by Nate Stevens, Former Peace Coffee Customer Service Representative

In March of 2007, I traveled from Minneapolis, Minnesota, the home of Peace Coffee, to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, to meet up with a varied group of people who had all come to learn more about the Fair Trade movement from direct contact and immersion within the communities of the coffee growing region of Chiapas. There were 12 of us, if memory serves me: college students, Fair Trade business owners and employees, an 8 year old daughter of one of the men, and several retired people simply interested in this experience. Our trip was lead by Chris and Jodie Treeter of Higher Grounds Coffee in Michigan, who have been leading Fair Trade immersion trips for several years now. Chris and Jodie's passion for Fair Trade was sparked by graduate work among the indigenous peoples of Central and South America, and lead them to start Higher Grounds, a Fair Trade business in which they have been able to merge their love of Fair Trade coffee with their love of travel and solidarity work in Central America. They are able to share the knowledge and experience they have garnered first hand with those of us who are eager to learn and see what life is really like for Mexican coffee farmers, their families, and the entire communities that are integral to the production of high-grade, organic, Fair Trade coffee.

After nearly 20 hours of travel on three airplanes, a taxi, and a shuttle-bus, I finally arrived, exhausted yet thrilled, in San Cristobal. I left Minneapolis on March 1st at 3:30 AM, and finally arrived in San Cristobal around 9 PM. Most of the group arrived at the nearest airport to San Cristobal at the same time, and were able to get to know each other on the hour ride into town. We then gathered with the whole group downtown at a very nice vegetarian restaurant run by a husband/wife American expatriate couple who have lived in Chiapas for over 25 years, working with the indigenous population and catering to touristas such as ourselves for a living. We were able to do a round of introductions between bites of a very tasty meal, throughout which the proprietor sat with us and told us about some programs she has been involved in using fresh fruit and vegetable juices to help people cure themselves of cancer. This treatment, known as Gerson Therapy, has been suppressed in the USA by the FDA, yet has been documented repeatedly to cure cancer in many thousands of patients. There were so many interesting and beautiful stories shared and told that week that don't directly relate to this article, that given the time and space I would love to share, but I will digress in an attempt at brevity.

03-02-2007, 11:35 AM - CIEPAC. In the first of many meetings and outings that took place over the 7 days we had together, we piled into a cargo van (which would be our second home for a good chunk of the week) and proceeded to the headquarters of CIEPAC – Center for Economic & Political Research for Community Actions – in downtown San Cristobal, our home base for the week, which is a very beautiful international travel destination by the way, and has a very long history of its own. At CIEPAC our speaker gave us a several hours long history lesson on the rise and development of colonialism> capitalism> Neoliberalism> Globalization, and a detailed explanation of the negative domino effects this movement in general has had on the indigenous population of Mexico, and the region of Chiapas in particular. We also discussed how current Neo-Liberal policies, tariffs, and trade agreements have been instrumental in stealing the resources (Neo-Liberal-Newspeak: developing the untapped capitol potential of underused local materials for the betterment and modernization of the native populations, haha!) of "underdeveloped" nations and bio-regions and transferring this created wealth into the hands of a very few powerful political and financial cartels, thus enabling them to continue the wanton destruction of our world's very precious and rapidly diminishing natural treasures (AIR, LAND, WATER), and at the same time providing said cartels with the raw materials required to continue this insane quest for domination of the entire geo-political landscape. Whew!! During this workshop we drew a diagram of the various international agencies, government think-tanks, trade agreements, and globalist organizations pushing this paradigm forward. What they call development actually looks on paper like a pretty great scheme to take over the world and use whatever means necessary to line their already ridiculously padded pockets, with no clear or stated end in sight! I think a popular American bumper sticker from the last 20 or so years sums up the frat-boy neo-liberal winner takes all agenda pretty well: "THE ONE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS." What some of us learned on this trip for the first time, and with no end in sight could very well soon mean the collapse of the global eco-system we call our home, aka PLANET EARTH!! Like they say in the Army, SNAFU!! Luckily, there are groups like CIEPAC made up of amazing people working hard to implement changes to these types of ideologies through education and organization at the grass roots community level.

