Is your coffee building Trump’s Wall? Part 4: The Rich and the Marginalised

James Harper

Hey there, this is episode 4 of a 5-part series.

If you haven't heard parts 1 to 3, I recommend you listen to them before you listen to this.

Mauricio Escalón

And there's something that you can hear from everybody, I would say, in Central America, but mostly in El Salvador, that you are always thinking that next year is going to be better.

Even though with a lot of problems, climate, rust and everything, they are always fighting, always fighting.

James Harper

I mean, some people would see that as stupidity.

Mauricio Escalón

Yes, probably, but it's the truth.

Salvadorian people are very tough to fight for what they want.

James Harper

I'm speaking again with Mauricio Escalón, the man with the great-great-great-great-grandfather Pedro José.

He, today, has a thriving coffee business.

He's one of the very few in El Salvador who do.

Mauricio Escalón

When we decided to do this, one of the things that we put into the table was that we won't see the New York spot again.

James Harper

As in, he will always get prices higher than the commodity price that the majority of producers in El Salvador are stuck with.

You do not sell coffee at the New York spot rate.

I don't see that.

Mauricio takes out his phone.

Mauricio Escalón

I have my thing here in the phone, the New York spot, but I don't see it.

Probably once a year.

James Harper

In the last episode, we explored how 100,000 people left the coffee sector in El Salvador.

We went from the collapse of the cooperatives, to the coffee price crisis, to Roya, a horrible disease, and the gangs.

But it doesn't affect everybody.

There are some elite farmers in this country who have thriving coffee businesses.

And in this episode, we're exploring how they do it.

We're also going to answer the question, where did those 100,000 people go?

And when we buy Salvadoran coffee, who in El Salvador is receiving our money?

James Harper

I'm James Harper, and this is Filter Stories.

The untold stories hidden in your cup of coffee.

James Harper

So, we've heard a lot about Mauricio's history.

On his father's side, we had Pedro Jose, his great-great-great-great-grandfather.

On his mother's side, they lost the farm that became the San Carlos Dos Cooperative, one of the many farms that got caught in the fighting during the Civil War.

The Civil War came to an end in the early 90s.

And Mauricio's families, on both his mother's side and his father's side, still owned a lot of coffee land.

But then, the commodity price for coffee collapsed.

And it has remained low for the last 30 years.

And many members of his families on both sides decide to get out of coffee.

Mauricio Escalón

After the crisis, they decided, no, I don't want to be in the coffee business.

So, who wants to stay, stay.

Who don't want to stay, don't stay.

James Harper

Mauricio stays, because he sees a way to get paid more than the commodity price.

Mauricio Escalón

Let's go just for specialty coffee.

We will find those specialty coffees in our farms.

James Harper

So, instead of producing generic, low-quality commodity coffee, Mauricio decides to produce high-quality specialty coffees that fetch a much higher price.

These are the types of coffees that end up in coffee roasters, manned by tattooed hipsters in skinny jeans.

But it takes quite a bit to be able to produce and then sell this kind of coffee.

But Mauricio had what it took.

He had a lot of money in the first place.

He had a good business education.

He had the technical expertise.

And then he won a bunch of awards for his coffee, such as the Cup of Excellence.

And he found buyers who were willing to pay higher prices for his higher-quality coffees.

What kind of price ranges are your coffees selling for?

Mauricio Escalón

I would say like four or five times the New York spot.

James Harper

Per pound?

Per pound, yes.

So, Mauricio earns at least four times what most coffee producers in El Salvador earn.

He is getting a financially sustainable price.

Everybody else isn't.

And that's why his farm has grown a hell of a lot since the early 2000s.

So today, how many hectares do you cultivate?

Mauricio Escalón

Now we are having 409 hectares.

James Harper

You've grown.

Mauricio Escalón

Yeah, we have grown.

Emilio Lopez

How's it going?

Very well.

Busy these days.

Good to see you again.

Good to see you, for sure.

Thanks for making the time.

You can back up your seat if you need.

James Harper

Now, I want to introduce you to this other big coffee farmer.

His name is Emilio Lopez, and he's just picked me up outside my hostel.

Emilio Lopez

How about we go for some coffee?

Sounds great.

James Harper

Emilio drives us to the next neighborhood over, and we go into an underground garage.

We walk up the stairs and sit down in this glitzy new café in a wealthy district of San Salvador.

We then spend about five minutes deciding what kind of coffee we want.

And a few minutes later, the coffee has arrived.

