Motozintla means “land of the squirrel”. I am in Motozintla and, while I haven’t been here long, I can say that there are no squirrels here. I came here on a bus, a wheezing, smoking diesel behemoth that used to be a painted Greyhound, probably the same one I took from Bakersfield back in 1983. Now it seems that 3 of its transmission gears still work, and to find them the driver either needs to synchronize with the engine rpm at a very particular speed, or he has to stop completely. It’s a charter, a buss that seats 50 for just 15 of us. But as far as coffee trips go, that’s about 10 too many on my book. No offense, but I am tired of groups. It feels like I am stuck in some gelatinous cytoplasmic goo. I prefer to be my own amoeba. The goo moves too slow, too much inertia. We let Tapachula, hot, sweaty Tapachula, in the morning. If the bus doesn’t have a major seizure, we will be in Motozintla, home base for the coffee co-op best called “La Union”. Or would you prefer the ugly acronym UDEPOM. Or would you like the full name: Union de Ejidos de Professor Otillio Montano. We arrive at Hotel Alberto. If that is Alberto at the desk, he is hard to rouse, in fact he is asleep most times I walk up to the counter. I get room 43. Room 45 has a syringe on the floor, I am told. Room 43 is good enough for me, but it is not the place you want to hang out.

Well, we came for the annual meeting of La Union, where all the “socios” (members) come in from the hinterlands of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, to sit through rousing speeches, a list of accounts (including – I am not kidding- every desk, table and chair the co-op purchased that year), a few words by the gringos, and – finally- some food and beer. There are around 600 socios from 5 areas, and 29 small mountain communities. They expect around 450 to come. And they do, with their wives, their kids, their grandmothers. Motozintla de Mendoza is the central town for coffee here, where the Union has its warehouse and milling facility. But all the coffee is processed from cherry until dry parchment on the farms. The co-op radiates out from here to Huixtla, south to Amatenango, over to Esquintla, and up to Tuzantan. Here we are, as far south as you can be in Mexico without stepping into Guatemala. Smashed up against the frontera with San Marcos and Huehuetenango districts of North Guatemala, the coffees have that same distinct acidity, and makes them unique among the other major Mexican regions: Oaxaca, Veracruz, Coatepec, Nayarit.

The trip is short. I can’t even pretend to understand this area, what’s really going on here. Chiapas has always been fiercely independent. Zapatistas, Commander Marcos, all that seems more like a Telenovella than what I see here. (Namely, there’s a lot of graffiti supporting the leftist uprising in Oaxaca). Chiapas is distinct in its topography as it is in its culture. I also can see how well the co-op is organized, as they must be to keep track of the individual efforts of 650 micro farms, 29 communities, 5 municipalities, producing a whopping 60 containers a year loaded with 250 bags weighing 154 pounds each. It’s why every desk and chair must be publicly accounted for, because it’s shared money. All this transparency is to alleviate the natural paranoia found among rural farmers that they are getting screwed. You would be paranoid too if you handed over your sole means of support to an agent who, you pray, is working to get you the best results. Coffee farmers don’t understand the market, who buys their coffee, and why. They join together in coops because there is no other way to get fair results for their effort. The alternative, selling to the “coyotes” who drive around and offer low-ball pricing (in cash though) probably makes more sense than the delayed payment they receive from the Union. But to do anything more than survive they need the coop, and they have to trust it.