By Talli Nauman

Arturo García Jiménez will never forget his 41st birthday.

It was a little more than a year ago and he spent it in solitary confinement – behind the bars of a Mexican state prison, with nothing to do but watch a pattern of sunlight from a small window move across his cell walls to a torn and pestilent mattress and a toilet bowl with no water.

Photo © 2001 by Janet Jarman

Arturo Garcia inside a processing plant in Atoyac, Guerrero

So he reflected: what had he done that was so bad? Nothing. Quite the opposite, he thought. "For wanting to do good, now here I am, jailed and surrounded by police," he wrote on the notepad his guards let him keep.

He remembered his youth as one of 13 children of a peasant family in a wretched town called Atoyac de Alvarez, in Mexico's southwestern state of Guerrero.

And he recalled the 23 years of his adult life, spent creating and promoting grassroots organizations that would give the many other poor farmers in his home state the opportunity his parents never had: to control the production and marketing of the fruits of their labors – mainly, coffee beans.

Throughout his trajectory, he always ended up making enemies with members of the privileged minority who sought to maintain that control for themselves. Now, as general director of RASA (Red de Agricultores Sustentables Autogestivos), the nonprofit Network of Self-Determining Sustainable Growers, some of those enemies had him arrested on a charge of defrauding a prestigious indigenous agricultural union in a deal to help sell its coffee.

But, he wrote, it was a trumped-up charge, and only the most recent injustice that "the mafia of the state" had foisted on the movement he had fostered. "My dignity and spirit to continue fighting alongside the campesinos (peasants) is enhanced even more behind these bars."

After five days, RASA had negotiated a settlement with the union, and García was released. Today, he continues fighting.

Despite his fears that his imprisonment would result in a victory for detractors looking to divide and conquer peasant groups, the two non-governmental producers' organizations involved issued a bulletin manifesting their will to rebuild relations, adding it had not been their intent to publicly slight him.

A Practical Solutionist at Work

On November 24, 1999, the day Garcia's release was announced in the newspapers, Jorge Salvador Aguilar, a respected analyst and columnist for the statewide daily newspaper El Sur commented: "I believe in Arturo García's innocence, and his years of struggle in favor of campesino organizations back him.

"García Jiménez has dedicated a large part of his life to promoting campesino organization with successful productive projects, with the goal of giving economic and political autonomy to those who work the land. His labor has had such effectiveness and independence from the power structure that it has bothered some government circles, which has caused harassment and accusations that he is an agitator linked to armed groups."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Short, unassuming, and looking for all the world like just another graduate student, Garcia is recognized by those who really know him as a conciliator who patiently and purposefully seeks practical solutions.

What makes García's work with peasant groups unique is precisely that he has served as a model for them, encouraging members of the poor, rural population to lay down their arms, pick up their plows, and throw off the twin yoke of repression and financial depression that has plagued Guerrero for generations.

A State Scarred by Poverty and Violence

As in many developing countries and pockets of poverty worldwide, Guerrero has a history of strife and bloody class struggle. The state's crown jewel, the renowned beach resort of Acapulco, rakes in tourist dollars. But that income and the tax money it generates is not distributed to the mostly rural, peasant population of the state.

Coffee Country, links and resources about the coffee crisis from PBS Frontline

More than a million people – roughly one-third of the population – live in poverty and extreme misery in Guerrero. They suffer from severe environmental degradation, the result of self-serving authorities who have failed to provide education and support for sustainable agriculture, while allowing water pollution to go unchecked. Illegal deforestation and merciless timbering by foreign interests is rampant.

Photo © 2001 by Janet Jarman

Malaquía Celes, 85, is one of the last living founders of El Paraiso, a thriving coffee production center in Guerrero, Mexico's third poorest state

Many must migrate to other parts of Mexico and to the United States because they have not so much as a bowl of beans to eat. Illiteracy and unemployment are high. Roads, schools, and other services are scant. Even when government has set out to help, corruption and the influence of the powerful political bosses have siphoned off or diverted much of the intended benefits.

While more than half of Mexico's population lives in poverty or extreme poverty and environmental havoc is generalized, Guerrero and some other corners of the republic have the worst of it. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that ruled the central government for 71 years until the historic presidential election of July 2000, is still in power in many of the country's 32 state governments, including Guerrero's. There, its leaders are the notorious Figueroa family, politicians who have run Guerrero as if it were a family enterprise for the past quarter of a century.

