The Good Word from Mexico: Chris visits Maya Vinic, September 2011

Visiting a trading partner thousands of miles from home can make you realize the progress you’ve made. That initial excitement of creating a relationship, gambling on it working, and then maintaining it over a number of years can lead to a sense of business as usual. A year comes and goes, prices are set, contracts are signed, coffee beans are collected and shipped, and a company has a product for another harvest season. We send fifteen cents above the price paid per pound back to the co-op in Chiapas each year to fund social projects, lead educational trips there to learn about indigenous rights, and work with the non-profit On the Ground (founded by Higher Grounds) to fund water projects. Yet even all of this great work can feel routine—until we’re given the opportunity to reflect.

I was just reminded how important long-term fair trade relationships are as I sat in Maya Vinic’s office in San Cristobal de Las Casas last week. The specialty-grade Arabica coffee beans from Maya Vinic were the first ever purchased by Higher Grounds. Chatting with Luis Alvarez, the office manager and long time advisor to Maya Vinic, I realized that we are approaching ten years of working together.

Every two years, Maya Vinic’s board of directors changes. As is customary in the cooperative structure, the general assembly votes on a board to oversee the day-to-day operations of the cooperative. In the case of Maya Vinic, these operations include an in-country roasting operation, a green bean export business, a coffee plant nursery, and soon, a cafe in San Cristobal. The volunteer Board of Directors spends endless hours each year working on everything from organic certification to interfacing with local indigenous groups wanting to use their space for gatherings. Each time the new board members are elected, I make it a point to sit down and chat with these six individuals, who represent more than 30 communities and nearly 500 members of the cooperative. One of these conversations happened last week:

“As many of you know, Higher Grounds and Maya Vinic have been growing up together,” I noted, glancing around the table at the new faces. “When Higher Grounds started, we were among the first to purchase coffee, with Cooperative Coffees [the importing cooperative of which Higher Grounds is part owner], from Maya Vinic. At the time we were babies. Now, together, we are entering our late childhood.”

Late childhood it truly is. This coming harvest will mark the 10th year that Higher Grounds has purchased coffee from Maya Vinic and the 10th year that Maya Vinic has exported their fair trade, organic beans. In 2002, when the first purchase was made and shipped, Higher Grounds was but an infant. We only had a few accounts but were fervent supporters of Maya Vinic, spending six weeks in the first year traveling to Chiapas, spending time with the cooperative and bringing a group of consumers down to meet them. At the time, Maya Vinic stored their coffee in a wooden shack in the former refugee camp of Acteal. The beans, nestled on top of wooden planks in the middle of the dirt-floor shack, were positioned centrally to avoid any rain or other moisture that might come in between the panels of the exterior wall. Farmers huddled together around an open fire to ward off the cold, discussing how to collect coffee and take it to trucks to be hauled off to the processing plant before it was shipped overseas.

Then, Maya Vinic rented office space in a house on the outskirts of San Cristobal. Two years before the first export, a woman from Tapauchula stole all of the year’s coffee from the co-op. The president at that time said, “We let her take it as she was recommended to us by a number of religious organizations; we assumed she was going to pay us.” She never did, leading to much desanimo in the co-op. In 2002, the farmers were still reeling from this theft. They had no infrastructure – no car, limited office, and no warehouse. Yet they worked hard and believed in the power of their cooperative as an organization to work for the betterment of all the farmers.

Since that time, and running parallel to the growth of Higher Grounds, the cooperative has built its infrastructure and excels as a small-scale growing cooperative on the international stage. Maya Vinic has weathered the storms, even with an organization built primarily by a group of farmers who do not have more than a sixth grade education, in a political climate where their struggle for indigenous rights and justice for the massacre at Acteal (which was the impetus to start the co-op) is continually undermined by the government that is supposed to represent them. Today, Maya Vinic has over 500 farmers in the co-op, all certified organic or in the transition to become organic, and they’ve partnered with many other organizations to help build their infrastructure. As a result of these strategic alliances and their ability to sell all of their premium organic beans to international buyers, they now operate a large storage and processing center, an office, a coffee plant nursery and organic training plot, and an in-country roasting facility.

Thanks to the 2010 social premium provided by Higher Grounds, this year Maya Vinic will own their very own restaurant. They are currently in discussions to start a tilapia fish farm to supply the restaurant with fresh fish. On the Ground is currently building a water system to bring fresh water to the residents of Acteal as part of their Chiapas Water Project.

For Higher Grounds, Maya Vinic represents the power of the cooperative structure and the building of long-term relationships. From the hard-working farmers who provide us with premium organic beans; to our friends at Cooperative Coffees who help us provide a fair price to the growers and import their coffees; to organizations such as Catholic Relief Services who have provided quality workshops and helped them start their very own coffee nursery; to Higher Grounds, forming long-term relationships and fostering solidarity with their indigenous rights cause; Maya Vinic represents what is possible when multiple stakeholders work together to create a more direct, fairly-trading relationship.

As we enter our 10th harvest with Maya Vinic, there is much more to do. As Luis and I discussed the distance Higher Grounds has traveled together with Maya Vinic and reminisced about the beginnings of both organizations, Luis looked up to a Higher Grounds poster on the wall we had given the co-op a few years ago and I had all but forgotten. “The best coffee comes from good friends,” he read with a smile. How true.

--Chris Treter