It was a bit of a jolt finally discovering that I am not one of the chosen ones. It was as though the scales were falling from my eyes and finally I was seeing myself in the clear and unforgiving light of day. It turns out that I am not a member of that reasonably well-off contingent of progressive folk who want the rest of the world to enjoy at least half the privilege that we all take as entitlement. Rather, I am part of that very obscure, overlooked minority: well-educated, informed, progressive and dirt-poor! People like me are not expected to be able to shop fair trade, because we don't have any money. We are not even expected to know about fair trade. It is widely assumed, if unconsciously, that we are going to be stupid and ignorant as well as poor because how could we possibly afford to go to university? um... no one has ever heard of books? Networking? If higher education really makes people smart then how do we explain the preponderance of imbeciles in high ranking positions of academia? And how could this blog, quite well and intelligently written, sometimes anyway, possibly be explained and rationalized out of existence, except for one little detail? When people make assumptions, they basically blank out of existence all evidences that would challenge their assumptions. Therefore, because I do not match popular assumptions, being poor, without university education but nonetheless extremely intelligent, well-read,well-spoken and well-travelled, I do not, and could not ever possibly, exist. and neither does this blog, and you did not just happen to read any of this paragraph, Gentle Reader, because it doesn't exist. People like me are not supposed to write like this. It simply cannot be made to fit on our resume, which is only to be written to fit us into some crummy low-paid contract or service industry job.
But we are talking about coffee, not higher education. Still, I find it a bit rich that here I was anguishing about not wanting to fund third world exploitation while such generosity was not being expected of me in the first place because I occupy one of the lowest castes in our society. Having not completed my postsecondary education, and assumed to be dumb and poor (that is how the assumption trees grow!), no one in their right mind would even imagine that I would be able to travel much further than to the welfare office or the food bank. But I have been to Costa Rica no less than seven times, Colombia three times and five times to Mexico, plus having spent a couple of months in Europe. How could I? That is one of my many secrets that I am not yet to reveal to any of you, my Gentle Reader. That's right, it's for me to know and you to find out. (Never mind about my offshore investments in Lichtenstein and Grand Cayman. But you didn't just read that.) But, on my second trip to Costa Rica in 2008, I was befriended by a local coffee grower who at the time also was proprietor of a coffee shop in the Monteverde region, where I always return to. I think my fluency in Spanish, along with his desire to have someone to practice English with (he was also pretty fluent) helped encourage the friendship. But, it is not popularly assumed that someone without a university education can speak properly even his mother tongue, much less to be able to incoherently babble a few phrases in another language, and certainly not, as in my case, to become fully fluent in another language. (And no, I don't have offshore investments in Lichtenstein or in Grand Cayman- And that's all I 'm not telling you!)
He took me on a tour of his plantation, but when I asked him about the workers he employs, that's when he became a little bit evasive. He had departed from the fair trade network that seems to connect a lot of coffee growers in Costa Rica, citing too many complications and problems. He would not elucidate. But as I came to know this individual, it also occurred to me that despite his many vocalizations about being a faithful Catholic, this guy really seemed to love money, more than almost even coffee itself. This man appears to have disappeared from Monteverde. In the last four years or so I have seen nor heard nothing of him. I would imagine that there might have been some incompatibility there?
The rest of the coffee grown in that region appears to be all part of the same cooperative, and my impression is that fair trade practices are clearly respected and enshrined. But coffee, being one of the world's great cash crops, if not the greatest and most lucrative, there are always going to be problems with corporate greed and less than honest or transparent business practices.
I just did a quick Google search. Brazil, the world's largest coffee exporter, is rife with coffee barons that prosper on the backs of slave labourers. In Costa Rica, where the industry is strictly regulated, there are no reports of abuses. It looks like my friend probably found himself increasingly unwelcome.
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