Coffee justice in Mexico
Café Justo’s alternative to the fair trade model keeps the means of production—and most of the profit—in the local community.
Illustration by Daniel Richardson
Though the coffee at the hotel was bland and stale, the carafe bore a label indicating that this was no ordinary brew. “Rainforest Alliance Certified,” it said. A few hours later, on an airplane on my way to Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, my coffee cup was marked with a label that said “Community Coffee” and noted that the airline selected its coffee in order to “do good.”
That’s a lot of angst for an ordinary drink that is part of the everyday life of 62 percent of Americans. I noticed it because I was on my way to visit Café Justo, a coffee company started by coffee farmers in Chiapas, their migrant relatives in the border town of Agua Prieta, and the Presbyterian church on both sides of the border. Americans have gotten the message that there is a problem with coffee, and Café Justo is linking the personal with the social in order to try to give them an answer to what troubles them.
Coffee is a unique site for doing so. Coffee rituals are as personal as they are ubiquitous. Every morning, I sit down with a cup of coffee and my notebook in one of my most central and intimate rituals of the day. To make the coffee, I hand grind the beans and steep the coffee in an insulated French press. I carry the coffee to my desk, and for almost an hour, I sip and I write. My husband carries his coffee to the living room, where he drinks with the dog curled up next to him and reads the New York Times. Another friend of mine prepares her coffeepot the night before, so that when she gets up for her early Zoom meeting, she can carry a cup to accompany her.
