In 1977 as tensions mounted across Guatemala’s western ...



Sarah Lyon

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

University of Kentucky

202 Lafferty Hall, Lexington, KY 40506-0024

Sarah.lyon@uky.edu

“Somos Cooperativistas”: Strengthening Participatory Democracy in Rural Guatemala through Fair Trade Coffee Consumption

Abstract:

The growing fair trade market is predicated on the unfettered flow of capital, people, information, commodities and signs. Among fair trade coffee producers, these same flows can facilitate the reinforcement of local democratic, participatory spheres and the reaffirmation of indigenous, community based identity. In the highlands of Guatemala, a region characterized by a history of violent repression, structural inequality and cultural discrimination against indigenous smallholders, Northern sustainable consumption practices and the growing demand for fair trade products lends political legitimacy and security to rural producer associations and their organizational activities, effectively enabling them to bypass national political and economic constraints and access international market and advocacy spheres. However, in order to foster large scale democratic transitions in regional and global economic spheres, the fair trade movement must work to create forums for broad-based international cooperation and increased decision-making power for producers.

In 1977 as tensions mounted across Guatemala’s western highlands, a small group of Tz’utujil Maya smallholders met in the shade of a ceiba tree located in the center of their village on the shores of Lake Atitlan. That day they formed an agricultural cooperative that would successfully weather the region’s instability and repression in the early 1980s at the height of the civil war. The cooperative grew to 116 members and began exporting fair trade and organic certified coffee in 1991. In recent years, the group has maintained a multi-year secure market contract with fair trade coffee roasters and retailers in the United States. The growing fair trade market is predicated on the unfettered flow of capital, people, information, commodities and signs. Among fair trade coffee producers, these same flows contribute to the expansion of local democratic, participatory spheres and the reaffirmation of indigenous, community based identity. This impact results from (a) fair trade certification standards that require producers to be organized into democratic associations and (b) fair trade coffee marketing strategies which foreground images and stories about producer identities and communities rather than intrinsic product features (Lyon 2006).

METHODS

This paper emerges from a nineteen month ethnographic study of the fair trade coffee market in the United States and Guatemala (2001-2003), including fourteen months of research among a 116 member Tz’utujil Maya coffee cooperative located in the western highlands of Guatemala. The cooperative is located in a community with approximately 5,000 inhabitants, the majority of whom are Tz’utujil Maya. The research consisted of ongoing participant observation, numerous unstructured interviews and structured interviews conducted with fifty-three cooperative members. The results indicate that the democratic and egalitarian ethos of the fair trade coffee cooperative serves to mitigate the destabilizing forces that often accompany agro-commodity export production while simultaneously reaffirming indigenous social and political structures. Fair trade market participation can offer a variety of potential benefits to producers, including higher prices, stable market access, organizational capacity building, market information, and access to credit. However, the research data also indicates a number of correlated limitations, such as increasing debt burdens, insufficient compensation, and a lack of cooperative member participation in the fair trade movement’s international decision-making and agenda setting (Lyon 2005; Lyon n.d.).

SIGNIFICANCE

Northern sustainable consumption practices and the growing demand for fair trade products lends political legitimacy and security to rural producer associations and their organizational activities, effectively enabling them to bypass national political and economic constraints and access international market and advocacy spheres. Successful agricultural development can contribute to long-term peace by raising incomes, increasing employment opportunities, and reducing the social frustrations that often fuel violence (Addison 2005). This agricultural development is especially critical for indigenous communities as the historical marginalization of and discrimination against Guatemala’s majority Maya population was one of the underlying causes of the war and remains one of the nation’s central political problems (Sieder and Witchell 2001).

Many theories of consumption revolve around three poles: consumption as utility, as identity or as symbolic, social competition (Wilk 2006). In an attempt to broaden this “synchronic and psycho-cultural” approach (Carrier and Heyman 1997), I approach sustainable consumption through a political economy framework in order to illuminate how fair trade consumption can potentially challenge the structural constraints facing small coffee producers. By empirically examining the concrete ways in which fair trade consumption in the North can contribute to producer self-determination, this analysis moves beyond assessments of the financial impact of fair trade premiums within producer communities and critical examinations of fair trade’s ideological discourse.

