i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

firm, CISA/AGRO. Corcasan has its own dry processing plant, a coffee cupping lab, vast
storage facilities, and a fleet of technicians who travel in pickups and on motorcycles.
Corcasan was managing a coffee quality development project funded by the Instituto de
Desarrollo Rural (IDR) while I was there. This project funded the first internet café in
San Juan. Corcasan held many trainings and public events in the community. The mayor
of San Juan is a member of the cooperative, along with many prominent coffee farmers in
the region.
Prodeco-op is at an entirely different level than the other three local co-ops.
According to unconfirmed accounts, their manager was in charge of the UCA in the early
nineties. When the UCA went bankrupt because of an administrative scandal she kept her
contacts and buyers and formed Prodeco-op.It is one of the two largest exporters of
organic and Fair Trade coffee in Nicaragua. I was told that only a handful of farmers
control the majority of the decisions. Prodeco-op is notorious for controlling interactions
between outsiders and the member-farmers. Although the local co-ops were critical of
Prodeco-op’s conduct, I found that they too exhibited some of the same behaviors, albeit
on a smaller scale. According to Tito Rivas, general manager of the UCPCO, Prodeco-op
has around 2,000 member-farmers, but only 39 delegates represent them in the
cooperative’s general assembly 75 .
The cooperative structure is a requirement for group organic certifcation and for
exports to Fair Trade certified markets. It can be a model for community building, but it
75 The cooperative general assembly is a mandatory meeting of the entire membership It
is typically mandated to be a yearly gathering as determined in the statues of articles of
incorporation and by-laws of a certain co-op. Most co-ops will elect delegates to
represent subsections (base-level co-ops) within the second-level co-op, thus making the
actual governing body a smaller group of participating individuals.
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