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

La Pedro lost their entire harvests in 2006 and 2007. They have since fired their
lawyer for conspiring with the land grabbers. They hired a new lawyer from the General
Secretary of the Sandinista party in Managua to handle the case. The new lawyer
submitted new documents to the court to initiate a new case on the matter because the
previous case was “demasiado viciado (too corrupt),” as Filimón described.
The court also had to remove two judges from the case because of conflicts of
interest. Then, because the court took so long to name another judge to the case, La
Pedro lost the second annual harvest. To add insult to injury, the Gomez family had taken
out loans using the land as collateral and were trying to sell it. According to Francisco,
they even sacked the farm for hardwood and neglected the caretaking of the plantation. In
2006, they sold the coffee cherries without depulping them, which earns a much lower
price.
I drafted a public letter (see the appendix) for the Pedro Altamirano members with
the help of Everst González. Kelly and I also communicated the situation to our contacts
at the University of New Mexico Fair Trade Initiative (UNM-FTI) and requested
donations to help defray the costs of transportation to visit the lawyers and courts
assigned to this case. The UNM-FTI raised more than $200 to help the Pedro Altamirano
co-op directly oversee the case. The more often they could meet with the lawyers and be
present in court, the better their chances were of having their case heard. We were
pleased to hear that several months after we had departed from San Juan, La Pedro
finally won their case and were able to get back to work on their plantation.
Much of what I had experienced confirmed what Tito Rivas of the UCPCO had
said to me months before: “La exportadora manda (The exporter calls the shots).” His
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