FAIR TRADE COFFEE

Coffee’s introduction to Latin America during the second half of the nineteenth century intensified existing transnational flows and affected diverse individuals and landscapes.[i] In Guatemala, coffee cultivation, and the exploitative political and social structures that supported it, contributed to the civil unrest that resulted in the nation’s civil war and continues to shape political, economic, and cultural reality into the present (Paige 1997; Williams 1994).

Despite coffee’s history within Guatemala, it became an increasingly attractive agricultural commodity for smallholders beginning in the 1970s because it is easy to store and handle, its value has historically surpassed that of comparable agricultural products, it can be grown on steep slopes and once neglected can be fairly easily rejuvenated (Sick 1999). In the research site the introduction of coffee cultivation is referred to as “the bomb” that exploded in the community, bringing the cash revenues that enabled families to end their decades-long pattern of seasonal migration, build cement block houses, and educate their children. However, as a result of the recent historically low coffee prices, revenues have declined significantly for those community members who are not cooperative members.

In recent years the international price for green coffee plunged to a century-long low due to three major transformations in the global coffee market during the last quarter of a century. First, the International Coffee Agreement, which historically contributed to price stability, was dismantled in 1989. Second, roasters and international traders went through a period of consolidation leading to an increasingly oligopolistic market. Third, producing countries lost their ability to control export flows and stocks as a result of market liberalization (Daviron and Ponte 2005).

Concurrent with these market failures, the international fair trade market began to steadily expand. In 1997 the umbrella certification group Fair Trade Labeling Organizations (FLO) International was formed (Raynolds 2000). Today, the FLO register contains 197 coffee producer organizations, 165 of which are located in Latin America and the Caribbean. Mexico is the region’s largest producer (3680 metric tons of green coffee) followed by Peru (2172), Colombia (1601), Nicaragua (1428) and Guatemala (1332) (Raynolds et al 2004). While FLO currently offers fair trade certification for ten commodities (coffee, cocoa, tea, orange juice, honey, sugar, rice, bananas, sports balls, and wine), coffee remains the backbone of the market (Raynolds et al 2004; Daviron and Ponte 2005).

The much heralded growth of fair trade markets must be contextualized within aggregate patterns of rapidly rising rates of consumption for all products. While the expansion of fair trade consumption is impressive, most ethical (and green) products have captured only modest market shares of less than 1% (MacGillivray 2000; De Pelsmacker et al. 2005). In 2003, international sales of fair trade products totaled more than US $500 million, representing a thirty percent annual growth rate (Fair Trade Federation 2003) and that same year over eighteen million pounds of fair trade certified coffee were roasted in the United States, representing a ninety-one percent growth rate from 2002 (TransFair USA 2004). In North America, the sustainable coffee market, which include organic, fair trade, bird friendly, Rainforest Alliance, Utz Kapeh and relationship coffees without third party certification, represents only .48% of the total coffee market and 2.8% of the specialty market (Ponte 2004; also see Daviron and Ponte 2005; Lewin et al. 2004). There are four requirements importers must meet in order to use the fair trade label. First, they must buy their coffee directly from certified small coffee farmers. Second, they must offer these farmers long-term contracts that extend at least beyond one annual harvest. Third, they must pay a price premium of $1.26 per pound and an additional $.15 per pound premium for dual certified organic/fair trade coffee. Finally, they must offer the farmer organizations pre-financing covering at least sixty percent of the annual contract (FLO 2005). Similarly, there are three requirements for participating coffee producers. First, they must be small, family farmers. Second, they must be organized into independent, democratic associations (which will be discussed at greater length below). And, third, they must pursue recently elaborated ecological goals (FLO 2005).

Both the explicit goal of smallholder support through equitable international trade and certification requirements are modest in comparison to the market’s implicit goals, such as promoting educational consciousness-raising among consumers (cf Simpson and Rapone 2000), assuring historical shipping arrangements and encouraging national development (Frundt 2005), serving as an alternative to both free trade and protectionism (LeClair 2002; Maseland and DeVaal 2002), ensuring public accountability and safe and healthy working conditions (Grimes 2000), fostering changes in conventional international trade (Redfern and Snedker 2002; Moore 2004), and contributing to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (FLO 2005a).

NEOLIBERALISM, MARKET STRATEGIES AND INDIGENOUS ORGANIZING

One outcome of structural adjustments has been a move towards market-friendly approaches to development (Desai and Imrie 1998; Fowler 2000) as the poor are increasingly seen as those who are not effectively integrated into the market economy (Hulme and Shepherd 2003). This growing focus on poverty reduction has led some aid organizations to direct their efforts towards more functionally oriented peasant groups, such as commodity specific producer associations (Bebbington 2005).[ii] However, despite this shifting focus, rural poverty remains an important welfare problem in most Latin American countries (de Janvry and Sadoulet 2000:389-90).

