Pedro Ascensio and students at Manhattan College

In mid-September, Equal Exchange and Catholic Relief Services co-sponsored a week-long Co-operative Speaker’s tour with Pedro Antonio Ascencio, Member, Farmer, and Marketing Coordinator of Las Colinas Co-operative in Tacuba, El Salvador.

The tour included 15 presentations in four states mostly at Catholic churches, schools, or colleges, but also at the Willimantic Food Co-operative in Willimantic, Connecticut.

Meeting at the Willimantic Co-op

Pedro’s Story

In his presentations, Pedro told the story of Las Colinas co-operative.

Before 1980, the 30 founders of Las Colinas were underpaid, overworked, mistreated employees on someone else’s farm, making about $28 a month. In 1980, a government land reform program purchased the farm and gave it, along with its debt, to the farmers. When they first bought the farm, they received no assistance, no access to credit, no training in agronomy or in running a business.

The aging processing facilities they inherited from the previous owner enabled them to depulp, wash and dry the coffee; the first three steps in producing pergamino or parchment coffee, but still a couple of steps short of having coffee ready for export. Eventually, the co-op was able to get a “trillador,” which enabled them to mill the pergamino and perform the subsequent quality control steps to produce exportable coffee, thereby earning them a higher price.

Their first buyer was Incafé, a government buyer, which had a monopoly and could force the farmers to accept any price they wanted to pay. The co-operatives of El Salvador subsequently formed an organization called UCRAPROBEX to find better buyers. There was still, however, no direct contact between buyers and sellers.

In 1997, some co-operatives formed an organization called APECAFE to seek Fair Trade buyers. Through APECAFE, Las Colinas and Equal Exchange met and started trading in 1998. This partnership gave Las Colinas a face to face relationship with their buyer so they could talk about costs and needs in setting a price. Pedro described the relationship: “It’s better to sell to a social group that has a common objective for all its members and works for a common good and has the same ideology as our co-op. Say we sold to a capitalist enterprise- they are only interested in their own benefit. They’re not interested in the needs of other people around them.”

Las Colinas’ farm is about 400 acres. Depending on the year, it produces between three and six containers of coffee [112,500 to 225,000 pounds] all of which is purchased by Equal Exchange. In recent years, they obtained organic certification from IMO Control, one of the strictest organic certifiers.

Las Colinas members have also been improving coffee quality and organizational capacity, and they know the characteristics of each block of trees on their farm. They can identify special lots of super-premium coffee for which Equal Exchange will pay a super-premium price.

The farmers of Las Colinas received the land collectively, and they farm collectively. Everyone in the co-operative, farmers and staff, receives the same pay. Pedro expresses this with the slogan “Todo en la cama, o todo en el suelo” which means “Everyone [sleeps] in the bed, or everyone [sleeps] on the floor”.

Pedro further explains, “For example, when decisions are made, no one has more than their own vote. Everybody has the same representation in the making of decisions. The other is that when I talk about free association, that means nobody can belong to an organization where they don’t want to belong. If they say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable anymore, I want to leave,’ you can’t pressure them to stay or go. It’s voluntary on their part.

“Control of the commonwealth is the responsibility of everybody. Everybody has the right to decide and know how the resources are being managed. And everybody has the right to know the finances and the right to transparency of all the operations. So we all have a responsibility and a commitment to our organization. That’s what cooperative democracy is about to us.”

They continue to be weighed down by their debt, with $311,000 of principal remaining to be paid in installments until 2023 at about 6%. There is another piece of this debt that is at a much higher rate because they missed some payments after natural disasters [Hurricanes Mitch in 1998 and Stan in 2005].

In addition, in 2000, the National Bank closed its doors to small producers (but not to large ones; big landowners, such as former President Alfredo Cristiani, can still get credit). This has made the credit Las Colinas gets from Equal Exchange even more important: they have been receiving pre-harvest loans equal to 60% of the purchase price of the coffee since the outset of the relationship.

Las Colinas members are continuing to make every effort to reduce their costs and improve their quality and efficiency and in this area their relationship with Catholic Relief Services has been extremely helpful. CRS has helped them add processing equipment—a better depulper and an extra conveyor belt for quality control. [Coffee is poured onto the conveyor belt and women on either side pick out the bad beans as the coffee goes past them.] These projects have greatly helped them to reduce their environmental impact and conserve water with a project to reduce the amount of water used in processing the beans (the new depulper) and reuse the water they do use for irrigation. The second conveyor belt also lets them do all their quality control processing in one shift, rather than a day and evening shift. Because of this, the women who used to work the evening shift can go home at the end of a normal work day instead of later at night.

One program they are particularly interested in is funding scholarships for the children of the members. In El Salvador, school is free only through the 9th grade; after that, it’s expensive!

The Tour

The meetings were packed with activists who were deeply affected by Pedro’s presentation and were energized to start or expand their relationship with Equal Exchange and, through us, Las Colinas. In four of the meetings members of Hispanic communities were in the audience, identified with Pedro’s presentation and expressed interest in Fair Trade. In another presentation, in an elderly housing project in the Bronx, another connection was forged, as two men in the audience recognized the similarities between Pedro’s description of life before the co-operative and the lives of their relatives who had been sharecroppers in the American South.

When asked what one thing he would tell consumers, Pedro replies,

“That they consume more Fair Trade coffee, and that they encourage other people to do the same. When you do that, you support small coffee producers in El Salvador who are involved in Fair Trade. You support education of the children of the producers. You support better living conditions for the children of the producers. You support good housing.”

-Quotes from Pedro Ascencio primarily taken from an interview conducted by Equal Exchange Program Representative Esther West, translated by long-time El Salvador activist and musician Dean Stevens.