Everything for everyone, nothing for just ourselves: Zapatista Coffee in Minnesota

"Chiapas...bleeds coffee," wrote Subcommandante Marcos in 1992, before the Zapatista uprising. The far southern state of Chiapas is one of the poorest in Mexico, a state where the indigenous Maya peoples have repeatedly rebelled against  government policies that deny them land, deny the use of indigenous languages in education and government, and help wealthy absentee landowners extract the many resources of the state--petroleum, gas, hydroelectric power, cattle, food crops--and coffee.  One third of the coffee produced in Mexico is grown in Chiapas.

Since the Zapatista rebellion on January 1, 1994, Zapatista communities have sought new, equal trade connections with allies around the world.  In Minnesota, Arizona and California, the volunteer Cafe Para La Vida Digna project works with the Autonomous Zapatista Municiptality Ricardo Flores Magnon, selling coffee to organizations sympathetic to zapatismo and returning the profit to the municipality for health and education projects. Families in Ricardo Flores Magnon grow, pick, dry, sort and bag the coffee; volunteers in the US import it, have it roasted and distribute it to organizations in sympathy with the Zapatistas.

"People said, 'You can't do that as a volunteer.  It won't work!"  Jerry Lopez, of Cafe Para La Vida Digna, is giving the organization's annual report at the Black Dog Cafe in St. Paul, where the municipality's coffee is for sale.  But it is working.  The project, begun in 2005, has seen steady growth and sales are expected to double this year.    

"What can we produce so that we will be in control of our own destiny?"

The Autonomous Zapatista Municipality in Rebellion Ricardo Flores Magnon is the largest municipality in Chiapas by area but has the lowest population density and the least international trade.  Donations and assistance from international groups, welcome as they are, arrive irregularly.  People felt, says, Lopez, that "we [had] no way of being sustainable without charity."  Working with Lopez and other long-term US supporters, the community came up with Cafe Para La Vida Digna. The name was first created in the community's languages of Tzeltal and Ch'ol then translated into Spanish and then into English. In English, the name conveys "coffee for a life with dignity"; more, according to Lopez, in the indigenous languages of Tzeltal and Ch'ol the name suggests the work of achieving dignity. 

The project emphasizes interconnection and mutuality. All sales decisions by Cafa Para La Vida Digna are approved by the Zapatistas; all projects undertaken with the profits from coffee sales are communicated to the volunteer collective. The price paid to the growers is based on the price the coffee sells for, rather than a pre-determined fair trade price.  At present, the price paid to the growers exceeds the fair trade price by over 100 percent. In the agreement between Cafe Para La Vida Digna and the municipality, the writers comment, "We realize that we are dealing with a new kind of trade...we are wondering if this should be called Z Trade or AE Trade - Zapatista Trade or Autonomous Economy Trade."

The politics of autonomy are carefully considered, right down to the labels on the packages of coffee.  Initially, there was one version, designed by the municipality--the image of a Zapatista woman from the community who had chosen to have her photo taken and used for this project.   Recently, a second label has been created with a design derived from indigenous art.  The first design, which is still in use, "scares some people," says Lopez, with its clear depiction of Zapatista rebellion.  When considering the second one, his first feelings were, "Aw, man!  It's not all Zapatista." But he thought further.  "Hey, what's our goal here? Autonomous communities."  All businesses that stock the coffee, whether in in the first or second versions, are made familiar with the political meaning of the project before it goes on sale. 

Like many coffee growers in Chiapas, those in the municipality practice traditional organic farming.  But the organic certification deck is stacked against small producers like them--it's an expensive, drawn-out process which requires hosting and feeding inspectors, payment of cash fees, and a multi-year wait which is supposed to guarantee that all chemicals have passed from the soil, unnecessary in Chiapas where chemical fertilizers have seldom been used.  Organic coffee must be packed in expensive burlap rather than cheap plastic; special drying areas must be built. 

So the coffee is organic, but it's not certified.  Again, mutuality appears. The Zapatistas say, "the only thing we can do is give you our word," Lopez tells the group, then jokes, "But who's got the money to buy herbicides and pesticides?" 

