Coffee and Bolivia - the beginning

This is an update from the Bolivian highlands where I am conducting academic research on the effect of Fair Trade on Andean women in the Bolivian coffee growing region.

Everything's going great with the trip.  My research on the FT knitters was very well received.  Now everyone, even the Ministry of Economic Solidarity, has a copy of the study (which I had presented in Spanish and English at a FIESS* conference in Canada in poster form in Oct. 2011 so it's easy to display).  The women I studied agreed with my interpretation of their experiences which now have evolved to a new place as the concepts of Fair Trade and Solidarity Economy have become better formed, unified, and understood here.  So my study has become a historic benchmark of how things were for Andean women working in Fair Trade textile production in 2010.

Now I am moving on to women and coffee which is becoming very interesting as I enter into the highly developed, multi-million dollar,  agriculture Fair Trade industry (ironically started in Bolivia by the US).  New Bolivia laws give women clear land rights and now women and even young people are buying land and growing coffee (along with a plethora of other crops).  I'll be down in the semi-tropical coffee region for a week on Sat. so I'll get to know more.

Meanwhile, here's what's happening up here in the mountains (14,000 feet!).

Mama Coca - the place I am staying in La Paz with Bertha, her husband Ricardo, and their 4 college age kids.  Bertha who is Bolivian works with Women's Rights, Fair Trade and Solidarity Economy on a regional and national level.  Ricardo is Italian and is now working on building juvenile rehabilitation centers for incarcerated and sexually abused delinquents.  It's great staying here - I'm a block away from some of the knitters I work with and right in the beginning of the city.  Free wifi in the tourist coffee ship is down the street - I buy an overpriced $1.50 coffee and have internet use for the whole morning!

"Chappy" my guide who brought me through the new urbanizations in El Alto outside of La Paz to where the new coffee processing plant for the ProAgro group is being built and used.  Hiking in 30 minutes from the main highway, passing hundreds of recently built houses and walled lots, you arrive at the plant (with the large roof in the distance).  El Alto's urbanizaitons are growing at a very fast pace as people in the countryside secure housing for times when they need access to a wage economy and their farm production is not enough to cover all their needs or there are new urban opportunities they want to participate in.  To start an urbanization a community comes in from the countryside and squats a section of empty land.  They divide it into plots, build walls and houses (out of brick or adobe for protection from the cold), organize with other neighbors, and present a community neighborhood plan to the mayor.  if the mayor accepts the plan the members get a title to their land and if lucky electrical lines put in and eventually water.  The community pays for their own sewer lines.  Eventually they will be established enough with full time residents and businesses that their roads will be cobblestone and then eventually paved and public transportation and schools will be developed.  This all takes about 5-10 years.  Most sections of the urbanization, Tilata, are less than 2 years old.

Installing the new equipment in the coffee processing facility.  This equipment will take the skin off the dried coffee beans.  In the background, sacks of dried beans await processing.

The coffee beans get raked on the patio about 4-5 times a day until they are completely dry.  Climate change has resulted in late rains arriving in the tropics causing the coffee to arrive in El Alto for it's second drying, pretty wet.  This could effect the quality of the coffee.  Much care has to be given to complete the second drying at exactly the right level of humidity.  The coffee get sorted into 4 grades.  Though all is Fair Trade and organic,  - only the 1st grade is sold as both fair trade and organic, the 2nd grade is sold as fair trade, and the rest is sold as secondary quality coffee on the common market.  Each blue bag is marked from the farm it comes from and is worth (before the final processing) about $170.  Once it's processed and sorted the different grades are sold at the market price for that grade.  Farmers have 5-12 acre lots and produce about 1-5 big blue bags of coffee each a year.  The coffee raker is wearing a face mask to protect himself from the cold and the sun.  Ilimani, the great protector mountain of La Paz, is in the background.  It's entering into the dead of winter and snowed a bit this morning.

On another note... Miners walked about 10 days from Potosi to La Paz to protest the privately owned mines and environmental damages the mines are causing.  They want the mines nationalized and/or cleaned up.

Next stop - the tropics!

*FIESS - International Federation of Social Solidarity Economy - an global network of academics, professionals, and governments working together for a fair and sustainable world economy. http://www.fiess2011.org/en/