COFFEE AND MAYAN CULTURAL COMMODIFICATION INGUATEMALA
MICHAEL K. STEINBERG, MATTHEW J. TAYLOR and MICHELLEMORAN-TAYLOR
Today in Guatemala, coffee is a dominant feature in the landscape (Figure 1).Dominance in this case doesn’t simply refer to export earnings, but also refersto how coffee shapes and has shaped Guatemala’s environment, labor history,economy, and political landscape for almost 150 years (Brockett 1990; Lyon2010). Exposure to coffee’s dominance is evident upon arrival in Guatemala.Coffee advertisements and associated images greet tourists at the internationalairport, and gourmet beans are available for purchase as one leaves the country.Between arrival and departure, one cannot help but come into contact (in vari-ous forms) with large coffee fincas, coffee shops, coffee laborers, and of coursethe sociopolitical results of coffee’s dominance in Guatemala.
Coffee’s modern dominance has been in the making for more than a cen-tury. It is not hyperbolic to state that the roots of Guatemala’s 20th-centurypolitical, economic, and related social woes can be traced to the expansion andentrenchment of the coffee economy in the 19th century (McCreery 1976; Cam-branes 1985; Paige 1997; Lyon 2007a). Perhaps most importantly, political elitesassociated with coffee laid the foundation for the present-day’s highly unequalland distribution, which continues to be Guatemala’s most pressing and deeplyembedded political-economic problem. The disparity of land holdings betweenthe haves and have-nots was the primary cause of Guatemala’s 36-year civil warthat ended in 1996, and continues to limit rural development and stabilitytoday (Handy 1994; Wilkinson 2004). Thus, labeling coffee as a historicallyrepressive crop is not hyperbole.
However dominant as coffee is today, it was almost nonexistent as anexport crop in Guatemala until the 1870s (Paige 1997). In 1860, for example,coffee constituted only 1 percent of Guatemala’s export earnings. Instead,cochineal (Dactylopius coccus; from which a crimson-colored dye is produced),which replaced indigo as the chief export crop after independence from Spainin 1821, stood as the most significant cash crop produced in the rural westernhighlands (Handy 1984). Cochineal accounted for 93 percent of Guatemala’s
k DR. STEINBERG is an associate professor of geography at the University of Alabama, Tusca-loosa, AL, 35487; [[email protected]]. DR. TAYLOR is an associate professor of geography atthe University of Denver, Denver, Colorado 80208; [[email protected]]. DR. MORAN-TAYLOR isan adjunct professor of geography at the University of Denver, Denver, Colorado 80208; [[email protected]].
exports in 1850 (Handy 1984). The cochineal economy depended on cultivationby Mayan smallholders. It was not until the 1871 Liberal overthrow of the Con-servative regime that coffee began to emerge as a powerful economic force(Handy 1984; Johnson 2002; McCreery 2003). In a few short decades after itsintroduction, coffee came to dominate Guatemala’s physical, economic, andsocial landscape.
The rise of coffee in the late-nineteenth century brought with it conflictbecause Liberal regimes opposed colonial restrictions on labor, land, and mar-kets (Paige 1997; McCreery 2003). In rural Guatemala, the coffee coup and thenew polices that it set in motion radically altered the political-ecological land-scape and consolidated a coffee oligarchy. Prior to the 1871 coup, Guatemala’s
FIG. 1—Map of coffee growing regions in Guatemala. (Cartography by Mary Lee Eggart).
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Mayan population controlled extensive ancestral lands. These lands were heldcommunally and controlled and governed by each village. Because cochinealproduction was so important to the state and Catholic Church, there was littleincentive to disrupt this profitable system that relied on smallholders and theircontrol of their own land. That situation changed in 1871 when the coffee econ-omy provided an opening for the state and economic elites, often one in thesame, to begin to gain widespread control of Mayan land, labor, and life (Lov-ell 1985 and 2010).
Policies ushered in by the new Liberal regime intended to stimulate coffeeproduction resulted in “a massive assault upon village lands” (McCreery 1976,457). If coffee was to expand, the leaders of the Liberal regime believed thatland in the highlands had to be freed so that coffee could be planted. Theemerging Liberal-capitalist Guatemalan society began to successfully transformlocal cultural relations to economic ones. One of the most significant legalmaneuvers implemented by the Liberal regime was Decree 170, in 1877, whichallowed for the privatization of communal lands. While local communities andindividuals were also given the opportunity to purchase and “improve” lands,and in some cases land did remain in the hands of local communities, it alsoprovided an opportunity for better-financed and politically connected individu-als to acquire large tracts of previously Mayan controlled lands. In a scenerepeated elsewhere in the Americas, communal lands held even prior to theSpanish Conquest were simply confiscated because communities did not haveany official legal title recognized by the state. Within a few decades of 1871,about half of all native communally held lands in Guatemala had been takenover by private interests, almost all related to coffee production (Carmack1995). Seemingly overnight, tens of thousands of peasant agriculturalists becamelandless.