With its hallmark slogan “trade not aid,” the recent growth of fair trade markets reflects the shifting priorities of international donors, such as the World Bank (World Bank 2001; Fridell 2004), and the increasingly popular notion that Northern consumption should be channeled into progressive movements to make the alienating institutions of trade and government responsible for the consequences of their actions (Miller 1995). Fair trade shares similar attributes with a variety of certification schemes emerging in response to the failure of interventionist states to meet the demands made of them in globalizing systems (Gereffi et al 2001), including organic, sweat-free, and forest stewardship labels. While they are presented as alternatives to development, these initiatives parallel the larger trend towards market based solutions for poverty reduction.[iii]

Neoliberal reforms produced a series of effects across Latin America, including the dismantling of local corporate structures, the growing responsibility of local governments and NGOs and the expansion of markets into remote areas. Postero and Zamosc 2004) argue that these reforms have impacted indigenous populations through (1) political restructuring, which has changed relations between indigenous groups and the state; (2) a new emphasis on resource extraction schemes, which may threaten their land rights; and (3) economic restructuring, which has resulted in economic crises.[iv] Yashar suggests that indigenous groups organized in response to the challenges posed by neo-liberal reforms (1998, 2005) while others maintain that the reforms presented both opportunities and challenges to indigenous groups (Hale 2002, Postero and Zamosc 2004, Roper et al 2003). For example, a growing body of research demonstrates that the retreat of the state has enabled some indigenous groups to negotiate directly with international companies, non governmental organizations and transnational advocacy networks (Brysk 2000; Fischer 2001; Warren and Jackson 2002; Yashar 1998).

Across Latin America, neoliberal policies contribute to an overall trend towards growing wealth inequality and declining access to resources such as land, water, and forests (Barkin 2001; Chase 2002). However, increased rates of fair trade coffee consumption in the North present an opportunity for small producers in the South as they are increasingly integrated into transnational markets on different terms than previous trade relations. Analyzing fair trade participation as a creative mixture of resources and actions contributes to a more realistic perspective on neo-liberalism, one that moves beyond simple market compliance or resistance (cf Beggington 2000; Chase 2002).

FAIR TRADE & DEMOCRATIC ASSOICATIONS

As noted above, fair trade certified coffee producers must be organized into independent democratic associations. The certification standards, established by FLO (Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International) state that in order to be “An instrument for the social and economical development of the members” the organization must “Have a democratic structure and transparent administration which enables effective control by the members and its Board over the management, including the decisions about how the benefits are shared” (FLO 2005)[v]. The strength of a producer association’s internal organization and leadership skills are critical components of fair trade success (Raynolds et al 2004). In turn, the security of fair trade prices and markets may enhance a cooperative’s general financial and organizational stability (Raynolds et al 2004). Because northern coffee buyers demand a certain degree of accountability and monitoring (Daviron and Ponte 2005) successful organizations must work towards transparent planning and active member participation in administration and internal control (FLO 2005). Policies that facilitate these processes may have the added benefit of increasing member commitment to the organization.

In prioritizing the formation of independent democratic associations, the fair trade movement follows in the footsteps of earlier international development efforts. As Gill details, the Alliance for Progress prodded the United States Congress to exert greater control over foreign aid through the creation of the “New Directions” guidelines for aid allocation in 1973 which directed the United States Agency for International Development to devote a larger percentage of development assistance to rural areas (Gill 1985). Agricultural cooperatives were increasingly viewed as the ideal organizational structure for the dissemination of technological innovations and services to rural people (Gill 1985).

In addition to their perceived potential for heightening efficiency in small holder commercialization, cooperatives were also encouraged by international lenders who were attracted to the overtone of social solidarity and democracy surrounding the concept. Despite these perceptions, some research indicates that rather than alleviating poverty, cooperative programs introduced by international lenders often serve to strengthen and entrench a small group of better-off peasants without significantly benefiting large sectors of the population (Gill 1985; de Janvry 1981; Nash et al 1976; Galjart 1975; Cohen 2000; Milgram 2000). The degree to which democratic producer associations formed with the purpose of accessing the fair trade market serve to deepen or counteract existing inequalities deserves further empirical research and scrutiny and is beyond the scope of the present paper.