Writes columnist Aguilar. "Today, for . . . Guerrero, the last name Figueroa is intimately linked with authoritarianism, backwardness and the violence that rule the state."

Like other poor states, such as Oaxaca and Chiapas, Guerrero has a high proportion of indigenous peasants, who are victims of discrimination. The army, judicial police and paramilitary groups use force to intimidate the people, often beating, torturing, jailing, or massacring them. Whole families have had to flee the state to avoid repeated torture and imprisonment.

The official violence has begotten violence at large. As a result, Guerrero continues to be the stage for armed conflict between even neighbors who feud over anything from an unpaid debt to a disagreement on timber resources. People survive on drug cultivation, arms trafficking, protests and guerrilla rebellion.

Photo © 2001 by Janet Jarman

A worker transports coffee in the early morning inside a processing plant where much of RASA's coffee is processed (Atoyac, Guerrero/Mexico)

This, in turn, is met by police and military force. Mistrust of state and federal government is widespread. One of the reasons the area's farmers, especially the small producers, have found it so hard to profit and save has been their dependence on layers of middlemen. Government attempts to play the middleman, through purchasing and supply programs, have been a disappointment. Most of the benefits have been lost to inefficiency or transferred to the people who were supposed to be in charge of administering the programs.

To top it all off, Mexico's ratification of nearly a dozen international free trade agreements, and its plans for more of the same, are putting small agricultural producers at a disadvantage in the marketplace. They face increasing competition from foreign growers and consortiums. Plus, they lack the know-how and resources necessary to access the chain of command that supports the global export economy.

A Development Model to Beat All Others

Enter Arturo García, pushed onto the scene by the rural development demands of the times. In the late 1970s he studied agronomy, specializing in rural sociology, at a time when rural residents were organizing to obtain credits, good prices and outlets for agricultural production through government channels.

His research led him to several jobs with the federal Programming and Budget Secretariat and with the Agriculture and Hydraulic Resources Secretariat, where he provided management support to rural communities in his home state in the 1980s. That was a time when campesino organizations were evolving and in search of the means to appropriate processes that would allow them to plan their own production and financing with less reliance on the government.

Photo © 2001 by Janet Jarman

Men unload coffee inside a processing plant in Atoyac, Guerrero. The city has long been a focal point for selling and buying coffee from hundreds of small-scale producers operating in surrounding mountain villages

In 1993, he founded RASA and proposed his Alternative Sustainable Development Model. Today, the coalition of 28 cooperatives and other groups has 1,500 campesino members, who are in charge of demonstrating and spreading the model. From 10 to 90 percent of Guerrero's farmers, depending on the crop, cleave to the model. Some 5,000 families are directly or indirectly involved in the project.

A Self-Sufficient Network of Coffee Growers

This model was in part inspired by the fair trade movement, initiated by the Max Haveelar Foundation in Holland. Also fomented by Oxfam and other European groups, the movement seeks to improve quality of life in the developing world by establishing direct-sales markets, which eliminate intermediaries that normally exact a portion of profits, for products that are grown and manufactured through environmentally-friendly processes.

In other Mexican states, including Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz, Tlaxcala and Jalisco, groups have carried on the movement in the last decade. But none have systematized the effort to the degree that RASA has. Under García's leadership, RASA has become the leading proponent of an integrated, self-sufficient network of coffee growers.

Photo © 2001 by Janet Jarman

A worker transports coffee in the early morning inside a processing plant where much of RASA's coffee is processed

It is a local contribution to the global movement aimed at empowering producers, increasing their economic benefits and engaging communities in environmentally sustainable agriculture, with the ultimate goal of positive social transformation.

"The idea is to rebuild the region's productive infrastructure to counter the tendency of the economy," says García. This involves finding ways to finance planting and to renovate coffee processing facilities that have fallen into disuse due to withdrawal of federal support and depressed markets.

"We want to break with schemes" that bring people together for handouts, he says. Self-sufficiency, mutual self-help and self-sustaining financing structures are part of that. They allow peasants to take charge of crop cycles, diversify products and markets, and control the timing of sales to achieve maximum profits, without depending on credits and prices determined by banks, stock exchanges and federal institutions.

According to García, "The first challenge is how to construct an alternative to the neo-liberal model. It must be constructed through people's participation. If they don't appropriate the process, nothing will get done."