"We want autonomous education"

Cafe Para La Vida Digna aims to create self-sustaining trade in coffee, self-sustaining education and medical resources for the municipality and a sustainable method of coffee growth.  So far, profits from the project have been used to buy a coffee bean sorter and support the local school and clinic.  In the future, the community hopes to buy a transformer to supply steady high-voltage power for medical equipment.

The Zapatistas want community-controlled education which reflects indigenous tradition and values.  State schools have routinely refused to allow traditional clothes, languages and ceremonies, while teachers have often been from outside the community.  Now, the Zapatistas work with teachers from outside their communities to develop teaching techniques, but only community members teach within the community, in order to "break the cycle of outsiders," says Lopez.

The school is a boarding school, open as the community has money and as families have time to send their children, whose homes may be three days away. "It's not fully functional yet," says Lopez. 

The municipality has its own carefully planned clinic.  Doors to different areas are labeled with what the community has determined best represent its health needs; the clinic partners with doctors from Cuba and other countries.  But it has only intermittent electricity, too weak to support medical equipment like X-ray machines.  Even if medical equipment were purchased or donated, it couldn't be used. And sabotage is another challenge to the electricity supply--power lines get cut and projects are attacked by groups hostile to the Zapatistas.

The clinic is next to what will become the coffee mill as the project continues.  The planned-for transformer, when it can be purchased, will power both the clinic and the mill.

"People die over coffee"

The story of coffee is the story of colonialism and neoliberalism.  The Spanish brought coffee to the Americas, establishing plantations worked by indigenous and African slaves.  Coffee went back to Europe and was served sweetened with sugar grown and harvested by slaves.  The hacienda system, which concentrated absolute power in the hands of landowners and which codified racism into law, grew along with the plantations.  The land and the wealth it generated were taken by the colonizers, so that today a huge class of landless or impoverished people pick and process coffee for exploitation wages and in unsafe conditions.  

Nestle is the number one buyer of coffee in Mexico. Coffee buyers who sell to Nestle and other large buyers, known as coyotes, travel from family to family offering ready cash for a crop of coffee.  Where coffee co-operatives don't exist, the coyotes are the only option, even when they offer a starvation price. From what a US person pays for coffee, the grower gets on average ten percent; the coyote thirty.  The US retailer takes twenty-five percent and thirty-five goes to Nestle or another corporation.

Coffee growers in Zapatista municipalities have been threatened, assaulted and murdered by paramilitary forces, their crops burned or stolen.  Where there is no violence, there is still an attempt to buy coffee growers out--coyotes have been known to offer families in the municipality unusually high prices in an attempt to weaken the project.

Coffee cooperatives in Chiapas are a new chapter in coffee production, a very fitting way to reclaim the resources stolen by colonization.

"Todos para todos; nada para nosotros"

With Cafe Para La Vida Digna, politics and production are inseparable. "We also agreed to do this project to talk about zapatismo, to talk about neoliberalism, to talk about autonomous education," says Lopez.  When volunteers travel to events to sell coffee, they also educate about the goals of the Zapatistas, the possibilities of organic farming in Chiapas and the mechanics of the struggle against neoliberalism. Cafe Para Vida Digna also works on self-education:  volunteers work in brigadas, local groups who take on the responsibility of distributing coffee and also studying the situation of the Zapatistas. 

The project is organized around the Four Questions:  Who are we?  What do we want?  What are we struggling against?  How will we get what we want?   "We want to share in the creation of an autonomous economy that does not ask permission of global corporations or corrupt governments to work towards dignified treatment and compensation for those who complete honest labor. We want the Indigenous communities in rebellion against Neo-liberalism to realize their goal of creating accountable exchange with good people everywhere. We want this exchange to be a model of Zapatista principles in resistance to the current political, social, economic reality of the world.  Beginning with this coffee, we want to be a bridge to accountable relationships of exchange between free people everywhere.  In sum, as the Zapatistas have said themselves, we want a world where many other worlds also fit," write the people of the project.


Coffee from Ricardo Flores Magnon is currently available at the Black Dog Cafe and Hampden Park Co-op in St. Paul and the Matchbox Cafe and the Seward Cafe in Minneapolis.  Lopez is optimistic about the future of the project.  "Everybody who's in coffee will tell you that it's really hard. But you can't let that scare you--everyone does things that are hard."