THE SERVICE ETHOS IN MESOAMERICAN COMMUNITIES

Anthropologists have long argued that a central component of contemporary Maya social structure is participation in an evolving cargo system (Tax 1937). Historically the cargo system consisted of civil-religious hierarchies in which male community members alternated between ranked positions in religious brotherhoods and the civil government (with the assistance of their wives). Over time cargo systems have evolved and most contemporary communities maintain only religious hierarchies, as the functions of civil hierarchies diminished with the introduction of formal electoral processes and national politics to the local sphere (Chance 1990).[vi] In some contemporary communities, including the research site, membership in committees that monitor community projects and public works and service on the boards of cooperatives and associations is elective and may substitute for the previous civil positions which are now occupied by politicians (Stephen 2005; Kovic 2005; Stepputat 2001). While marked differences exist between the historical hierarchies and their current manifestation, the ongoing significance of the behavioral ideal of communalism based on individual service is evident in rituals of social recognition and public initiation (Watanabe 1992; Annis 1987), the performance of shared morality (Cohen 1999) and the reinforcement of community values (Cancian 1965).

The historical Mesoamerican cargo system has several essential features: (1) it involves voluntary service without remuneration (although there may be social pressure placed upon individuals to participate), (2) holders of civil or religious offices perform most or all of the functions necessary for running the local government and/or the Church, (3) tenure in these offices is rotated, usually annually, to other members of the community, (4) participation is costly in terms of time or money, and (5) participation is an important means of acquiring prestige within the community (Dewalt 1975).

Service within the fair trade coffee cooperative in the form of positions on the board of directors shares some of these essential features: service is voluntary and not remunerated, tenure is rotated annually or semi-annually to other cooperative members, participation can be costly in terms of time, and service on the board of directors is rewarded with prestige and decision-making power within the organization. Cooperative service also brings practical and tangible rewards to members such as the formation and maintenance of networks of reciprocity, respect, and trust which serve to unite non-kin community members. Furthermore, like the cargo system, which historically limited outside intervention in community life through the local resolution of internal differences (Cohen 1999; Greenberg 1981), cooperatives with a strong board of directors are better able to maintain their autonomy within the global market and resist external control at the hands of development organizations, managerial staff or buyers.

SERVING THE COOPERATIVE CARGO

Of the fifty-three surveyed cooperative members, seventy-seven percent have served on the cooperative’s sixteen member board of directors at least once over the course of their cooperative membership (average length of membership is fourteen years). On average they have fulfilled two terms of service, each lasting either one or two years. A similar rate of participation is evident in the community and religious service records of cooperative members: eighty-three percent have served a cargo in a religious organization or on town committee. Only seven of the 116 cooperative members are female. To date, none of these women have served positions on the board of directors and cooperative service largely remains a male pursuit.

Service in public positions, whether in groups such as the cooperative or in religious hierarchies, can be interpreted as a conservative force. Those who serve sacrifice for the community, whether through financial investments, labor or time. This sacrifice is essentially an investment in the continuity of the system that assures them their local social rewards (see Cancian 1992:194), or in the case of the cooperative, their financial remuneration. This analysis of service as an investment and reward cycle is reflected in the claims made by many community elders during interviews that serving cargos requires both obedience and respect for the position, the responsibility it entails, and the elders who have filled it before you.

Unlike other forms of local participation in the transnational economy (migration, service jobs in the tourist industry, drug trafficking etc.), which often present alternatives to community based economic strategies, participation in the fair trade coffee market embeds members more deeply in local economic and social spheres since it is contingent upon an individual’s membership within a democratically organized cooperative. In essence, cooperative members’ success in the marketplace requires an allegiance to the group itself. The adaptability and yet continued importance of service to both the community and the cooperative helps ensure that those who participate remain invested in the local social structure and its continued cohesion in the future.

Despite the high rate of participation, the varying service records of cooperative members demonstrate that not everyone eagerly jumps at the opportunity to serve. In fact, at times, it has been difficult to recruit members to serve on the board of directors. Some individuals serve repeatedly while others provide excuses for why they cannot fulfill their elected cargo (viewing it literally as a burden). For example, many of the long-term members of the cooperative feel they have fulfilled their responsibilities and should not be required to provide future service. In addition, those already serving cargos in Catholic Action (generally two year posts) or religious brotherhoods (one year posts) are excused from cooperative service obligations due to time constraints. Since surveyed members have nearly equal rates of cooperative and non-cooperative service (77% and 83% respectively), external commitments often limit the prospective pool.

