A greenish-gray haze of incense filled the air all around the church steps.
Jen told them a little about the cathedral. “The Santo Tomás isn’t exactly your mother’s Catholic church. It’s a mixture of Catholicism and Mayan religion. The eighteen steps that lead up to the front doors represent the number of months in the Mayan calendar. A lot of the saints in the church are more or less Mayan deities given apostolic names. You might say it’s syncretism in its purest form.” She laughed heartily at her own joke with a funny laugh that sounded like a little child being tickled.
Angela surveyed the market, which clearly catered to an eclectic crowd. There were the usual household wares offered to the Chichi locals, but there was also a plethora of articles for sale aimed at the North American and European tourists who were scattered among the crowds. Beautiful handmade Guatemalan textiles and indigenous art adorned nearly every wooden kiosk. One vendor who sold cortes, the colorful Guatemalan skirts, seemed to attract a mixed crowd of local women, who were buying them to wear, and tourists who were likely to use them as a tabl
e decoration back home. They mingled among the market crowd for about half an hour.
“Ever been to Chichi before?” Jen asked Angela.
“This is my first time back to Guatemala. I was adopted.”
“Welcome back then. Want to reconnect with your Mayan ancestors a little? Come with me. I’ll show you guys something very cool.”
“How cool?” asked Sofia, who was getting a little hungry. Angela remembered that she liked to eat lunch on time.
“Very.” Her eyes narrowed into an impish smile.
Angela and Sofia glanced at each other for a moment, a quick cost-benefit analysis in the context of imperfect information. “Okay, lead the way,” said Angela, and Sofia acquiesced.
Jen led them away from the plaza south down the Avenida Acro Gucumatz. They turned right on a narrow rural lane for a few hundred meters until they came to a path that jogged off the main road to their left. The path led through the forest.
“This way,” she motioned.
“Where are you taking us?” asked Sofia, not seemingly worried, but curious.
“You’ll see,” came Jen’s mischievous reply. The wooded area around the dirt trail became thicker as they walked past a few homes. It led directly to the base of a small mountain and then began to wind upward, switching back and forth as it led them toward the top. Although only about a mile from the center of town, they were in fairly dense forest now. A dark canopy of branches and vines hung over their heads. Nevertheless, the path was well traveled. More than a few people had made this trek in the recent past. Angela noticed bits of candles tossed to the side of the path, and a few other bits and pieces of strange artifacts. It was humid. The women began perspiring as the climb became steeper, and their hair stuck to the sides of their faces.