by Kristina Stevens,
Former Peace Corps Volunteer
Santa María, La Paz

On an ordinary day in Santa María, commotion and energy fill the air as radios blare, students run through the streets, and neighbors chat in the shaded town plaza. But from November to early March, town life comes to a stand-still. During this long-awaited harvest, known as "la temporarada," all activity revolves around coffee production.

Schools break. Streets are vacant. Only a woman's shuffling footsteps are occasionally heard. She rakes a sea of coffee beans over the solar. Her children and husband left for the fincas (coffee fields). She handed them their lunch - a stack of warm tortillas, red pinto beans, and a fried egg. She rose before the sun - 4:30 she guesses - to grind the corn at the molino (mill).

The five trucks in town congregate by the white-washed church. A horn is blown. Twenty-five workers scramble into
the back of Neri's well-traveled Datsun. Another five leap onto
the bumper and hang from the tailgate. Overtaxed, the sunken pick-up crawls up the treacherous mountain road, notoriously known as the "siete vueltas (the seven hair-pin turns)." Others set out on foot, walking for two hours, needing to save the extra five lempiras (U.S. 40 cents).

The coffee pickers take up arms. A plastic sack or half-sliced gasoline container is strapped around their waists. Another is slung across their shoulders. Fully equipped, they discreetly eye the fullest trees and claim choice rows. Arms reach to the inside. Fingers pluck the beans from the branches. Cupped hands catch the falling grains.

The ripest beans (café uva) are dropped into the waist sack while the dried coffee (café reseca) is tossed into the shoulder bag. The beans are separated because a higher price is paid for café uva. When the waist bag fills, the beans are emptied into larger storage sacks.

At the end of the day - around three or four o'clock in the afternoon - the sacks are weighed and the workers are paid according to how much coffee they picked. An average worker will pick 100 pounds (una carga) and will earn $30-50 lémpiras, approximately, U.S. $2.3-4.2.

This is the only time of year that regular employment can be found in Santa María. During this time, new clothes and fashionable merchandise appear. Celebrations spontaneously erupt. Cars move in and out of town. But many men consume alcohol and whittle away their families' income. Oftentimes, money is not well managed; no reserve is set aside. Other times, it is simply not enough. Come August and September, many families cannot even buy corn to make tortillas. They turn to field owners, pledging days of labor in exchange for cash or food advances.

Coyotes (middle-men) drive from rural town to rural town, preying on small farmers. They buy their coffee at low costs and resell it to exporters for a large profit. Larger producers have cars to transport their harvest to urban centers to sell. Others belong to cooperatives that export to the U.S. and Europe. These same producers own most of cultivable land in the area. They benefit from the large supply of local labor that is only employed during the harvest months. They grow richer as the poor barely squeeze by. Their houses are made out of concrete blocks and clay tiles. The poor live in thatched, adobe houses. Bad blood inevitably flows.

After the harvest, the coffee must be processed. The beans are washed, their outer shells (pulpa) are removed by despulpadores, and the inner seed is toasted over the fire or in large furnaces.

Many farmers wash their coffee in the same rivers that supply water to entire communities. This run-off water (aguas mieles) contaminates the water sources. First, because of traces of chemical fertilizers and other toxic materials sprayed on coffee. And second, because coffee is naturally high in ammonia. Ammonia will deplete rivers of oxygen, killing all fish and marine life.

Also, if the pulpa is stockpiled instead of processed into compost, its pungent odor can attract insects that carry harmful diseases. Many farmers are also clear-cutting fields and planting species of coffee that resist shade and need heavy chemical treatment. These plants are popular because they will yield a larger harvest in a shorter time.

Many development agencies and government ministries are working with local farmers to compost coffee shells and to promote shade-grown organic coffee. COMARCA, a coffee cooperative in Marcala, La Paz, has built the first ecological plant in Honduras with oxidation lagoons to treat the aguas mieles. IHCAFE (the Honduran Institute of Coffee) has created experimental centers to research new species that are more resistant to plagues and in less need of chemical treatment. And management plans have been implemented to protect and reforest watersheds and promote sustainable agricultural practices.

Continue! Meet other townspeople of Santa María, La Paz. Visit other towns in Honduras: Chinacla, La Esperanza, and the Río Platano Biosphere, Gracias a Dios. Consult our map of Honduras.