The fact that nearly sixty percent of the surveyed cooperative members attended three years or less of school and may be illiterate or have poor Spanish skills also contributes to their reluctance to serve cargos in the cooperative, which in order to fulfill market demands for certification and quality, increasingly resembles a business association, or what Nigh refers to as an “associative corporation” (1997:428). Many of these members are uncomfortable reading and signing contracts and socializing with the Northern coffee buyers who regularly visit.

Ironically, some of the those best prepared for service, those who are educated and relatively comfortable negotiating cross-cultural social relations and business transactions, are not disposed to accept positions because they are “professionals” as opposed to campesinos and cannot miss work in order to attend the frequent meetings. One member who is a teacher in the town’s parochial school explained to me during an intervew, “They have nominated me but thankfully they understand that I don’t have the time. I can’t…one can’t send his mozo (day laborer) to fulfill the cargo and because of my job I’m always going to meetings at the school.”[vii] This finding is echoed in Zorn’s research on cultural heritage tourism projects in Taquile, Peru. She finds that an increase in income correlates with a decline in communal institutions as wealthier Taquileans say they are “too busy” to attend assemblies and serve in leadership positions. As for the coffee cooperative, this breakdown in social structure may be especially critical since the ability to act collectively is a key component of the existing social gains. (2004).

Despite an occasional lack of volunteers, the ethos of service and mutual aid remains a highly potent symbolic component of cooperative membership, one that helps to mitigate tensions among members. During general assemblies, disagreements were often resolved when an observer emphatically stood to declare, “Somos cooperativistas o somos nada!” In interviews, members frequently reiterated the importance of mutual aid explaining how, “The cooperative helps you at the same time that you have to help it.” Cooperative members also employ culturally distinct negotiation styles in general assemblies. For example, before making decisions those in attendance take turns voicing their opinions regarding the matter at hand. Special respect is given to the opinions of elder cooperative members, although all who wish to speak do so, including women. After thorough discussion, decisions are made through public voting procedures. This practice helps to defuse tensions or allegations of injustice within the group as it ensures all opinions are heard in an open forum. While the cooperative has transformed into an associative corporation which successfully negotiates the international coffee market, members collectively ensure that the group remains a mutual aid society.

FAIR TRADE AND ASSOCIATIONAL SPACE

Strong communal organizations are a key component of successful community development efforts (Zorn 2004; Healy 2001; Bray 1995). While many contemporary Guatemalans see democratic organizations as essential to confronting poverty and precarious economic circumstances, due to the fact that any social organization not under army control during the war was criminalized, fear remains a significant obstacle to rural organization (REMHI 1999:88). Therefore, in regions with a history of targeted rural violence, such as Guatemala, the international nature of fair trade networks buttresses the strength of cooperatives and the secure civic spaces they foster.

During Guatemala’s civil war two hundred thousand people were killed or disappeared, ninety-three percent at the hands of state forces and related paramilitary groups. The United Nation’s Commission for Historical Clarification report charged that the war was an attempt to destroy the cultural values that ensured cohesion and collective action in Mayan communities (CEH 1999:23). Rural cooperatives, formed across the indigenous western highlands in the 1960s and 1970s, were especially targeted by the armed forces. Individuals who participated in successful community projects and organizations, “Were often met with envidia and accusations of self-interest. Social justice organizing was always met with accusations of leaders being ‘subversive’ or ‘guerrilla’” (Sanford 2003:144).

In many communities, the war aggravated local divisions and transformed pre-existing interpersonal conflicts into lethal contests as villagers denounced each other to the army as guerrilla sympathizers. While the community in which the cooperative is located did not suffer widespread violence at the hands of the army, there were several covert (yet public) assassinations in the community in the 1980s. At the time the cooperative maintained a small store and corn mill which was pillaged under the cover of night by soldiers. The cooperative’s agricultural director was held hostage at the local military base for several days after he was accused of being a guerilla due to his interest in organic agriculture and dry latrines. Guatemala’s civil war tore at the fabric of many Maya communities and weakened the strength of cooperative practices and shared identities. The researched cooperative successfully weathered the civil war by maintaining a low organizational profile, preserving internal cohesion, and avoiding overtly political activities and stances (cf Gill 1985). However, in other parts of the highlands, such as the Ixil triangle, smallholder coffee production and cooperative efforts were effectively halted.