As we sip these coffees, Emilio tells me that his family in El Salvador was one of the very wealthy land-owning coffee families.

Emilio Lopez

And that at one point they were huge, and they were exporting, and they were milling, and they were the biggest exporter and producer in the country, and the biggest mill in the world.

James Harper

Emilio was born outside of El Salvador, but he came back to get into coffee farming.

Now, there's nothing radically different between Emilio's story and Mauricio's, except for the fact Emilio is going all in on mechanization.

Emilio Lopez

I, for example, banned any handsaw or any machetes or any manual tools in our farm about six years ago.

He's taking a leaf out of Brazil's book.

That's the first thing I learned in Brazil.

Okay, coffee does not mean poverty in this country.

I currently have a farm in Brazil that I have neighbors that have only one hectare or two hectares.

They're not poor at all.

They have their cars, their tractors, they live very well.

They might not be hiring people to work their land, but they have a little tractor that does everything.

Spraying, weed control, etc.

James Harper

If we zoom out, one of the major reasons behind this coffee price crisis is the fact that there is just too much coffee.

And a lot of that is due to Brazil, because they're so productive that even with today's low coffee prices, they're still in business.

And that's because they use machines.

Emilio Lopez

I truly believe that traditional farming of coffee is condemning our people to poverty.

I'd rather be identified as, oh, he's exploiting the land or he is mechanizing and he's reducing the amount of people that he's giving work to.

I'd rather be labeled like that than someone promoting poverty.

James Harper

Emilio has escaped the clutches of low commodity prices by growing high quality coffee, mechanizing and having contacts in the global north who are prepared to pay high prices for his coffees.

Emilio Lopez

So now we own in El Salvador about 250 hectares.

James Harper

And because he's earning high sustainable prices, he's able to grow his farm, unlike the majority of coffee producers today.

And there's one thing you need in particular to succeed if you're going the mechanization route.

Emilio Lopez

Got to run.

James Harper

You also need a great education.

So we finish up our coffees and then head down to the garage to Emilio's car.

And then we drive to Emilio's kid's school.

Emilio Lopez

These guys are already in line.

James Harper

We sit there with the engine off in a line of SUVs under the blazing hot sun for about 45 minutes.

Emilio's kids go to one of the most prestigious schools in this city.

What better place then to talk about the role of education.

Emilio Lopez

I know farmers, I'm not going to give names, but I know farmers that started off with one hectare and now they have 20 hectares because of how well educated they were when they won the award.

And now they've capitalized on that.

That is something that again, if you're not a middle class farmer in this country, that does not happen.

James Harper

So how does a small farmer become a producer that can send their kids to a good school?

Emilio Lopez

A tiny little farmer that is not educated, that wins the cup of excellence or that wins any award or is able to sell their coffee a little better.

The first investment that they need to do probably is put their kids to school and then invest in their land.

But I don't think you can do both at that level.

Because the farm needs a lot, a lot of investment.

And obviously your kids education needs a lot, a lot of investment.

James Harper

Emilio's car inches forward to the school gates.

This is quite the military operation.

James Harper

You have a woman on a walkie-talkie.

Cars proceeding up, it's like royal dignitary picking up ambassadors.

James Harper

In a city fighting a war with gangs.

The parents of these kids aren't letting them out of their sight for a second.

So let's take stock for a second.

Very small Salvadoran farmers are being slowly ground out of the coffee business by mechanized Brazilian farmers.

The only way for them to survive is to mechanize themselves, get into specialty coffee or both.

But they need education and a lot of money.

The farmers who are succeeding today because they have the capital and the education are also the same people that used to own most of the coffee lands in the 1970s.

Many are from the wealthy families.

Today in El Salvador there's a new imbalance that everyone is talking about.

In 10 years time what's it going to look like?

Emilio Lopez

So unfortunately this is I think what happened and what we have now.

So in the 80s there was an agrarian reform because probably 20 people had 90% of the land or 90% of the business.

I think now we've come back to the same situation that 20 people are in charge of the coffee in El Salvador.

James Harper

Another question we haven't answered is where did those 100,000 coffee farmers go?

In the 1990s we had 150,000 people.

So I put this question to our economist Alvaro.

These 100,000 people go.

Álvaro Castro

They're your gang members.

They migrated.

They died.

They came to the city to find misery.

I'm going to show you.

When we go to the football court that I showed you in the beginning, you can see a marginal community that's right next to it.

