(Part of a Border Lines series on border security on Cochise
County and Agua Prieta.)
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| Pedro Maldonado of Café Justo in Agua Prieta/Tom Barry |
The killing of prominent Cochise County rancher Rob Krentz last
March by a suspected illegal border crosser precipitated a border security
firestorm in Arizona – leading to Gov. Jan Brewer’s approval of the
controversial SB 1070 bill, the governor’s creation (with federal stimulus
funding) of the Border Security Enhancement Program, and the increased
deployment of Border Patrol agents to southeastern Arizona border.
Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever cofounded (with Pinal County
Sheriff Paul Babeu) Border Sheriffs.com and became a
national voice for a border and immigration crackdowns.
While the killing of the rancher led to national attention to
border security in Cochise County, this Arizona border county has been the
focus of border crackdown campaigns since the 1990s. Leading the way were
vigilante groups like the Minutemen, American Border Patrol, Civilian
Defense Fund, and Cochise County Concerned Citizens, as well as the Texas-based
Ranch Rescue.
As border control tightened along traditional crossing corridors
in the mid-1990s, especially in the El Paso and San Diego areas, illegal border
crossers sought other routes that weren’t as heavily patrolled and
guarded.
Responding to the surge of immigrant flows through southeastern
Arizona, the Border Patrol launched Operation Safeguard 99, which included
intensive Border Patrol deployment. Hotels in Douglas, the border town that
hosted the Border Patrol’s district station, filled with Border Patrol agents
in 1999.
At a time when border vigilantism and federal deployment were
intensifying, there were other forces working to integrate the two sides of the
border. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1992 boosted the
maquila sector in Agua Prieta, the sprawling Sonoran town that lies opposite it
much smaller border twin, Douglas.
The expanding maquila sector in Agua Prieta attracted thousands of
women and men from southern Mexico, with an especially large number from
Chiapas. As coffee prices plummeted in the mid-1990s, small coffee growers left
their land to seek a livelihood in the only formal economic sector that was
expanding in Mexico – the exported-oriented maquilas that assembled imported
components destined for foreign markets.
Among those chiapanecos working in the maquilas,
assembling car parts and seat belts, was Eduardo Perez Verdugo, who had left
his mountain village near the Guatemalan border to come 2,000 miles to the U.S.
border. Hurricane Mitch had devastated his town, and in 1998 he traveled north
with his son, where they made $47 for a 48-hour work week. Seeking more income
to support his family back in Chiapas, Perez unsuccessfully tried crossing the
border to seek a job at a Phoenix golf course.
Both in Chiapas and in Agua Prieta, Perez had attended services at
Presbyterian churches. After being deported, in conversations with Mark Adams,
the minister of the Lily of the Valley Presbyterian Church in Agua Prieta, a
vision of a cross-border economic integration project slowly emerged.
“To leave our land is to suffer,” Perez said, “If only we could
control the sale of our coffee, we would be able to stay on our land.”
More than a decade later, the binational Presbyterian ministry,
Frontera de Cristo, has made this vision a dynamic economic development project
that turned despair into hope – and a sustainable livelihood – for dozens of
coffee farmers in Chiapas. Across from the Lirios del Valle church in Agua
Prieta now stands the roasting and marketing center for Café
Justo/Just Coffee.
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| Frontera de Cristo Coordinators Angel Valencia and Mark Adams/ Photo by Tom Barry |
Visiting the Other Side of Border Security
A visit to the U.S.-Mexico border is likely to shock and
depress. At a time when debt and deficits are defining the political
debate, the region oozes with federal dollars. No expense is spared to “secure
the border.”
Border control costs the nation more than $10.5 billion annually
(not including the $5.5 billion for immigration enforcement), and border
security advocates in Congress pass measures to increase the number of Border
Patrol and to bolster border fortifications.
A region, once prideful of its cultural diversity, is now being
defined by the extremes employed to control the international divide.
But there are countervailing trends, while not necessarily more
powerful, are certainly more hopeful – while costing nothing to U.S. taxpayers.
