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

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coffee. 79 This project required significant organization between the Ministry of Education and the two El Naranjo cooperatives: José Damas and Guillermo Hernánadez. UCPCO When Kelly and I lived in Zona Uno, our neighbor Eddy Garcia was a member of the UCPCO cooperative. He parked his older-model Land Cruiser off of the street next to our house on the driveway our landlady had built. Eddy and his wife had two small children, and they operated a small venta (store) in the front of their house, across the street from ours. On the afternoon of May 8, long after the harvest and export had been completed, I asked Eddy if his cooperative had paid their farmers for last season’s export. He had mentioned that it was taking a long time to get paid for his harvest. He was worrying about having to go deeper into debt with local merchants. Eddy explained, Si, nos fue mal. El rendimiento fue bajo. Solo el 46% nos dieron. Esto no sirve. Producir orgánico casi no rinde del todo y te van a venir con un bajo rendimiento exportable. La UCPCO pagó mal este año y a lo mejor me salgo. (Yes, poorly. Our yield was low. They declared only 46% was exportable. This is bad. Organic doesn’t yield at all, and then you get stuck with a low exportable yield. The UCPCO paid poorly this year and I better get out). Not all of the coffee a farmer harvests is exportable quality. When I relayed the above statement to Danilo he explained that most specialty farmers are able to export about half of what they turn over to the cooperative. This is a very interesting aspect of what it means to share in the gains and losses of a community-based cooperative endeavor. After harvest and depulping, farmers dry their coffee to about 47% humidity. 79 FLO stipulates that US$5.00 from every quintal sold under Fair Trade certification is to be reinvested into the community. In the past, the general assembly has voted to redistribute the funds to member farmers. 214
This is not an exact measurement, but rather an estimation done by touch, smell, and the appearance of the washed and fermented coffee. Then the farmer deposits, for example, ten quintals (ten 100 lb sacks) at the cooperative, totaling 1,000 lbs. It is likely that close to half of that amount, 500 lbs, will be of exportable quality. The final quality selection is done at the beneficio seco after the coffee has been dried to 12% humidity. The first selection is done by a machine, known as an Oliver (Oliver Manufacturing being a primary producer of this equipment), the second is by hand. Women (typically) dressed in caps, masks, and aprons sit along both sides of a conveyor belt and hand-select the coffee off of the belt. The buyer will conduct the final selection and evaluation by roasting and cupping the coffee to detect the aroma, fragrance, body, and other accents in the brewed cup. Because what is being judged is an aggregate yield among the various coffee farmers that are members of the cooperative, even though one farmer’s coffee may be better than the others’, all are mixed together and they share the exportable yield. Because Eddy was unimpressed with his cooperative’s exportable yield, he considering resigning from UCPCO. This is a typical reaction when one’s cooperative is not meeting quality expectations. UCPCO is in a unique situation. Their cooperative has 132 individual members that belong to four base-level cooperatives for finance and internal inspection purposes. The UCPCO has administrative offices in San Juan and they have their own beneficio seco. The administration had also recently purchased a diesel truck for transporting large shipments of coffee. During our conversation Eddy made reference to the recently purchased truck: Viajan a los estados para comprar y mandar un camion. ¿Para qué? No hay suficiente camiones aquí en Nicaragua? Y sobre todo, nos pagan mal y después se van y se compran un camión nuevo. Los pobrecitos no se van a quejar, pero esto no es justo. (They travel to the States to purchase and send a truck. What for? Are 215
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Patrick W. Staib Candidate Anthropo
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COFFEE AND THE COUNTRYSIDE: SMALL F
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I heartily acknowle
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Informal Economy in San Juan del R
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Preface La sabiduria y la constante
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aftershocks of a war in this commun
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This chapter brings the reader into
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Introduction: The Fieldwork I first
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I had visited Matagalpa in 2000, wh
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agricultural extension agents 3 in
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Figure 1. Map of Nicaragua showing
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Nevertheless, San Juan was the idea
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Telpaneca today is a depressed muni
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Figure 2. Electoral map of San Juan
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espondents reported that at least o
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In my experience assisting small-sc
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fieldwork, including surveying, int
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crop aggregation meeting simply bec
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The following chapters are an overv
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Don Amado raised his family of six
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once-bustling colonial center of Nu
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One afternoon, while sitting on his
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Chapter 1 Regional Identity Formati
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Vásquez’ records indicate that t
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The native Segovians apparently coo
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The role of native Segovians was ke
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thousands 22 of passengers to Nicar
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The Pueblos de Indios stood in the
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industry leader and an advocate for
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The mid to late 1980s proved to be
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The Indigenous Revolt of 1881 and I
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These communities appear to have es
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sectors of society forced rural com
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Nationalist writers Gámez (1889),
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San Juan farmers’ understandings
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Sandinista Revolution made signific
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Sandino’s Influential Rebellion A
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Migrant workers in the Babilonia go
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In an ironic turn of events, the Sa
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Somoza regime and U.S. economic and
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The high ideals of the Sandinista r
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three special zones. Las Segovias,
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economic activity for rural communi
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Over time, some members wanted to g
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Chapter 3 Personal Histories of Agr
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to talk about the confiscation of S
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mountains, El Malacate, El Majaste,
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transport between Samarkanda and Sa
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high-altitude farmland. Don Mundo,
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areas. The Contras were former Guar
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effort. As Don Ramón put it, “la
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The project was called Huertos Fami
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who is president of the Carlos Fons
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Part Two Development: International
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I consider how organic coffee fits
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Small-Scale Agrarian Communities, D
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Although the ideological justificat
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(Richards 1985; Dennis 1987). Latin
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dominated much of Third World expor
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depleting natural resources or degr
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communities experience tensions and
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I sat in and helped facilitate seve
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urning. When the wind was calm, our
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Marvin was involved with a rural en
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Hurricane Mitch and the Internation
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Conclusion Because the plant and th
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The Farmers of Las Grietas Upon mee
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stonemason and carpenter for local
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for work in the past five years? If
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for Danilo, but not as closely as w
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The lives of these three families h
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Adrian was able to invest in a bene
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employee dormitories. The large far
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Wiwilí. Danilo had to show proof o
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in Nicaragua, and I encountered it
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from the training in production tec
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farmers who receive pre-harvest fin
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award committee, in 2003 and 2004.
