Coffee free market brews trouble

Mexican growers bank on quality for survival

By SUSAN FERRISS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

PANTELHO, Mexico -- In the verdant hollows of Mexico's Chiapas state, one thing unites Indians and non-Indians, Zapatista rebels and their foes.

They are all at the bottom of a production chain of one of the world's most traded commodities -- coffee.

And all have suffered the consequences of free market whims and manipulation.

Coffee growing has proved to many in Chiapas that the free market cannot be trusted to deliver stability and that international cooperation is sometimes necessary.

"We are fighting now to sell our organic coffee on the 'fair market' in Europe, which offers us better prices. If we cannot change our product and do this, we will die," said Juan Vasquez, a Maya Indian who leads Sociedad Tzotzil-Tzeltal, a coffee farmers' cooperative in Pantelho, Chiapas.

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