El Mezcal – Microlot farmers
El Mezcal Microlot is a group of 11 families of farmers that live and grow coffee in La Tarraya, Angel Albino Corzo. These families have grown up among coffee trees all their lives, their parents cultivated the land and they then succeeded them.
Some people assume that coffee farmers are owners of large portions of land and therefore are economically stable. The reality is that many farmers are small-scale producers who struggle to sustain themselves. These farmers are hard-working people who learned farming from their parents as they were growing and now dedicate their entire life to farming. Usually small-scale growers face financial difficulties that not only affect their daily lives but also prevents them from improving their farming and processing practices. El Mezcal Microlot is similar, but each family has its own story to tell, learn about each of them bellow!
Armin is our Microlot leader, his role is pretty important for all, as he works as a mediator between farmers in the group and E-café Chiapas. Armin organizes meetings with the group members, listen to their need and then present us their concerns so we can see a way to helping them. Armin, together with his bother Nestor, inherited his 8 ha of land 20 years ago and has only been cultivating coffee ever since. Coffee has been the only source of income for him, his wife, and four sons; sometimes struggling to send their sons to school. His first and third sons did only their Middle School studies; his second son has a Bachelors’ Degree; and his youngest son is still beginning High School.
For years, Armin has been facing difficulties to visit the nearest town to buy supplies and transport his coffee. The farm road is difficult to drive itself, but Armin does not own a car, thus, every harvest he has to pay 2.5 to 3 USD per coffee bag to be able to carry his coffee down to town. For that reason, he got a loan from E-café Chiapas, which with some help from his two oldest sons, who are working in another city, he hopes to use to buy a second-hand truck.
Jose Domingo has been making a living by growing coffee for over 25 years. Coffee has not only been a source of living, but his passion, as he says he has enjoyed his work all these years. Unfortunately, since the beginning of 2019, Jose Domingo and his family have been going through the toughest time of their lives, and now, coffee farming does not provide enough income to fulfill his family´s needs.
Their struggle began as Alfredo, Jose Domingo´s 14-years-old son, was diagnosed with Systematic Lupus Erythematosus, an autoimmune disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue. In consequence, Alfredo suffers sever pain, and is now unable to walk. Although the disease has no cure, treatment is helpful to delay the effects and control the symptoms. Nonetheless Alfredo´s treatment is very expensive, especially for farmers like Jose.
Last month we visited Jose Domingo´s family; he told us that he spends around $7000 pesos (354 USD) every month. Jose and his son travel to Tuxtla, Chiapas, in order receive proper medical attention and treatment. Although for some people, 354 USD may not sound too expensive, it represents a large amount of money for micro-lot farmers. Moreover, Jose Domingo also has a nine-years-old son who is still attending Elementary School and to whom he hopes to continue to be able to provide education for.
Last month, with the help of our client in South Korea, we were able to give $5000 pesos (257 usd) to Jose Domingo. Farmers in the group gathered and were thankful for the support that coffee buyers give them despite not knowing them in person.
Javier and his wife have been coffee farmers since they were kinds, never learned to write or read, rather learned their occupation form their parents. They had 4 sons and 1 daughter, all of them now married, so Javier and his wife have lived and worked their plot by themselves for several years now. However, it is becoming more difficult for them to work alone, lately.
El Mezcal is not a very save zone, there are many armed conflicts among people. And Javier lost his left hand in one of those incidents. On the top of that, Javier’s wife suffers arthritis, which makes her suffer constant pain in her knees and makes it hard for her to walk. Consequently, they have to hire some workers to help them work their crop even if that implies getting lower revenues for themselves. To lessen their struggles, they hope to improve the quality of their coffees and sell at better prices. That is why they decided to be part of El Mezcal together with their son, Julio and Randulfo, as well as Jesus Ivan, their son in law.
Santiago recently joined El Mezcal microlot´s partnership with E-café Chiapas. Although he has been farming coffee all his life, the 2019-2020 harvest will be Santiago’s first experience working with E-café Chiapas. Previously, he was working as the representative of a coffee producer´s organization, but unfortunately, the organization dissolved.
Compared to other group members, Santiago was very lucky to have been able to finish his High School education. His academic and professional experiences have helped him to provide education for his four sons and he hopes to continue to be able to do so. His two oldest sons, 22 and 21-years-old are studying a Bachelor´s Degree; his 17-years-old son is attending High School, and his youngest son is still in studying Elementary School in the closest town to this farm.
Neu is a hardworking woman, who works the land she inherited from her parents with the help of her three sons. She was Reynol’s wife, but now that they are separated, she is the main economic support for her sons. Her two oldest sons were studying their Bachelor’s Degree but had to suspend their studies because they did not make enough income to support theirs studies. Currently, they are working in a border town of Mexico with the United States, trying to save enough to keep studying. Meanwhile, Neu´s youngest son simultaneously helps her at farm and does his High School education.
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Nestor Santizo and his wife have been working their land during 20 years, they inherited their land from Nestor’s parents. When young, Nestor did not have the chance to study, but he tried to give their two children that chance. However, Nestor and his wife could only support their daughter and son´s education until High School and Middle School, respectively. Currently, their daughter is married and their son is working in Saltillo, Mexico. This last one, sometimes send some money to his parents to help his mother buy her medications, as she was diagnosed a possible cancer. Nestor, too, got sick, earlier this year, so even though he had sold 30 bags of coffee to E-café Chiapas, he sold 10 of those bags to someone else. Soon, other members at El Mezcal, gathered as a real team and helped with to pay his debt.
Javier Randulfo and his wife work their plot with the help of their two children, who are 6 and 13 years old. Their two children wish to continue the work their parents are doing now and thus, try to learn everything about coffee from them. Unfortunately, like many other children who grow up in the country side, Javier’s children, too, decided to interrupt their education up to primary school. On their parents’ perspective, although they wish they continued their education, they are also aware of the low chances that they can afford to pay for their higher education later on. Hence, Javier’s whole family is 100% dedicated to coffee farming.
Jesus Ivan and his wife are a small but supportive family. They both yearn to become parents and despite not being able to, they decided to be each other’s family and support. They take care of each other and their small batch of coffee trees.
When Jesus was only 5 years old, he had an accident while playing and hit his head badly. Jesus’ town is small and lacks resources and medical services, for that cause, he never received proper medical care. Jesus has lived with migraine ever since the incident he suffered. Luckily, his wife takes good care of him and sees that her husband takes his medication on time in order to reduce his pain.
Emilio and his wife are parents to three children for whom they are doing all that is in their hands to send to school. They have an 18-years-old daughter who just began to study his Bachelor´s Degree, a 13 years-old son who wants to follow his sister´s steps, and a 6-years-old boy in kindergarten. Similarly to other Mezcal members, Emilio finds it hard to cover the expenses that come unexpected. This year, for example, his daughter had strong eyesight problems; Emilio needed 9000 pesos (about 463 usd), about 15% of the money he makes a year.
Emilio says that seeing his children grow motivates him every day when he is working in his farm taking care of the coffee production. Slowly but steadily, he planted several new coffee trees in his land to increase his production volume, but now he expects to enhance his farming techniques Until now, this family has been drying their coffee beans in concrete yards (patios) but hopes to have African beds for a better drying process.
Julio Cesar and his family live surrounded by their coffee trees. He and his wife have two sons, 10 and 14-years-old each, who, after finishing their elementary education at the town´s school, decided to quit studying and work at their coffee farm with their parents. Although the current situation is not very promising for their future, Julio and his family hope that they can continually learn better ways for farming their coffee and get to be exported by a fairer price. Also, they want to produce a larger volume of beans.
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