When did Mexico start growing coffee? does Mexican organic coffee have cocoa flavor?

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Coffee did not reach Mexico until the late 18th century, when Spaniards brought plants from Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Decades later, when German and Italian immigrants migrated from Guatemala and other Central American countries, this commercial cultivation began. In the 1890s, when the first coffee plantations began to appear in the southeastern state of Veracruz, Spanish colonialism was deeply ingrained in the region; nearly two and a half centuries ago, the Aztec Empire was conquered and destroyed by disease. Mexico's huge mineral deposits mean that coffee and agriculture have for years been inferior to exports of minerals such as gold and silver (later oil and now the biggest contributor to the Mexican economy). Unlike the Caribbean Islands or the later "Banana Republic" in Central America, Spanish magistrates were slow to investigate and allocate land. This hindered investment in coffee cultivation and allowed indigenous agricultural communities to retain small or public lands in the remote mountains and remote rural areas of southern Mexico long after the end of colonialism.

Although independence from Spain has brought some improvements to Mexico's rural population, factional struggles, civil wars and international conflicts between Mexico and Texas, France and the United States, deprive the country of the stability necessary to develop or promote social reforms over the next 70 years. However, it was during this period that coffee cultivation in southern Mexico began to flourish in plantations. In the 1860s, a border dispute with Guatemala led to the first extensive land registration. This allows a small number of wealthy Europeans to buy previously "unregistered" large tracts of land and feel safe to invest in nurseries and long-term cultivation. The local landlords and politicians gained a large degree of autonomy, and in order to protect their land, they began to slowly force the small farmers into the mountains, and then as indentured servants to lure the natives to work on the land they once occupied.

It was not until after the Mexican revolution that small farmers began to seriously invest in coffee cultivation. The land reform in the post-revolutionary period divided thousands of small plots of land among indigenous groups and labourers. Like Ley De Obreros in 1914, labor laws liberated many "serfs" and indentured servants who worked on coffee plantations, bringing coffee-growing skills and seedlings back to their communities. The rise of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Institutional Revolutionary Party) in the early 20th century also witnessed the development of INMECAFE in 1973-the Mexican National Coffee Institute (National Coffee Institute of Mexico). A slightly populist and development-conscious government sees coffee cultivation as a valuable contribution to the national economy, not only financing social development in the rural sector, but also creating much-needed foreign capital for urban and industrial investment.

INMECAFE was developed to support coffee cultivation by small farmers. The organization provides technical assistance and credit to farmers, guarantees purchase, provides transport to the market, and works with the Federation of Cooperatives to sell coffee on the international market. ICA is a London-based partnership between coffee producing and consuming countries that aims to stabilize the volatile coffee market. They have succeeded for nearly 20 years through agreements, quotas and subsidies.

In the 1980s, the Mexican government-largely due to huge foreign debt and a sharp fall in oil prices-defaulted on its loans and was forced to enter the early stages of neoliberal reforms. Over the next decade, the Mexican government gradually stopped supporting coffee farmers and agriculture, and INMECAFE completely collapsed in 1989. This almost coincided with the collapse of ICA (market prices fell rapidly as a result of the influx of cheap Brazilian coffee into the international market). The impact on coffee farmers is devastating.

Coffee accounted for $882 million of agricultural exports in dollar terms in 1985, but fell rapidly to less than $370 million in 1991. The price of coffee at the farm gate plummeted, credit dried up and farmers had no way to sell their crops. Predatory coffee brokers, or hyenas, quickly filled the vacuum left by mecafe, exploiting the isolation of farmers and a lack of information, credit or transportation. Over the next few years, the number of immigrants to cities and the United States soared. The fate of Mexico's small coffee producers has never been so bleak. Even before the official demise of INMECAFE (government support waned, countering the corruption and bureaucracy that plagued the organisation years ago), the need for private organizations to replace government support was clear. The role of social organizations in fending off the storm of political and economic instability in Mexico is inestimable. For centuries, public land has connected families, providing support and innovation; after land is privatized, social organizations based on common values, economic interests or descent will replace them. At the confluence of various labour organizations and agricultural movements, often with the support of the Catholic Church, Mexico's first coffee cooperative emerged. In the early 1990s, groups like CEPCO and UCIRI in Oaxaca were crucial to the survival of thousands of coffee farmers.

The cooperative was set up to replace the transport, processing and marketing departments of INMECAFE and to free farmers from the exploitation of coyotes. They began to share information about organic certification (the price of organic coffee is much more stable than traditional coffee) and reduce their reliance on capital-intensive inputs such as fertiliser. Cooperatives contacted European "alternative trade organizations" such as Equal Exchange and began to successfully export fairly traded coffee to obtain stable prices and pre-harvest financing for their members.

These cooperatives exist not only to replace INMECAFE as a strong player in the organic coffee industry, but also to expand their scope to economic diversification, environmental initiatives, and the provision and lobbying of social services such as schools and hospitals. They represent an island of self-determination in a political spectrum that barely recognizes its existence. The model and success of Mexican cooperatives and civic organizations have laid the foundation for some of the most compelling social movements in the world.

During this period, coffee production in rural areas surged from 1973 to 1990, with the support of INMECAFE, with an almost 900 per cent increase in some areas. However, government support has not been extended to services other than coffee production. Farmers in Chiapas and Oaxaca remain one of the most marginalized groups in the country lacking municipal support or the most basic government services. It is in these areas that Mexico's most powerful social organizations flourish. Agricultural movements organized to demand further land allocation, ILO played an important role in advocating workers' rights and ending the debt burden, and indigenous groups began to re-assert requirements for the land and resources in which they had lived for centuries.

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