Just Solutions for US/Mexico's Immigration Problems

Just Coffee Just Trade
September 22, 2008
Jody L. Ipsen

In times of global apartheid and neoliberalism, millions of migrants spurred on by poverty, while some wash up dead on the shores of Spain and others found decomposed along the US/Mexico border, travel to distant countries in search of work.

According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “Three percent of the world’s population (191 million) lived in a country other than the one in which they were born in 2005, with one third having moved from a developing country to one that is developed, one third moving from one developing nation to another, and another third originating in the developed world.”

With North America hosting more than 45 million migrants as of 2005, other countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal and Italy have somewhat embraced the migrants, while many other countries have created paths to legalization.

However, in the United States, with the divisive polarization among Americans regarding the estimated twelve million Latin Americans living in the country illegally, a unique organization has created just solutions for the impoverished conditions in Mexico.

Straddled between the Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Mexico border in the southeastern region of the Sonoran desert, Immigration and Customs Enforcement are steadily erecting muros (walls) to stop the migration of men, women and children from Latin America.

Along Border Road, a dusty washboard that snakes up hills and around rock formations parallel to Mexico’s train tracks, the construction of steel fencing, vehicle barriers, stadium lighting, infrared cameras, and motion detectors seems strange considering the relationship between the two friendly nations. However, these obstacles only push the flow of migration into more remote and hostile regions.

Rev. Mark Adams, US Coordinator and Pastor for the bi-national Presbyterian Program, Frontera de Cristo, in Douglas, Arizona says, none of these provisions address the root causes of the immigration problem: poverty.

He is a tall, thirty-five year-old man from Clover, South Carolina. In his southern twang, he says “At one time, I was one of two people in Clover, NC who spoke Spanish. Me and the Spanish teacher. Now there is a host of Latin American families residing there.”

At his office in Douglas, an old bungalow with grey-green trim on a residential street in Arizona, he serves up coffee, but not just any coffee, “It’s coffee with a conscience.” The roasted Arabica beans, cultivated from Chiapas, Mexico, hang in the air. The furnishings are spare save for the large mission-style dining room table where he conducts business. The wooden table is covered in a Mexican blanket with bands of bold red, yellow, green and blue.
Adams, with his broad smile, speaks about the events that have since transpired into Just Coffee and Just Trade.

“Ironically, the notion of Just Coffee began in a coffee shop in Loveland, Colorado at his regular Tuesday morning breakfast club. There at breakfast, I talked about an incident that occurred along the border, when the men at the table told me, ‘You’ve got to do something.’”
Rev. Adams understood his mission, borrowing the micro-credit model dating as far back to the signing of the Marshall Plan, and Frontera de Cristo Border Ministries, Daniel Cifuentes, a former coffee farmer working in the maquilas in Agua Prieta, Tommy Bassett, a former maquila manager), became widely popular by Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, both Nobel Laureates, for their social and economic developments in Bangladesh and beyond.
Under the auspice of the Presbyterian Church, Frontera de Cristo Border Ministries, Daniel Cifuentes, a former coffee farmer working in the maquilas in Agua Prieta, Tommy Bassett, (a former maquila manager) and Rev. Adams, Just Coffee sprouted an economic plan with coffee growers in Chiapas.
According to Rev. Adams, “Just Coffee is focusing on the direct causes of economic migration into the US. We are sure that providing economic incentives to remain on cherished homelands with friends and loved ones will prove much more humane and effective than all the fences, cameras and agents.””Why move if there are opportunities and the potential for financial success and family satisfaction at home?”

The Just Coffee cooperative and Frontera de Cristo developed a model in which the value of roasting, packing, and sales is added to the coffee produced by the coffee community of Salvador-Urbina, Chiapas, Mexico.

“This value rises to about 400% of the value of the green product paid by fair trade intermediaries such as Equal Exchange, and ten times that paid to the vast majority of small producers in the conventional market. All the profits remain within Mexico to contribute to the growth of the cooperative and to economic development.”

Surprisingly, the organization has fueled the economy of the small coffee village, and Rev. Adams admits, “has had a positive effect on the quality of life as well as the sense of dignity and justice prevalent in the families involved.” There is now potable water, cell phone coverage, education for the children and basic necessities that were, otherwise, non existent.

In contrast to the success of Just Coffee, a startling report published by the USDA on the success of NAFTA, David Williams, states, “Economic transition away from agriculture is inevitable for many small-scale agricultural producers. Future policies should focus on generating off-farm employment for those who need it, improving trade opportunities for the 15 percent of Mexico’s producers who are globally competitive and improving the productivity of the 35 percent who have the potential to compete.”

While the migration from Latin America continues, despite the billions of dollars to secure the border, small villages that were self sustaining through centuries of hard labor from toiling the soil, now find themselves without opportunities to compete in the global empire. Villagers are desperate to feed their children, and with the growing numbers of impoverished people in Mexico and further south, Just Coffee offers a Just Solution to the inequities among the haves and have nots.