Fair trade consumption in the North is predicated upon consumers’ access to information regarding the conditions of production and increasingly the social circumstances and cultural traditions of producers themselves. This information gathering and sharing strengthens the “modes of connectivity” (Whatmore and Thorne 1997) linking Southern producers and Northern consumers. These international connections fostered through participation in international fair trade markets lend legitimacy and protection to democratic producer associations operating within historically hostile national climates.

Fair trade market participation facilitates the formation of local “associational spaces” and the political opportunity to organize (Yashar 2005) while simultaneously supporting producer efforts to “scale up” beyond the local.[viii] These processes contribute to the construction of social capital and the resultant “thickening of civil society” (Perreault 2003; Fox 1996; Yashar 2005; Simpson and Rapone 2000). This local participatory democracy might translate into broader-based political participation: research indicates that participation in independent cooperatives has lead some indigenous Latin Americans to become involved in political organizing at the local, regional or even national level (Castro Apreza 2003; Eber and Kovic 2003; Kovic 2005; Tice 1995).

Nash’s body of research demonstrates the many ways that indigenous people have drawn on both local traditions and new forms of organization to devise innovative structures to preserve their economic and cultural autonomy (1993a, 1993b in Stephen 2005). As demonstrated above, in the research site the cargo system has changed considerably in recent years. However, this has not dampened the service ethos which still structures community life to a significant extent. As a democratic association rooted in local practices of mutual aid, the cooperative contributes to community self-determination by translating world market integration into indigenous practices. Through this process local understandings of morality are reinforced or adapted (cf Cohen 1999) and traditions of horizontal cooperation and reciprocity are reproduced (cf Fox 1996).

SELLING FAIR TRADE

Today’s consumer market is characterized by product standardization, meaning products now require signs such as brand names or certification seals that add value to them (Goldman and Papson 1996:3). Communicating product attributes other than use-value has long been the goal of advertising (Tinic 1997) however, during the recent years of post-Fordist flexible production and increasing levels of consumption, advertising and sign values have become constitutive features of products, not simply descriptors of them. Fair trade products are given significance and gain value because they are more than just food: knowledge of where the products are produced and how they are connected to wider cultural and political trends is argued to be a critical component of consumer choice and participation within the alternative market (Fisher 1997). However, marketing fair trade coffee presents a strategic challenge—how does one communicate to customers what exactly makes this coffee different and why they should care? Recent market expansion proves that once the fair trade premise is understood by consumers it is relatively easily absorbed into the left leaning middle-class habitus (Bourdieu 1984). However, it nonetheless is difficult to distill the modes of connectivity linking dispersed fair trade producers and consumers into sign values that both inform and entice consumers.

The growing popularity of specialty coffees in the United States is a direct result of widespread and diligent consumer education. Across the country, coffee drinkers have been taught to eschew the watered-down inferior brews of their grandparents in favor of high-quality and high-cost specialty coffees. Many coffee roasters relish their role as teachers of taste and have expanded their consumer pedagogy to include lessons in coffee origins and the processing factors that influence quality and flavor. Roaster trips to coffee-producing regions, during which they purchase coffee and attempt to nurture relationships based on proximate contact with producers, are readily shared with consumers who may daydream of similar exotic travel experiences. A powerful way for retailers to market this vicarious travel is through the prominent display of the photos and profiles of the producers who grow the coffee they serve.

Fair trade marketing mirrors Northern consumers’ attachment to far off places and traditions, infusing products with information regarding the peoples, places, and cultures engaged in the production of particular commodities (Raynolds 2002). The “material semiotic process” of the fair trade network serves to make coffee producers “near and dear” for Northern consumers (Goodman 2004). This is achieved through marketing strategies which pair testimonies and stories about cooperative members with colorful photographs.[ix] These stories are simply framed because their singular purpose is to persuade consumers to take action by purchasing specific products.

