Cafe Rebelde Zapatista: Solidarity with the Zapatistas

Originally posted January 2001, updated 11 June 2009:

Coffee has a turnover of about 10 billion dollars. Its production employs 25 million people in the southern hemisphere. These people, whose livelihood is based on coffee production, are dependent on the price trends fixed by the north hemisphere financial commodities markets.

Mexico produces one of the best coffees in the world, mainly grown in the mountains. Coffee is Mexico's main export. Mexico is in fact the world's fourth largest producer of coffee in the world, and the main producer of organic coffee.

In Mexico more than 3 million people depend on the production of coffee and on its exportation. 91.7% are small producers with less than five hectares of land, and more than 60% of these are indigenous peoples. The other 8.3% own a number of enormously extended estates that are the fruits of occupations of indigenous lands; these occupations have been promoted and supported by the government.

The 'Finquero'

Those families who used to live off a small plot of land have become farmhands forced to work under inhumane conditions for their new master, the 'finquero'.

The large estates owned by rich families of the national oligarchy and by foreign entrepreneurs can count on the high yields - and high profits - coming from modern technology and from the work of underpaid labour.

Small producers, on the other hand, are left to produce coffee without technical knowledge and equipment, and are forced to take out credit loans. They, unlike the finqueros, are reliant on their own endeavour to get their products to market.

The 'Coyote'

The fields under cultivation are often in remote areas and, after a tiring journey and a rudimentary transport to the nearest road, the goods are sold to the 'coyotes'. These are the first ones in the complicated distribution system that, thanks to falsification of scales and lies about the market price, pays the small producers a paltry sum for their crops.

The macro-politics, the global economics of the coffee market, based on the constant creation of new products and overproduction, fixed last year an all-time low on the commodities market.

Yet the dependence of countries in the southern hemisphere on a single product, and the impossibility to control its price, has caused complete dependency on rich importing countries and on the politics and strategies of big financial institutions (IMF, WB, WTO, etc). In real terms, this means despair caused by the inability to meet production costs, and results in the impoverishment and eventual eradication of indigenous cultures and of indigenous communities.

The EZLN

In order to change this situation, the EZLN has developed social and political projects: building, from the bottom up, a society where the Maya people can enjoy autonomy, safeguarding their own idioms and culture, and organising their own access to education, health, and land, through forms of direct democracy.

One of these projects is the creation of small cooperatives that produce the Cafe Rebelde Zapatistas. The organisation of these cooperatives has strengthened and improved access to the land and the quality of life overall.

For these reasons we have developed a new project of common struggle on the side of the indigenous communities in resistance, and we supply their coffee with the guarantee of direct international solidarity.

A project of solidarity

Our vision is that every radical social space and occupied social centre supports this initiative by serving and distributing the Zapatista Coffee whilst educating people about the Zapatista struggle.

This coffee is completely organic, and all money raised by buying this coffee will go directly into the autonomous communities that produced it. It is direct solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Mexico.

If you would like to order some coffee or would like to start distributing it, please send an email to: caferebelde@riseup.net

Zapatista Coffee Points

Active Distribution. Loads of alternative, punk and political stuff available via mail-order. Active now distributes Zapatista coffee beans (500g) and ground (250g) both wholesale and mailorder, email jon@activdistribution.org for details

56@ Infoshop. South east London's infoshop, full of info, publications and proper shopping. Zapatista coffee available. 56 Crampton St (near Elephant & Castle), London SE17 3AE

The rampART Social Centre at 15-17 Rampart Street, Whitechapel, London E1 (near DLR Shadwell). EVERY FRIDAY - social nights with great food, music, Cafe Rebelde Zapatista and occasionally screenings, exhibitions and talks.

Pogo Café at 76 Clarence Road, Hackney, London E5 8HB. Phone: 0208 533 1214. Excellent vegan food and Cafe Rebelde Zapatista available all day.

Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London N1. Beans and ground coffee available. Plus books, obviously.

SUMAC Centre at 245 Gladstone Street, Nottingham NG7 6HX. Coffee available every day.

Unicorn Grocery, 89 Albany Road, Chorlton, Manchester. 500g bags of coffee beans in stock.

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