Selena Mercado arrived at Cooperativa Cafetalera Sanmarqueña, known as COCASAM, in 2008. She filled bags, transplanted seedlings, and worked in the nursery. All tasks that attract little attention. Over the years, she learned to classify coffee by quality, a job that requires technical knowledge and precision. For the past five years, she has been a permanent employee and the person who operates the forklift at the processing plant. A position that, until recently, was held exclusively by men.
She says: We all have the right to learn. When the forklift arrived, I was not afraid. Before, coffee had to be moved by brute force. Now it is faster and safer.
COCASAM was founded in 1988 by 16 smallholder farmers on the Botija ridge in southern Honduras. The cooperative produces organic specialty coffee at elevations between 1,200 and 1,600 metres. All of its harvest is sold on international markets. The cooperative now has 160 members, 61 of them women.
María Rutilia Mendoza is a producer and secretary of the cooperative’s oversight board. She remembers how families used to hand their coffee to middlemen. By organising, we have increased the economic value of the coffee, and that allows us to support our families, she says.
Ana Julia Ríos tells a different story. When her husband died, the cooperative gave her the chance to work and provide for her five children. Today her earnings also cover the insulin she needs for her diabetes.
On the Botija ridge, the forest is protected. Farmers cannot expand their plots. So they focus on quality. And the question of who ensures that quality has a different answer in San Marcos de Colón today than it did twenty years ago.