[pic]

(cooperative profile at )

MARKETING MAYA

While some fear that global economic integration will result in cultural homogenization as western commodities inundate local markets (for example see Hannerz 1990), contemporary markets are also marked by a reverse commodity flow as consumers seek exotic and unique objects produced in Third World countries (Nash 1993). Successful claims to local authenticity and indigenous identity in international arenas may be rewarded with significant material advantages (Edelman and Haugerud 2005). Anthropologists have documented multiple instances in which indigenous people strategically foreground their authenticity and identities for economic gains in diverse industries, including tourism and artisan sales (Hendrickson 1996; Castaneda 1996; Garcia Canclini 1993; Feinberg 2006; Zorn 2004; Little 2004). This increasing value of authentic indigenous identity in international markets poses a significant challenge to historic associations of indigenous populations with underdevelopment, poverty and tradition-bound cultural practices (Kearney 1996; Montejo 2005; Zorn 2004; Levi and Dean 2003; Garcia 2005).

In January 2003, the CEO and employees of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters visited the research site to meet with the cooperative which supplies coffee for several of the company’s blends. The visiting group also included a film crew from the PBS show Frontline and the trip coincided with the launch of the Green Mountain and Newman’s Own co-branded (meaning both company logos are displayed on the label) fair trade and organic coffee blends. Nell Newman also traveled with the group in order to interact with the producers growing the coffee that bore her family’s name. Frontline filmed the whole visit to include in a piece on the coffee crisis, which aired in the spring of 2003. The resulting Frontline piece was educational, emotionally moving, and provided free publicity for Green Mountain, Newman’s Own, and the cooperative.

In addition to the high quality of its organic coffee, the cooperative is attractive to Northern coffee importers and retailers because its members have a cohesive, easily marketed ethnic identity as “authentic” Tz’utujil Maya Indians. Cooperative members are aware of this and consistently foreground their Maya identity in their interactions with outsiders.[x] In preparation for the above visit, members dressed in traje, or the traditional, hand woven outfits historically worn by the Maya. Like many contemporary Maya, male community members rarely wear traje in their daily activities, such as picking coffee, because of its high cost (approximately US$100). In fact, several members were forced to borrow traje from family members and neighbors because they do not own their own. However, they repeatedly expressed to me their excitement over the opportunity to demonstrate their distinct cultural traditions and lifestyle to the visitors.

The cooperative’s management and board of directors chose to highlight what they deemed their most distinguishing and unique trait, their Tz’utujil culture. They wanted to demonstrate the quality of their coffee and the stringent organic production guidelines they followed. However, they chose to portray this through the lens of cultural identity: in short, claiming “Our coffee is high quality and organic because we are traditional Tz’utujil.” Picking coffee is a messy task: cooperative members, their families and their mozos arrive at the wet mill in the afternoons sweaty, bug-bitten and tired. The women’s usually well-combed hair is in disarray, feet are muddy, and hands are stained and sticky from the cherries. The thought of cooperative members and their family members picking coffee in their best traje is laughable in its near absurdity. However, when the visitors finally arrived at the coffee field after a long, arduous climb (because they arrived late in the season, all of the coffee at lower altitudes had already been harvested), they were delighted by the colorful clothing and watched attentively as cooperative members, their wives and children picked coffee and placed it in traditional, woven baskets (as opposed to the plastic tubs more commonly used) before pouring it into burlap sacks which were tied onto a patiently waiting donkey.

The Frontline producers followed the cooperative’s lead and distilled cooperative members’ identity into an easily digestible package of ethnic and cultural traits, or, in the words of Rick Wilk, “Structures of common difference.” These structures celebrate particular kinds of diversity, such as Maya traje, while submerging, deflating or suppressing others (Wilk 1995). [xi] Cooperative representatives might have chosen to highlight the group’s modernity: the strict guidelines members follow when making organic fertilizer or tending their coffee, the large loans from international lenders they collectively manage, or their plans to eventually construct a dry mill and training center. One of the traje clad coffee harvesters might have informed the visitors that he is a medical doctor who rarely performs agricultural labor, but instead monitors his mozos’ (day laborers’) work on the weekends. However, instead they chose to represent the group as the “small farmer cooperative rich in Indian tradition” described in their Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’ promotional materials.

[pic]

The spouse and children of cooperative members dressed in traje for the cameras (author photo)

Friedman (1994), Jameson (1991) and others have claimed that post-modern capitalism produces a significant crisis of both collective and individual identity. While this may be true, within fair trade coffee networks some of the forces commonly associated with globalization, such as increased flows of information and capital, can also resulting in the reaffirmation of indigenous identity.[xii] For example, Nigh argues in his study of the Chiapas, Mexico fair trade coffee cooperative, ISMAM, that the group resists the trends characterizing the “Postmodern condition” (such as cultural homogenizing and financial domination) by seeking specific markets for their goods and using their cultural identity as capital to gain competitiveness (1997:428).