Just Coffee has expanded its operations with Just Trade, creating other coffee cooperatives in Veracruz, Nayarit, and Haiti, replicating the successful micro-credit model.


To order delicious, organic and shade grown coffee contact them at http://www.justcoffee.org/

Prudencia

Immigration: Why Prudencia died
Prudencia Martin Gomez's death in the desert is rooted in the chaos wrought by U.S. involvement in Guatemala's decades-long civil war

JODY L. IPSEN

Previously Published in the Tucson Citizen 7/7/08


More than 4,000 people have died along the U.S. border with Mexico over the past 13 years.
With no hope for immigration reform from Congress this year, the dying season is here again.
Neither President Bush nor the presidential candidates wants to address immigration reform.
Many Americans believe Latin American governments are responsible for the immigration problem.
On the contrary, no country has been more egregious in creating this problem than the United States.
The history behind the case of Prudencia Martin Gomez makes that clear.
Prudencia, 19, came from Todos Santos, Guatemala, an indigenous village in the Cuchumatanes Mountains.
She was migrating to California to join her boyfriend, Ismael.
When she fell ill from dehydration and heat exposure, her group abandoned her.
She died June 15, 2007, in the Tucson Sector of the Sonoran Desert. The recorded temperature that day was 115 degrees.
Many men and women, like Prudencia, have fled Guatemala despite the peace accord that was signed in 1996.
The civil war that raged there in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
And in a CIA report released under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency's David M. Barret readily admits to U.S. clandestine complicity in the civil war.
The CIA and the U.S. government gained tremendous currency during the Cold War by selling fear that Guatemala was a rising communist country.
Pivotal roles in overthrowing the Guatemalan government were played by two brothers - John Dulles, then secretary of state, and Allen Dulles, who was CIA director.
Allen's investments in United Fruit Co. were threatened by the possible expropriation of land that President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán wanted returned to peasant farmers.
As John Foster Dulles said in 1958, "The United States of America does not have friends; it has interests."
The lucrative interests of United Fruit Co. were of foremost importance.
The CIA and U.S. Ambassador John Peurifoy directed certain Guatemalan military leaders in overthrowing Arbenz's government, CIA documents report.
"It was also psychological warfare - cleverly deceptive efforts to persuade Guatemala's citizens and political/military leaders that a major invasion force was steadily moving toward the nation's capital," the CIA papers say.
Under such secret directives by the U.S. government, Todos Santos, the hometown of Ismael and Prudencia, became one of many villages burned to the ground in the 1980s.
Ismael's father was forced to join the ranks of the military (or be murdered) and fought against his own ilk.
When Ismael grew up and became a teacher, he could not find work and migrated to the U.S.
"The Guatemala affair (was) a disreputable moment - Eisenhower was 'directly responsible' for 'death and destruction' yet showed no signs of embarrassment then or later over his 'bullying of a banana republic,' " writes Christopher Andrew, a scholar on the history of U.S. intelligence.
More than 200,000 people had been murdered by the time the civil war ended in 1996.
But whether the military violence ever really ended is questionable.
Last year, 3,000 women "disappeared" in Guatemala - many of their bodies later found mutilated, therefore to remain forever unidentified.
Many observers suspect the killers are former Guatemalan military and police officers, trained by the U.S. at the notorious School of the Americas.
In an attempt to bring back the conservative party known as mano dura (iron fist), the military appears to be using mutilations to instill fear, persuading peasants that only "the fist" can stop the violence.
Many migrants leaving Guatemala are without work or even, as in Ismael's case, without a community.
The fallout of the decades-long civil war continues despite the ongoing efforts of Amnesty International.
The legacy of death and destruction, due largely to U.S. covert operations, thwarts any efforts to restore Guatemalan life to prewar conditions.
But we remember Prudencia, though she was but one of many, many victims of U.S. intervention in Guatemala.
July 14, 2007, a memorial service was held in the desert where she had died.
That day, 33 humanitarians caravanned along a dusty road to a remote region about 20 miles west of Tucson.
Discarded backpacks, filthy jeans, brittle water bottles and worn shoes spread across miles of greasewood, mesquite and devil's claws.
In the bed of a truck, Father Bob covered his mouth and nose with a bandana to avoid choking on the fine dust that creates our stunning sunsets. It was over 100 degrees at 5:30 p.m.
But we had transportation. Prudencia never even had a chance.
Since her death, at least 239 more bodies have been recovered from Arizona deserts. Each of these people had a history, a family, a face.
We must continue to fight for humane immigration reform, and we must give voice to the dead, such as Prudencia.
Jody L. Ipsen is a Tucson writer and humanitarian working with migrants in the desert and across the border.

Los Desconocidos' work includes cleaning up migrant lay-up sites, preserving the natural state of the region in the Sonoran Desert, recycles all items, and with the useable items (mostly clothes) are recycled into a funky but chic fashion line and International Migrant Quilt.