His model has three key principles: emphasis on economic objectives, rather than political ones; dialogue with officials, rather than confrontation; and creation of campesino-controlled institutions, to substitute for government or private ones that fail to serve their purpose.

The principles are brought to life through the Alternative Sustainable Development Model (box below), which has nine strategic components. Redesigning the production process and making the model stick has been a major challenge every step of the way.

The Nine Strategic Components of the Alternative Sustainable Development Model First, small producers work to reverse soil erosion and degradation with organic conservation practices, such as composting, natural fertilizers and pesticides, and rainwater capture. They draw on generations of empirical experience in applying these and other technologies. For example, in harvesting coffee, one of Guerrero's chief crops, shade-grown cultivation, was abandoned by some when government policy encouraged mono-cropping. It is being resumed to assure regeneration of fragile soils. Additional benefits include protection of the habitat for migratory birds and other organisms important for a healthy ecosystem. Growers are re-instituting the custom of raising food for their own consumption, which many lost as economic policy over the years emphasized production only for monetary exchange. With cash crops, particularly coffee, RASA members are trying to pump up their productivity, which has fallen in the wake of sagging world prices and the federal government's withdrawal of price supports. Quality control is considered a must if RASA members are to gain access to export markets. For example, higher quality products can result in 20 percent more income from coffee. Building the markets is one of the most complex tasks. Sales to outlets in the fair trade movement are not sufficient. While the prices offered there are good, the volume is low, demanding only 0.5 percent of RASA's coffee supply. So the organization has decided to take a long-term view. Participants are creating brands to establish name recognition. So far, they have established sales for three types of coffee in the United States – regular, decaffeinated, and gourmet organic. Under the World Share label, they contract with a network of 350,000 affiliated U.S. stores. In Mexico City, they also sell organic coffee under the Paradise label. Developing the demand has gone hand-in-hand with controlling the supply. The producers are learning to plan their sales for when prices are high, instead of selling everything as soon as it is harvested, when prices usually are low. Crop diversification is another part of the strategy. Where before, the common practice was to alternate between growing coffee and forage (livestock feed), RASA now has three years of experience in successfully growing and exporting niche market products, such as eggplant, ginger, and a Japanese root, satoymo. Altogether, it has 27 diversification projects, which benefit from the pro bono advice of agricultural university experts. Self-financing mechanisms contribute to the project. A campesino bank that García devised offers relatively low credit rates and comparatively easy terms. It is based on a group savings account that frees administration from costly bureaucratic overhead. Participants are looking for ways to link group savings with other sources of financing to respond to immediate short-term investment needs. Peasants manage the organization and its decisions. They only have one mass assembly a year. Rather than spending their time at big meetings, members of individual communities target other communities in which to impart their strategy and techniques, expanding the project through formal agreements as they see opportunities arise. Last but not least, the project involves ongoing training. Toward that end, RASA has established a Regional Teaching, Experimentation and Production Center of Sustainable Agricultural Development. Among its activities are experimental plots and organic fertilizer production.

Some Challenges, and Some Strides in the Right Direction

No matter how good the model, it does not dictate the market. "The prices of agricultural products are a little higher than expected one day and the next they are lower," representatives of a RASA women's collective explained in a letter requesting support from Guerrero governor, René Juárez Cisneros.

Nor can it rapidly reverse decades of bad practice. In addition to the price problem, the women noted that the other major problem was "the poor results of the growers, who unfortunately have not learned to produce quality." Yet, based on their experience, they expressed their faith in the model as they recognized that it had had a significant impact on the region.

Photo © 2001 by Janet Jarman

Workers manually extract beans of poor quality inside a processing plant in Atoyac, Guerrero

Ongoing training and outreach are a big part of the challenge. "It's necessary for people to master technical and administrative transformations," says García. "The main problem is ensuring that people don't become like outdated computers that capture information but don't know how to process it."

One of his best weapons in meeting the challenge is his perseverance, says Guerrero environmental activist Silvestre Pacheco. He lauds García for his "unconditional struggle for campesino self-determination and democratic development."

García laid the groundwork for putting the model into operation during the late 1980s. A grant from Ashoka helped kick-start his model and promote it. The support came at a time when he was deeply involved with consolidating relations between peasant movements in Mexico and those in the rest of the world.