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time farm staff. Danilo, on the oth
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were able to accumulate large tract
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natural resources, to conserve, pro
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The growers share a collective resp
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Danilo, Maragojipe does not thrive
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In August and September, farmers fo
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gallon bucket of coffee cherries, a
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section with smaller Catuaí plants
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The beans turn from a pale green to
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Rainforest Alliance and the Audubon
Page 177 and 178: Figure 5. Depulping coffee with mot
Page 179 and 180: engañar facilmente (They [the brok
Page 181 and 182: farmers are not adept at these proc
Page 183 and 184: The International Cup of Excellence
Page 185 and 186: Organic Farming Responsibilities In
Page 187 and 188: The Nicaraguan Rural Development In
Page 189 and 190: unsuccessfully combated, can only b
Page 191 and 192: Organic Fertilizers Many coffee far
Page 193 and 194: community. This means, for example,
Page 195 and 196: application. Most farmers had not e
Page 197 and 198: They returned that evening empty-ha
Page 199 and 200: Danilo’s fields as we talked with
Page 201 and 202: converting to organic production. H
Page 203 and 204: in their cooperative and communitie
Page 205 and 206: organizational strategies present m
Page 207 and 208: Part Three Outcomes: Cooperative Or
Page 209 and 210: organizational models that have bee
Page 211 and 212: coffee farmer, and José Manuel Mor
Page 213 and 214: El estado cuenta con nosotros porqu
Page 215 and 216: company” (la empresa) when talkin
Page 217 and 218: their estimated yield should cover
Page 219 and 220: firm, CISA/AGRO. Corcasan has its o
Page 221 and 222: earning higher prices for their far
Page 223 and 224: funding package. Corcasan brought i
Page 225 and 226: The credit model from banks and mic
Page 227: green coffee that weighed 412 quint
Page 231 and 232: only for a few select farmers. That
Page 233 and 234: Tito is Heberto’s oldest son. He
Page 235 and 236: Towards the end of my fieldwork the
Page 237 and 238: Danilo received several of the bene
Page 239 and 240: prohibited on this farm).” Some f
Page 241 and 242: One afternoon in August 2006, near
Page 243 and 244: single gas station in San Juan. Bro
Page 245 and 246: camp, was only 30 kilometers away.
Page 247 and 248: emote parts of the community to fin
Page 249 and 250: apparently the more diligent farmer
Page 251 and 252: Chapter 8 Community-Based Campesino
Page 253 and 254: campesinos y del ecosistema. No hay
Page 255 and 256: Nosotros en la Procaoc vendemos apa
Page 257 and 258: have the capacity to supply the dem
Page 259 and 260: instructor, actually instructs farm
Page 261 and 262: transparencia (There’s problems w
Page 263 and 264: waste my time with the smaller farm
Page 265 and 266: Javier Vanegas, accountant for the
Page 267 and 268: conversation provided a foundation
Page 269 and 270: carpenter; and Jorge, the assistant
Page 271 and 272: “Nosotros [Guillermo Hernández]
Page 273 and 274: en el servicio. (They gave it to me
Page 275 and 276: The cooperative model for export ag
Page 277 and 278: day went on. The music changed to l
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would ask me about my research and
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familiar with the community of Guan
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houses and additional farmland, but
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statement was in reference to Corca
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colonial history in Chapter 1), the
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Conclusion Regional Segovian identi
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production and marketing of organic
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economic development programs. In t
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capacity of their fellow farmers. T
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encountered in trying to conserve r
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Benjamin, Medea 1987 Don’t Be Afr
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Enríquez, Laura J. 1991 Harvesting
Page 303 and 304:
Guido, Clemente 1989 Los Conservado
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MAGFOR 2004 Estrategia para la reco
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Redford, Kent H. and Allyn. M. Stea
Page 309 and 310:
Turner, Terence 1991 Representing,
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Appendix EL SIGÜIENTE COMUNICADO R
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