Mut Vitz (Bird Mountain), located in the Highlands of Chiapas, is one of Cooperative Coffees’ first producer cooperative partners.

We have witnessed their growth from their first steps as an Autonomous Organization and their introductory sale into the Fair Trade market to becoming a viable actor in Fair Trade and a major force for community development in their region. As an Autonomous Organization they have suffered economic hard times, as they refuse to accept any resources from government sources, and they have suffered political violence. But despite the multitude of obstacles the cooperative has overcome, and those they continue to face, their growth and development continues.

Construction of the Mut Vitz warehouse, a huge step forward to facilitating logistics for their members, has begun. So now, in addition to Mut Vitz coffee farmers becoming agroecology promoters, internal inspectors, auditors, logistics wizards, managers and secretaries… they now must also be construction workers! By internal agreement, each Mut Vitz community offer teams of 30 men to work two-day shifts until the construction is complete.

And work they do: cutting re-bar with a hack-saw; breaking cable rods with a chisel and a rock; digging a 3 x 6 foot trench along the perimeter of the building-to-be with picks and shovels, and red clay flying… and a relentless laughter filling the air. By the time I was preparing to depart that groundbreaking afternoon, the Chavejaval team had nearly completed the first trench the length of the warehouse and had generated an impressive stack of metal support beams. At this rate, the Mut Vitz board expects that they will have the warehouse construction completed within the month.

Funding for the construction has come from the capital fund Mut Vitz has been building over the past three years of exports to the Fair Trade market in both North America and Europe. As they have been generating this fund, Mut Vitz has also able to pay its members some of the highest prices per kilo for pergamino coffee in the region! And, they have been able to achieve all of this without outside grants and without accepting any supports from the Mexican government – all just from the sales of their exceptional Fair Trade coffee and their own hard work!!

Next stop – Yachil, from whom we will buy two containers of organic certified coffee this year. In 2001 an initial group of 383 producers from Cancun and Pantelho came together to form Yachil Xojobal Chulchan (New Light in the Heavens), in the hopes of creating more viable alternatives via the sale of their coffee. Since then and despite the enormous sacrifice and economic investments required to construct a new cooperative, Yachil has grown to 1,522 members in seven of the surrounding municipalities. They already have surmounted a first huge obstacle, regaining organic certification (many members had previously been certified in other organizations, but lost that status in joining a new cooperative). This year 239 members will be organic certified, with the remainder in transition levels 1 or 2.

I met with members of the newly elected Producer Board of Directors. We talked about their realization of the need to create a new Autonomous Cooperative in their region, and how despite the on-going situation of displacement that many Zapatistas still confront, the cooperative is still advancing. Following the massacre at Acteal (Dec. 22, 1997), some 10,000 people came to Polho seeking refuge from the threat of violence by paramilitary forces in the area. At that time, international attention and solidarity support was high.

Today, one of their biggest challenges is simply keeping enough food on their collective table, and thereby keeping up the strength to resist Mexican government politics that never have served Indigenous interests. And despite it all, they continue with wisdom and good spirits to create a new path for development in Mexico.