He formed the Union of Small and Mid-size Coffee Producers of Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean, to which he was nominated as the first secretary general. Later, he became president of the directors' council of the London-based Cooperative Society of Small Cooperatives that has 1.5 million members in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Cashing in on an International Market

He also took advantage of contacts in the Ashoka network to meet with U.S business people and explain the efforts of peasant producers to find markets. This led to coffee contracts with United Airlines and hotels in the United States. Another result was that the makers of Ben and Jerry's ice-cream, recognized as socially responsible entrepreneurs, introduced a new ice-cream flavor containing coffee from Guerrero and promoted as such by rock star Carlos Santana.

He spent six years making contacts, when he took a reality check. "After flying around in airplanes and talking about thousands of dollars that I never saw, I came in for a landing," he says. That is, he grounded his attention on developing the model and establishing RASA.

Since then, RASA has expanded significantly from its original 39 members to 1,500, and its markets are widening as well. Its most recent success is its partnership in a new U.S. company, America's Acid-Free Coffee Inc., which is bringing out a novel line of java (coffee) exclusively from RASA that it claims won't cause stomach problems or headaches.

Photo © 2001 by Janet Jarman

A couple work inside a coffee processing plant in Atoyac, Guerrero

After demonstrating positive results from a marketing survey, the firm landed its first contract – for 40,000 pounds of the coffee – to hotels, restaurants and hospitals in the southwestern United States. The price paid to Guerrero farmers is US$1 per pound, compared to the highest current price of 70 cents for coffee traded on the stock exchange.

Not only that, but the firm is also working with The Federated Group, a chain of 40,000 supermarkets in seven U.S. states that is interested in selling the acid-free coffee. The chain sells 3 million pounds of coffee a year, just a little more than half of the entire annual production of Guerrero.

While officials at the Mexican Coffee Council have told García they doubt the viability of RASA alternatives, coffee producers around the country are enthused.

Growers from several of Mexico's principle coffee states have met with RASA over the past year, creating a Coffee Network to confront various problems at the national level. RASA heads the informal holding company, which involves 5,500 producers.

"They're not RASA, and we don't want them to be," says García. "We share our proposal, people adopt it and make it theirs."

Despite the hopeful scenario, he admits, political and economic problems plague the project.

Some Flies in the Ointment

Vested interests remain in Guerrero. To address them, García has appealed publicly to the governor to establish order and justice for all. "René Juárez Cisneros faces a great challenge that he promised to meet in his campaign and in recent declarations," says García. "It is essential to do away with the mafia that today holds the law prisoner in our state."

García and members of RASA have also personally met with the governor to reach an accord aimed at protecting García and the organization from political attacks, such as the one in 2000. In addition, they have mustered public backing from state representatives, 11 of whom signed a letter to the president of the Guerrero State Human Rights Commission soliciting his intervention "in order to avoid any injustice and guarantee the physical integrity of his [García's] person."

Photo © 2001 by Janet Jarman

Arturo Garcia addresses coffee producers in Atoyac during a routing training meeting

In the letter they added a show of solidarity, saying García "has distinguished himself as an honest and democratic social fighter in the state of Guerrero."

Equally problematic is the instability of the international coffee market. Since last year, production is down by 30 to 40 percent in Mexico because prices are so low that they don't pay for as much as picking the beans. Peasants are protesting in the streets.

Besides maintaining its model, milking the niche markets in the global economy is RASA's hope for minimizing the impact of the coffee crisis. "Here the main problem is that we don't have resources for promotion and publicity," says García.

For example, The Federated Group is willing to put up half of the US$3 million for promotion that it requires for signing an acid-free coffee contract, but that still leaves a $1.5-million hole to fill. "We're not drowning in mid-river, but neither have we reached the other side," says García cadidly.

The Next Steps

In the final analysis, he notes that the project "can't be a life boat. It has to be changing. We're going to adapt to the situation and see what else can be done. That's what I've told groups in Central America, too, not just in Guerrero."

Within three years, he hopes RASA will have increased conservation measures, financing, production, quality and markets to the extent that "we are achieving improvement in people's economy," he says.

Then, family members will not have to migrate in search of an income to put food on the table. Communities can be kept intact. That is when they will begin to take control of their own destinies. And only then will they see the results of environmental stewardship reflected in their quality of life.

"It's a broad horizon," says García. "Sometimes I can't believe it, but we're on our way."

• Advisors in marketing techniques, productivity, administration, etc.
• Publicity and promotion for acid-free coffee
• Co-financing and financing, especially for marketing