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

have the capacity to supply the demand, basically they expect to buy coffee on the
street [not from its members] to fill the order. I am too small-scale to make my
farm more productive. I don’t have money to reinvest. I do what I can, but 25
quintals is a lot to expect from me. It gets complicated when it’s about the cost of
certification. Well, the UCA charges me to sell in the specialty market and for the
cost of certification. If they [UCA] buy on the street and pay New York prices,
then who gets the preferred price? And who pays the cost of certification?)
Neither of us knew how the co-op accounted for these fees when they had to go
outside the membership to fulfill their contracts for exportable coffee. The fact that this
was uncertain to Adrian, an UCA-San Juan member, may indicate a lack of transparency
in the administrative and managerial operations of the co-op. When I asked him why he
was unaware of this estimated yield he shared that he never assumed that the UCA would
overestimate so greatly. In his words, “nunca pensaba que me hubieran estimado así (I
never thought that they would estimate [my yield] like that).” Apparently, larger-scale
farmers are motivated to export their crop with the small-scale growers in order to access
niche markets and obtain greater values through their participation in co-ops and work
with small-scale growers.
Kelly and I became very close with both Danilo’s and Adrian’s families as we
lived, worked, and relaxed with them. Danilo and Adrian are only ten years apart (Danilo
was 46 and Adrian 36 in 2005), but they differ in many ways. Danilo has achieved
recognition through his leadership and his outspoken and tenacious responses to unjust or
exploitative situations. Danilo was instrumental in securing the land for the Las Grietas
base-level co-op. He was resourceful in obtaining much of the infrastructure that
remained in Las Grietas after the privatization of government-owned coffee farms.
Adrian, on the other hand, has been a less active participant in much of Danilo’s success.
Adrian lived on Don Amado’s farm and still farms on land that technically belongs to
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