by Regina Gonzalez
I am from a town called Coatepec, its name comes from the Nahuatl (native language before the arrival of the Spaniards) coatl serpent tepetl hill, so it means on the hill of snakes.
With the conquest and the “exchange of species” the Spaniards brought coffee from Ethiopia. This coffee adapted perfectly to the climatic conditions of the area. A place that lies 1,200 meters above sea level, with a constant and penetrating humidity. In this ecosystem known as cloud forest, coffee grows in harmony with the environment.
The space is also used to grow bananas, citrus, jinicuil, macadamia, chalahuite, among many, many other plants.
In these coffee farms there is a lot of life, animals like tlacuaches, armadillos, opossums, snakes, different birds like woodpeckers and chachalacas.
My house was surrounded by coffee farms, my older brother even played in them. Little by little, they have been ending, the peasants change them for sugar cane plantations or subdivisions.
Sugar cane. Coca-Cola. For soft drinks you need sugar, a lot of sugar. An international company has the economic capacity to monopolize the crops, they pay the peasants medical insurance and a crappy salary, but… more than what they earn with coffee.
Why don’t they do the same with coffee? Brazil has monocultures in the sun, hundreds of tons of coffee are produced in Brazil, how can they compete with that?
With sugar cane at least the people are more secure, more stable, “to hell with coffee” that besides its big buyer is Nescafé, Nestlé… another big capitalist monster, that without being explicit they have a monopoly over the coffee crops, they decide how much is sold and when it is sold, but hey, everyone can rest assured that they are a “socially responsible” company and they also put “don Pepe” the farmer who grows your coffee on the label. In our town we say “it is not even coffee” because of its lousy quality, however, few of us know it, in reality almost all of Mexico consumes this soluble coffee, why if we have one of the best coffee productions in the world do we not consume it ourselves?
Then, all these factors and the famous rust, a plague that killed the Arabica coffee and that gained strength thanks to climate change, everything has become difficult for the owners of the farms and they are lotifying them because they get better money from selling those lands as subdivisions or houses than to continue with the cultivation.
No coffee, no farm, no forest, no biodiversity, no water, more heat, less moisture retention, more landslides, less food, more poverty, more overcrowding.