03-02-2007 4:00 PM – CAPISE. After the meeting at CIEPAC, we jumped in the van with Julio at the wheel. Julio was our driver for the week, and also is the general manager of CAPISE, a community center in San Cristobal comprised of a café, artisan shops, a central plaza, and meeting rooms. CAPISE was started in 2006, when coffee coop members were searching for a place in town to sell their coffee and goods. This space features woven items from a local women's cooperative, and serves Fair Trade organic coffee from Mut Vitz (Peace Coffee's Mexican Dark Roast used to be from Mut Vitz) and amazing food to the public. This organization serves the community by providing low cost retail space to artisan members, and a meeting space for the autonomous Zapatistas and supporters. There we were given a several hours long intensive on the "Other Campaign" - the most recent Zapatista initiative to sweep across Mexico - a detailed history of the conflicts between the indigenous peoples of the region and the Mexican Federal Government that had lead up to the Zapatista uprising in '94, and an overview of the work with autonomous Zapatistas that is being done by CAPISE. One of the main projects going on at CAPISE over the last several years has been the tracking and GPS mapping of all the Mexican Army bases that have been systematically set up around the perimeters of autonomous Zapatista communities, with the intention of driving the Zapatistas further and further into the northern Chiapan jungle, which is federal protected bio-reserve land, or trying to get them to cross off the autonomous land into Federal protected territories, where the Zapatistas will be arrested and driven away for violating federal land laws. The Mexican government has been systematically harassing the Zapatista communities ever since the tense cease-fire was declared in 1994. In 2007, more than 94 Mexican Army bases exist in Chiapas, all strategically placed to surround Zapatista communities, with the cause and effect of intimidation of autonomous people, and a secondary effect of cultural degradation which happens from the alcohol, garbage, and prostitution that follow the trail of the Mexican Army bases. Soldiers have repeatedly raped young girls and women throughout the last 13 years of occupation, all without consequences from the Mexican government. Part of the work CAPISE is doing is bringing to light the fact that these bases exist (The Mexican government denies the existence of Army bases in Chiapas, but from the obvious presence of military throughout our trip, that is a flat out lie) by doing the actual footwork on the ground to locate them, them map their coordinates with GPS systems, creating a map that lets all the people know where the army is present, and tracking the movement of these bases. The army often moves bases; this is part of their strategy, and an ineffectual attempt to remain in secrecy. Many of these bases are set up directly around Zapatista communities, where the army will appropriate schools, homes, and community buildings out of which to operate their occupation of Zapatista territory. CAPISE has used military-like tactics to provide detailed information on the different military units deployed, such as uniform identification, and learning what each different military company is assigned to, in order to counter the harassment of the army and make people aware of what the army is up to in each different region. CAPISE notes that if you look at the placement of the army bases in the region, the way in which they juxtapose Zapatista communities appears to be part of a larger strategy of war against the autonomous people of Chiapas. The situation is so critical, that if the military was to attack, they have the means to exterminate the Zapatistas in one week's time, with no major losses to their ranks. There is a cold war going on right in our neighborhood, of a national army against its own indigenous population. It appears that resisting the neo-liberal policies is becoming more and more a fight of life or death, on many levels.