In 1984 the U.S. and Mexican Presbyterian churches joined together
in a common border mission called Frontera de Cristo with six
binational centers along the border.
Next to the Mexican customs and immigration office at the port of
entry is the Centro de Migrantes, one of the numerous projects supported by
Frontera de Cristo. Like most of its other projects, the immigrant center is a
joint effort of other church groups, particularly the Catholic Church in
Douglas and Catholic Relief Services, and community groups. “We always try to
work cooperatively,” noted Adams. “Rarely do we do anything alone.”
In the case of its Water for Life project, which leaves
strategically located barrels of water for migrants crossing ranch lands on the
Mexican side of the border, the Frontera project even counts on the cooperation
of the municipal government of Agua Prieta.
While most of its numerous projects are service-oriented -- like
its New Hope community center, health clinic, and involvement in the city’s
substance-abuse treatment center CRREDO -- Café Justo aims not just to serve
but also to solve structural problems.
I visited Café Justo on the eve of what the staff call the “Día de
Exportación.” It’s a time when the Agua Prieta members of the cooperative are
preparing bags of coffee to meet the expanding U.S. market.
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| Preparing coffee for "Día de Exportación"/Tom Barry |
It took a few years to turn the vision of Sr. Perez into a
reality. The idea of a fair trade economic project that would unite small
producers with U.S. consumers had been percolating for a few years.
All started coming together in 2002 through additional
brainstorming among Mark Adams and Daniel Cifuentes, another former coffee
farmer who found work in the maquilas, and Tommy Bassett, a maquila manager who
became excited about the prospect and offered his full-time management and
business expertise to concept. Through a $20,000 loan from the Presbyterian
Church USA, Café Justo purchased a coffee roaster.
The project currently supports 40 coffee growers in Salvador
Urbina, the home village of Daniel Cifuentes. Now, rather than leaving for work
on the border or to cross illegally into the United States, to
support their families, the women and men of this semi-tropical village are
tending their coffee bushes.
Once harvested, the coffee beans are dried and then shipped in
burlap bags to Agua Prieta. No longer obligated to sell their produce to coffee
buyers, known as coyotes, the coffee cooperative sends their beans to its
border branch facility, where their coffee is roasted and prepared for market.
Sitting on the porch the Frontera de Cristo house in Douglas,
Adams told me that the obvious success story of Café Justo has been its ability
to build a sustainable enterprise that supports its members and keeps them in
their villages (the project has recently expanded to four other villages, three
of which are in other southern Mexico states).
“But the success is also making international connections real for
our coffee consumers,” he said. “Fair trade is not just ideology but a real
relationship that now exists between the cooperative members and those drinking
Café Justo coffee. It’s not just fair trade, with growers getting a fair price,
but it is real trade, a real relationship that makes people feel good.”
It’s all part of Frontera de Cristo’s vision of sustainable and
just binational relations through its Just Trade Center and other
projects.
As Café Justo’s mission states:
“Café
Justo's mission is to deliver the highest quality, organic, environmentally
conscious, fresh roasted coffee to our customers at a price that is fair and
just. We work to create a bond between the members of the coffee growing
community in Salvador Urbina and our customers throughout the world.”
Back in Salvador Urbina, life has changed dramatically since the
mid-1990s when the men and boys, and then the women, started leaving in droves.
It used to be that ad-hoc bus companies would regularly announce by megaphone
“Departures to Agua Prieta” and other border locations like Altar and Tijuana.
The stagnant U.S. economy and increased border control measures
only partially explain that these advertised “salidas al Norte” are no longer
the central feature of life in Salvador Urbina.
Thanks to Café Justo, these chiapanecos are
staying home, finding ways to improve their coffee crops, fixing their homes,
and communicating by internet with fellow cooperative members in Agua Prieta
and other family members at the cooperative’s internet café.
(To
get involved – buying Café Justo coffee, making a donation, visiting the
project in Agua Prieta or in Chiapas -- and beat the border security blues,
contact: sales@justcoffee.org To
read more, read the inspiring story of Café Justo in Just Coffee: Caffeine
with Conscience by Mark Adams and Tommy Bassett, available from Just
Trade Center.)
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