A visit from two Mexican coffee farmers Tuesday helped some MSU students explain why it's important to make fair trade coffee available in campus cafeterias.
The speakers, Jose Vasquez, president of the Las Abejas Civil Society, and Macario Arias Gomez, president of the Maya Vinic Coffee Cooperative, which is part of the society, spoke of hardships they faced growing coffee beans in Chiapas, Mexico before organizing into cooperatives and selling to fair trade companies in the United States, Canada, Japan and Switzerland.
"We are organizing as a cooperative so that we can organize and work toward a better life," Vasquez said.
In the mid-'90s, the Mexican government wanted to take the coffee farmers' communal land and sell it to private oil and timber companies, but the farmers peacefully protested.
On Dec. 22, 1997, about 45 indigenous farmers and their families were massacred by Mexican paramilitary while they were praying and fasting for peace in a chapel in Chiapas.
"We have suffered just to find peace and justice," Vasquez said. "The have killed us - our brothers, our sisters, our mothers, our fathers, our children. They took pregnant women and opened up their bodies and threw out the wombs."
Gomez and Vasquez's visit to MSU's campus was hosted by The Real Food Group of MSU and Higher Grounds Trading Company of Leland.
The Real Food Group aims to respect social and environmental concerns behind food production, and supports animal rights, family farms, organic food and fair trade products.
"It's all about the education behind where it comes from and what goes into it - what work, and by whom," anthropology senior Shawn Wozniak of The Real Food Group said about bringing the farmers to campus.
"Our next step is to try and meet with RHA to see if they'll test run fair trade in cafeterias."
Wozniak said the fair trade system, which ensures coffee farmers outside the United States receive wages that provide education and medicine for their families, is necessary.
"Consumers get better coffee because standards are placed on the coffee, and because farmers meet these standards, they get a better living wage," he said.
Higher Grounds Trading Company, started by Chris Treter and his wife Jody after visiting Chiapas, buys coffee from farmers at fair trade prices. Chris Treter said the practices of non-fair trade coffee companies are unethical.
"Many conventional coffee companies are making record profits from the toil and the sweat off the farmer's back," he said. "Many companies wash their hands clean of any fault because they simply say, 'This is the way the industry works.'"
Fair trade coffee is currently available in Sparty's Cafes and Coffeehouses and is marketed as "Spartan Spirit." The Real Food Group helped make the coffee available in the cafes and coffeehouses in April.
"It's really nice for MSU students to know the food they eat, the clothes they wear, and the car they drive are made in a socially and economically friendly way, so they know there wasn't any injustice spread throughout the world," he said.
"In our world money is power, and they need to have a little bit more power - and more friends on their side too."
Staff writer RoNeisha Mullen contributed to this report.
