It's March, and the annual Guatemalan coffee harvest is drawing towards a close. There are however some reddening cherries yet to be picked, and Jose Diaz Quinones still walks up the main road heading east out of town each morning towards his plot.

Towards lunchtime, Jose's bags are full and he walks the three or so kilometers back down to his house in Jacaltenango. After he has eaten, the remainder of the afternoon is spent processing coffee in the back yard - pulping his freshly-picked coffee with a hand pulper, scooping the slimy beans into a large tub where they will ferment in water for the next day or so, turning out and washing beans that have now fermented long enough to have lost their outer layer of mucilage, raking fresh parchment out onto black tarpaulins so that they can dry in the afternoon sun.

Parchment is coffee which still carries an outer husk. These husks will be removed down in Guatemala City using specialised machinery, but Jose will sell his coffee as it now is. As a member of the Guaya'b Asociacion Civil, a fair trade coffee co-operative which is also based in Jacaltenango, he has two choices: he can either sell his coffee to the co-op, which will sell all the coffee they receive on to fair trade buyers overseas, or else he can sell it for what he can get to local street traders, or 'coyotes' as they're known.

Each sack of Jose's dried parchment is weighed until it contains 100 pounds (or, in local terminology, one quintal). The price for a quintal of coffee sold in the street fluctuates constantly, and everyone knows the current going rate. In a good year, the street price might reach 600 or 700 Quetzales for a quintal of coffee, in bad years less. This year has seen particularly high street prices but not for the best of reasons; firstly, production in every part of Guatemala has been hit by Hurricane Stan, which brought high winds and heavy rain when the trees were laden with cherries. Around Jacaltenango, production is down by 40%. The price has also been distorted by local drug barons, who have turned to coffee as another means to launder their illicit profits. They can even afford to sell coffee on at a loss and still find the transaction worthwhile.

Even with the temptation of these higher street prices, Jose understands that he will be significantly better off if he sells his coffee to the Guaya'b co-operative. Not only will he still receive more in his hand for his coffee, but the fair trade premium his group will receive will be put to good use as well.

Guaya'b became established in the late 1990's in the wake of Guatemala's gruelling 36-year civil war, seeking to take advantage of the new peace to help resurrect the fortunes of the many Popti' Mayan living in the region who had suffered so much - both from violence, and from very low incomes. Through trade with fair trade coffee and honey buyers, Guaya'b is helping to provide locals with a new sense of hope. Extra income through fair trade has been ploughed back into improving quality - from the employment of field workers through to a gleaming new warehouse and drying patio - as well as providing social services through a home outreach program which offers women, among other things, business training, health education, and nutritional advice.

'Since we began selling at the fair trade price', states Antonio Carmelo Camposeco, Guaya'b's president, 'we have seen a big improvement in our quality of life. Co-op members can now afford to buy clothes and medicine for their families and they benefit from the new programs the co-op has implemented'.

At the end of each day, Jose Diaz Quinones rakes up his drying parchment and stores it inside, away from any dew. As he walks past his pulping machine, he will know that the Guaya'b co-op has plans to build a wet processing mill with future fair trade premiums that could save him the hard work of hand pulping nearly three tonnes of coffee every year. This, too, is an offer that no coyote could ever match.

Jose Diaz Quinones



Jose with his parchment



Guaya'b coffee beans



view of Jacaltenango



Jacaltenango town



Manuel Hurtado Lopez and Epifanio Hurtado Lopez