Globalization is pushing coffee prices to historic lows and brewing poverty

By JOHN OTIS
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

LA DALIA, Nicaragua -- Bibiano Mendoza has spent much of his life gingerly plucking crimson coffee cherries by hand at their peak moment of ripeness.

Now, instead of pondering retirement, the sunburned, 60-year-old grandfather frets about where he'll get his next meal.

Mendoza and 82 other field hands have been squatting illegally on this coffee plantation in northern Nicaragua ever since their employer defaulted on loans and lost the property to the bank. With no job prospects and nowhere else to go, they have survived for the past two years by growing a little rice and picking wild fruit.

"In good times, we didn't make much money," says Mendoza, who used to earn a daily wage of $3 -- about the price of a grande latte at Starbucks.

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