03-03-2007 12:30 PM. On this day, we made a visit to Maya Vinic, an organic Fair Trade coffee cooperative in the hills of Chiapas, whom Peace Coffee buys from. In a nutshell the uprisings of 1994 consisted of an armed group of around 1,000 indigenous men and women, calling themselves Zapatistas, take over the town, and a days long battle begins with the Mexican National Army over land rights and human rights. Stand-off, town shut down. Many shots are fired. Many people die. They can't take anymore. No more politicians ignoring their voices, no more corporations raping their land. No more government land deals giving away the water and mineral rights to the land beneath their feet. No more indignity, no more slavery, and no more death. This land is our land, was our parents land, and their parents before them, back to before recorded history ensued. The Zapatistas will not be silenced, tortured, murdered, or stolen from any more without speaking their voices loud and clear. (This is an extremely simplistic summary of the events of 1994 in San Cristobal - the roots of which we can trace all the way back to that fateful day Christopher Columbus "discovered" the "New World" - which brought the Zapatista struggle to the headlines of international newspapers, and the hearts of freedom lovers across the globe. I will not attempt a detailed explanation of the series of abuses that lead up to this armed resistance; I will attempt to convey some things I learned about the Zapatista struggle, and some experiences I had spending time in Chiapas. For a more detailed understanding of the history of the Zapatista struggle, and the intensely real and ongoing situation in Chiapas, I would recommend some personal research into the massive volume of literature written about this struggle, which can be found at the touch of the fingertips.) We met with the president of Maya Vinic and some members of the coop who gave us a detailed history of the organization, how it came to be, how the operations are going, and how membership in the Fair Trade organization has benefited the communities. Maya Vinic came together out of necessity after the Zapatista uprisings. It started in 1992, when 5 men from this community were arrested and jailed by the Mexican police, accused of crimes they did not commit, an act of intimidation to try to scare the Zapatistas, and prevent them from organizing further. A group of people from the community got together to protest and petition this unjust act, and the group "Las Abejas" (The Bees) was formed. Las Abejas was a group of men and women who organized themselves initially for survival in the face of serious oppression by the Mexican army. You know the old saying "Divide and conquer"? This is the methodology of any group attempting to squash any resistance to its goals, and this method is still alive and well in Chiapas. Las Abejas knew that they would have to work together, pool their resources and skills, and organize themselves if they wanted to remain autonomous and survive as well. In 1997, the tension came to a head in the community of Acteal, where the Mexican army, along with army sponsored paramilitary groups invaded the community, and massacred 45 people in cold blood, mostly women and children, of whom 20 or more were killed in a chapel while praying and fasting for peace. There was no time to arm themselves or fight back, and those who tried to run away into the hills were shot at by the local police of the area, who were accomplices to the national army and paramilitary groups. We visited the chapel, saw the bullet holes, felt the pain, and heard the stories of survivors of this horrible atrocity. The community of Acteal now has a women's cooperative that makes and sells handmade clothing to support the community. It is also the headquarters of Las Abejas. After this massacre, it was obvious to the community that more serious organization was necessary, so they got together and to decide what to do with all the various products they produced within their community. The major product of the members of this community was and is coffee. The people of Acteal and surrounding areas choose an initial board of directors, and created Maya Vinic in order to get their product out to the marketplace for a fair price, all in the midst of a low-intensity war. (What kind of war is really low intensity?) The first step was to figure out how many producers there were in the group, and who would want to be a coop member. Many coffee farmers had not been harvesting coffee much, due to the presence of paramilitary forces throughout the region, which had been known to attack unarmed people who set out in small groups. This group sought out international support, the call was heard, and a group of international human rights observers came to stand in solidarity while the farmers harvested their crops in relative safety. These are the basics of how Maya Vinic was formed.

This article will already take up several volumes of our newsletter, so I am not going to continue a detailed description of the rest of our trip. I have touched upon some of the basic issues facing the Zapatista communities, highlighted some of the international issues causing problems in this region, given a first hand account of meeting with survivors of the Acteal Massacre of 1997, and attempted to share with as much clarity as possible some of my experiences and realizations of my trip to Chiapas Mexico. I could write much much more. The story is rich with struggle, victory, pain, joy, and new life, new beginnings, and new ways of doing business. I encourage every one of you to look more into this struggle, to envision the solutions, to see the new paradigms and business and community models forming out of the rubble of an old world. The people of Chiapas Mexico are in fact our neighbors, our brothers and sisters in the struggle for a life lived with dignity and peace in the face of the ever tightening grip of powerful anti-autonomous forces, and the best example of hope and perseverance I have ever had the honor and privilege of sharing stories with. I salute the farmers and communities of Mut Vitz and Maya Vinic, and all Fair Trade farmers, Fair Trade supporters, and Fair Trade consumers the world over for making a powerful statement that we can do this thing called life with respect and honor, all the while sharing the bounties and treasures this beautiful planet has to offer. To all the Zapatistas I had the pleasure of sitting with during my week in your world, I tip my cup to you!!

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