James Harper

At the end of our interview Alvaro leads me to the corner of this private member's club.

We are walking up some steps.

Álvaro Castro

Yes, we are going to a small football court.

James Harper

We walk across the sports court towards a metal fence that separates this private member's club from the main road.

We're jumping onto a ledge.

We're now walking behind the football field on the grass between the grass and the fence.

We're now right up on the outside fence.

And as I look down I see this steep ravine.

Álvaro Castro

Oh wow!

You have a different kind of neighborhood.

James Harper

Oh my god, literally in the shadows.

Álvaro Castro

Yeah.

James Harper

I mean this is a private member's club.

And literally just below the football pitch is a shanty town.

Álvaro Castro

Exactly.

You can see the differences in all the inequality.

James Harper

I mean it's literally within a matter of five meters.

Álvaro Castro

Now I can show the video because there's no sound.

James Harper

Alvaro takes out his phone and finds a news report from the 1980s.

Speaker 5

The poor in El Salvador are very poor.

The majority housed in shanty towns like this one in the heart of the capital.

Seventy percent of the children under five suffer from malnutrition.

One in ten dies at birth.

And mothers give birth to an average of six children each.

Hence, El Salvador has the highest population density in Latin America.

A population which has been ruthlessly exploited for more than a century by a tiny handful of very rich families.

They live up the hill two miles from the shanty towns in palatial residences.

Jon Snow, News at Ten, La Labora, El Salvador.

Álvaro Castro

There it is.

There it is.

So it's nearly 40 years after.

We still have the shanty towns.

And the posh neighborhoods in the video, they're just like ten blocks away.

And you see the structural causes of inequality still remain.

So that's what they call the war.

That's what they call the violence.

So that's what I wanted to show you.

Extraordinary.

James Harper

Alvaro and I make our way off the football pitch.

Álvaro Castro

By the way, the guard was checking us out because we were suspicious.

James Harper

I mean, we look pretty suspicious.

Álvaro Castro

Yeah, you're a reporter.

I usually come here, but with a football.

James Harper

Not some Caucasian guy with a microphone.

Let's zoom out now and take stock of everything we've covered across these four episodes.

When our parents, our grandparents, happily drank Salvadoran coffees throughout the 20th century, their money flowed into a system that denied the majority of Salvadorans economic opportunities.

This was a major reason behind the 1932 indigenous massacre.

The United Nations has a permanent forum that addresses the needs of indigenous people.

In the sixth forum, they address the issues of land, stating in the documents that indigenous people's relationship with their lands and territories is said to form a core part of their identity and spirituality, and land is deeply rooted in their culture and history.

Here is a thought.

Had indigenous Salvadorans not been marginalized, perhaps their connection to their land would remain stronger and Salvadorans today wouldn't be emigrating as much.

After the indigenous massacre of 1932, the system didn't change very much.

Poor Salvadorans were still denied economic opportunities to progress, while a handful of very wealthy families made a lot of money from coffee.

This is the underlying tension that led to the civil war and the huge wave of migration in the 80s.

In October 2018, the International Organization for Migration conducted a rapid survey of a group of Salvadoran migrants who were in a caravan headed for America.

Half of them said economic opportunity is the reason for them leaving.

Another 20% cited violence and insecurity.

2% wanted to be reunited with their families in America, and about 30% said it was a combination of all these things.

These are the same reasons we covered in part 3 about the collapse of El Salvador's coffee sector.

Low prices have made it extremely difficult to survive financially, and many young Salvadorans can't work in coffee because of gang violence.

So here's one more thought.

When we, today, buy specialty coffees from El Salvador, the odds are our money goes to the larger coffee farms owned by the descendants of the wealthy coffee families.

Our specialty coffee dollars are most likely not ending up in the hands of El Salvador's marginalized coffee farmers.

So are we denying economic opportunities to the same people our parents and grandparents did?

In the next episode, let's explore how we can get our coffee dollars to historically marginalized Salvadorans.

And not just marginalized Salvadorans, because El Salvador's history is as bloody and unjust as many countries that were colonized by Europeans.

We have to find a way to send our coffee dollars to marginalized coffee producers across the world.

James Harper

Thank you for listening.

James Harper

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This episode was sound mixed by Dom Edgley.

He's a freelance sound professional.

You can find him at domedgleysound.com.

And the filter stories logo was created by Headquarters, a branding and packaging design team.

Find more of their work at headquarters.studio. Thanks so much.

Speak to you next time.