Scrawl: The Finca, and its Discontents

On Saturday I went with a group to tour an industrial Coffee farm or finca, which is a pretty rare experience to get. There are a ton of finca tours in Guatemala, but they're all happy little co-operatives, or small, friendly, family-owned operations. The tours focus on the process of making coffee: when to pick the beans, how they're sorted and roasted, etc. It all ends up with a nice cup of coffee on the porch.

On the other hand this tour spent a lot more time talking about the various ways that the owners (or patrones) often cheat the workers, and the vast discrepancies in income that these large fincas perpetuate. While the Guatemalan administrator of the finca allows our guide to bring small groups of foreigners to raise awareness, the owners do not know, and would probably fire the administrator if they found out. We were asked not to publish the name of the farm, so that our guide can continue to take groups in the future.

The owners of the finca are a European family The finca we toured was about 1850 acres. It is the smallest of three fincas that they own. They show up once in a rare while, but aside from determining if the administrator has successfully produced the expected yield for the year, they have practically no involvement in daily operations.

Coffee farming is a strange process. Coffee beans grow inside a small fruit, about the size of a grape. The whole process of removing the berry pulp, drying the beans, sorting them by quality, roasting them, and packaging them for wholesalers can be accomplished by 10 families that live on the farm year-round. However, for the two and a half months of picking season, the farm employs about 200 more people to harvest the berries. This process can only be done by humans, they have to move through the rows of plants, picking only the ripe berries, and leaving the rest to mature later. When you've finished a row, you go back to the beginning, and pick the berries that have ripened since your last pass....and so on for two and a half months.

The automation that they have set up to process the beans is incredible. None of it uses any electricity, it's all powered by a small stream running through the grounds. Watching the whirring machinery in the building where all the processing is done was enthralling. There won't be a single bean to process until mid-September, and yet the wheels spin ceaselessly. The water powering the various mechanisms doesn't wait for the harvest.

For the 10 families who live there permanently, life is relatively good. Which is to say that they would appear incredibly poor to folks in the U.S.. But each family has a small home, (well, everything is actually owned by the patrones, but they are granted access to it) and possibly a chicken or two. The houses are positioned strategically around the finca. Each family, in addition to their normal duties, is also responsible for watching for thieves that might brave the barbed-wire fences to steal from the fruit trees or the wood pile, or whatever.

For the 200 people that come from hundreds of miles around (often walking) to gain temporary work during the harvest, life is decidedly worse. There is no school locally that will teach their children. The kids end up missing about a month of school, and are often needed on the farm anyway. The children are usually responsible for picking the low-hanging berries that are difficult for their parents to reach. We were shown a large building, perhaps 40 yards by 15 yards, which will house 30 families. These are not your average American “Mom, Dad & 2.8 kids” families. These are Guatemalan families, which means more like 5 children, and probably a grandparent or two. Pulmonary problems are very common, since people often work in the rain, and sleep crowded together on concrete floors.

The patrones' helicopter pad in the foreground, while Santiaguito [see "Laguna Xicabal" entry for more on Santiaguito] blows off steam in the background.