Cooperative members strategically highlight their indigenous identity and distinctly Tz’utujil culture to foreign coffee buyers. In turn, their coffee is marketed to consumers through the calculated use of Maya identity as a commodity sign. By choice, cooperative members do not actively support the pan-Maya movement. However, like other indigenous people who embrace the use of strategically essentialized (Warren 1998) representations of cultural authenticity to facilitate tourism and artisan sales, rather than political or cultural goals, they are active agents in the construction of their identity.

Cooperative members’ successful participation in the global economy through fair trade coffee sales is predicated upon remaining in their community and maintaining the competitive advantage they gain through their distinctly Tz’utujil cultural traditions. Therefore the relationship between market success and Maya identity is dialogical. While their identity may be a distinct market advantage, like the fair trade artisan groups studied by anthropologists, participation in the fair trade market also plays an important role in the preservation and promotion of local cultural traditions (Grimes 2000; Rosenbaum 2000). This argument is supported by similar studies (Nigh 1997; Hernandez Castillo and Nigh 1998; Vargas-Cetina 1999; Bebbington 1996) which indicate that cooperatives that combine cultural norms of reciprocity and service with contemporary business activities are often more accountable to the needs of their communities and better grounded in local social processes. Furthermore, market participation provides international validation of Maya cultural traditions, historically denigrated within the Guatemalan nation-state.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper has argued that the fair trade coffee market can contribute to the self-determination of producer groups through the formation of democratic associations and the international validation of cultural traditions. The fair trade movement should work to scale up these local forms of participatory democracy by creating an international forum for broad based and meaningful producer-consumer interactions. In achieving this goal, fair trade will become a truly sustainable form of consumption—one that contributes to the economic, social and environmental viability of producer livelihoods while transforming Northern consumption into politically meaningful action.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was funded through grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Fulbright-Hayes and the Emory Fund for Internationalization.

WORKS CITED

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[i] (Roseberry 1983; Roseberry et al 1995; Ortiz 1999; Stolcke 1988; Sick 1999)

[ii] By facilitating the incorporation of “marginal” populations into market economies, this shifting development focus may indirectly serve neo-liberal state goals (Ferguson 1994; Fisher 1997 in Wilson 2003).

[iii] According to Fridell, the depiction of the fair trade network as a victory against neoliberal globalization fails to situate the network historically. He argues that the recent expansion of fair trade is indicative of the current triumph of neoliberal globalization and a voluntarist, nonstatist development strategy (2004).

[iv] The impact of recent economic transformations on indigenous populations has been prioritized in Guatemala where all major international assistance groups give top priority to helping Maya communities. For example, according to Fischer (2004:92), it is USAID’s explicit policy to develop poverty reduction education programs with a Maya focus.

[v] Specifically, FLO regulations state (a) there must be no discrimination regarding membership and participation, (b) ther emust be a general assembly with voting rights for all members and an elected board, (c) the staff must answer through the board to the general assembly, (d) there must be one general assembly a year during which annual reports and accounts are approved (FLO 2005:4).

[vi] In 1990, Chance reported religious hierarchies were more than twice as common as combined civil-religious hierarchies throughout the region (1990:216).

[vii] However, the lack of participation on behalf of educated cooperative members may not be an entirely bad thing. For example, Hacker and Elcorobairutia argue that in the case of the Mondragon cooperative in Spain, the increased election of a professional, university-trained elite to make important decisions, weakened workplace democracy (1987:372).

[viii] This process is similar to that identified by Brysk (2000) who demonstrates how indigenous groups across Latin America have strategically linked themselves to transnational networks and international nongovernmental organizations in order to address local concerns.

[ix] See Keck and Sikknick 1997 for a discussion of information flows in transnational advocacy networks.

[x] Guatemala itself has begun to view indigenous identity as a “Productive resource.” As Nelson reports, one state official told her, “The major money maker for Guatemala now is tourism….Our cultural heritage could be our entry into the global economy” (1999:357).

[xi] Similarly, Harvey has argued that the same conditions that facilitate the international flow of goods, capital, people and information permit the reinforcement of local and translocal spaces of resistance (1989:60).

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