Colombia’s cafeteros take a stand

TENS OF thousands of coffee growers in Colombia went on strike February 25 to protest desperate working conditions--and they've pledged to remain on strike despite some concessions offered by the government.

Bad weather, crop failures and unfavorable currency rates have forced coffee growers in Colombia, the world's leading producer of top-quality Arabica beans, to sell their output at a loss. The growers have organized protests and road blockades to demand that the government guarantee them a minimum price when they bring their coffee beans to market.

On March 2, the government of President Juan Manuel Santos announced that it would increase the subsidy to 115,000 pesos from 60,000 pesos for a 125-kilogram sack of coffee from now until the end of 2013. But the growers have vowed to remain on strike until the government guarantees a minimum price of 650,000 pesos ($360) per sack. Currently, coffee growers receive about 521,000 ($288) per sack, though the cost of production per sack is 650,000 pesos for a highly efficient grower and 700,000 pesos for an average one.

But the offer to improve--even marginally--conditions for growers was not how Santos initially responded to the protests. On the first day of the strike, he openly derided the strikers and sent out 15,000 police, who meted out brutal repression, killing one protester and injuring scores more. Santos described the protests as "unnecessary, inconvenient and unfair" and accused them of being organized by guerillas in an effort to discredit them.

The same day that the government pleaded with growers to end the Paro Cafetero, Colombia's 340,000 truck drivers announced they would go on strike to demand lower fuel prices. "The decision has already been made, there's no way back," said Pedro Aguilar, leader of the Colombian Truckers Association.

EVEN BEFORE the strike by truck drivers, traffic was conspicuously scarce on highways throughout Western Colombia. Instead stones, bonfires and branches were strewn across the highways by the cafeteros, the small family-farm owners and workers who have been hammered by global economic forces.

Buses, trucks and tankers were already idled on vast swathes of the country's roads, and the truckers' strike will no doubt intensify the situation. Rotating groups of protesters, sticks in hand, manage the primary road barriers, reinforced by tree trunks and bamboo. Each paro (roadblock) is flanked at its sides by tarp shelters where food for the protesters is prepared, and tents are erected for those staying overnight.

"For years now, we have been selling coffee beans below the cost of production," explains Edimer Ome Moncalo, who lives and works on his family's coffee farm in San Agustin. "My father lost 8 million pesos ($4,400) in the past two years because we paid more for fertilizers than we made from selling coffee."

Unfortunately, the Moncalo family is not alone. For the past two years, many coffee farms throughout Columbia have been operating at a loss due to the rising costs of production, unstable weather conditions and worsening economic conditions (lower prices and unfavorable exchange rates). In terms of inputs, the cost of fertilizer has risen dramatically, and Colombia's gas prices are amongst the world's highest, adding to the cost of transportation for the cafeteros.

What's more, inflation in the cost of basic necessities has further exacerbated the desperate circumstances most growers find themselves in, forcing many to take out loans in order to keep themselves afloat while hoping for a positive shift in market conditions.

Colombia has a National Coffee Fund--paid for by coffee farmers themselves and established for the purpose of providing insurance to coffee farmers--that is supposed to help the cafeteros out under such conditions, but now that the fund is needed, the growers have discovered that the fund has been grossly mismanaged. Over the years, the fund has been emptied out--for projects that have been ineffective at improving the well-being of many coffee farms or by corrupt officials seeking to enrich themselves.

The woes of coffee workers in Colombia are only the tip of the iceberg, however. Poverty, unemployment and inequality are rampant in Colombia, where civil war has ravaged sections of the country for decades. More and more, the very cafeteros who farm and transport coffee in Colombia cannot afford to drink the coffee they produce.

Colombian coffee beans are generally exported in raw form, largely to the United States, where the coffee is roasted, ground and sold. This year, the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement went into effect, but Colombian coffee farmers lack the technology to keep up with U.S. coffee processors, thus accelerating the pattern of industrial underdevelopment in Colombia.

Colombians are left to export their diminishing natural resources to wealthier countries in exchange for poverty wages, while Colombian people are generally stopped from stepping foot in the very countries that consume their coffee, palm oil, petroleum and precious metals.

Other plans for the future of the region render the fate of the coffee farmers still bleaker.

Along the Río Magdalena, plans for nine hydroelectric dams are in the works, and President Santos can be counted among the supporters of the project. According to Yorley Vanegas Hernandez, a protester who organizes against the dams, the dams will dramatically raise the average temperature of the region, effectively wrecking the capacity of the region to produce coffee as well as a variety of other crops residents rely upon for their livelihoods.

"Santos doesn't care about any of us," said Yorley Vanegas Hernandez. "But 50,000 of us, he will have to care about. My air, my life are not for sale. How can we win? United!"

Moncalo agreed. "We are many, but we are poor," he said. "They are rich, but they are few." He cited the last strike--in 1997--when campesinos shut down the country to demand cancellation of their debts to the government. In the end, the campesinos won complete debt forgiveness. Moncalo, like many other protestors, says that this strike will likewise continue until the coffee producers' demands are met.