While Decree 170 freed land needed for the coffee economy, Decree 177 pro-vided the legal framework to control the labor needed to work the growing cof-fee fincas (large farm or ranch) through the creation of a debt-peonage laborsystem. The expanding coffee economy also required a more developed infra-structure. To update infrastructure, coerced labor was used in public-worksprojects that ultimately supported the expanding coffee economy and latifundi-sta class (Handy 1984). By legally obligating rural residents to contribute a spe-cific amount of labor on an annual basis, the emerging coffee elites completedthe goals of the 1871 coup in regards to coffee (McCreery 1976). After 1871, bothland and labor were available at little cost.
Another impact of the coffee coup was the further institutionalization ofracism within Guatemala. Racist attitudes existed before 1871 in Guatemala.The Spanish Conquest and the atrocities associated with it were ultimatelybased on supremacy ideologies. But along with the various decrees targetingMayan land and labor, the coup sanctified a positivist perception of the Mayanpopulation. Like land and labor that needed to be controlled, the Mayan cul-
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ture itself needed to be remade; if it could not be reprogrammed or resisted, itneeded to be done away with altogether. The liberalism that took over Guate-mala in 1871 in no way resembled liberalism associated with the Enlightenmentthat stressed social welfare and democratic institutions. Economic expansionand global integration were sought-after goals, but the benefits of this expan-sion (via coffee) were intended for Guatemala’s elites, not the rural masses. Infact, the conservative, rural Mayan culture was seen as a barrier to nationaldevelopment. Liberal leader Justo Rufino Barrios, the dictator in charge duringmuch of this era, stated that “(the labor of) 100 foreign families were worth asmuch as 20,000 Indians” (Cambranes 1985, 302). Liberal politicians alsodescribed Mayan culture by such phrases as having “clogged blood” and “natu-ral propensity to indolence” (Handy 1984, 65). After the Liberal takeover in1871, these racist attitudes were legislated as fact in the Guatemalan politicallandscape.
As a result of his perceptions of the rural population, President Barriostraveled to the United States in 1882 to recruit Protestant missionaries (Presby-terians specifically) whom he hoped could whip the “indolent” Mayan Catho-lics into shape (Carlsen 1997). This was a seminal moment in modern Mayancultural history in that it further opened up and ultimately divided the previ-ously closed corporate communities by undermining the Catholic cofradia sys-tem (a civil-religious organization that maintains traditional Mayan-Catholicceremonies, but a leveling mechanism, too, in that it is self-supported). Con-flicts between Catholics and evangelical groups, the seeds of which were plantedduring the Liberal era, remain a common feature within the Maya village land-scape today and even resulted in violence during the civil war (Perera 1993;Stoll 1993).
The shift to coffee meant radical changes were in store for semiautonomousMayan communities. They were violently torn apart by the commodification ofboth land and labor, and the erosion of indigenous civil-religious institutions.After the plunder of Mayan land and labor through these decrees, land wasspun from community into commodity with disastrous consequences for nativewelfare, for to deprive Mayan communities of land was to deprive them of life(Lovell, personal communication).
These political decrees and erosion of Mayan institutions resulted in a dra-matic rise in the importance of coffee within the Guatemalan economy. By1880, coffee made up about 92 percent of Guatemala’s exports earning (Jonas1991). So in just a single decade coffee came to completely dominate the Guate-malan economy, and in turn political life. Guatemala continues to grapple withthe aftermath of social, economic, and political upheaval set in motion by thecoffee coup. The commodification of Mayan land and labor entrenched ruralpoverty through pervasive land shortages and low wage, seasonal labor on cof-fee fincas. For example, at the end of the 20th century, 2 percent of the popula-tion owned 65 percent of the arable land. Among those rural farmers who do
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own land, many do not own enough land to support themselves. In rural Gua-temala, 54 percent of all farms are too small to support subsistence farming.Guatemala’s rapidly growing population increases pressure on dwindling landresources. Between 1950 and the mid-1980s, Guatemala’s population grew from2.8 to 8.5 million individuals (McCreery 2003), and population projectionsshow the total population increased to 14.7 million in 2011 (INE 2012).
Certainly, some local communities resisted these incursions, such as theuprising in Momostenango in 1875 (Handy 1994). But, the Liberal regime insti-tuted a new level of oppression through the creation and nurturing of a milita-rized state, along with the various policies that undermined local control ofland resources. Thus, Mayan communities not only faced political and legalhurdles in their efforts to control ancestral lands, but also increased state-sanc-tioned violence when they resisted the demands of the elites (Handy 1984 and1994). Set against these historical events, then, it seems especially intriguing thatpresent-day coffee interests incorporate the images and symbols of the verypeople that many of its members began violently exploiting in 1871.
COMMODIFYING MAYAN CULTURE AND COFFEE
During the past two decades, Mayan culture has been increasingly used to sellthe very product that laid the base of its impoverishment and political margin-alization. Using Mayan culture to brand, market, and sell an export crop likecoffee has taken on many cultural forms, some subtle and some public andovert. At the industry level, the Asociaci�on Nacional del Caf�e (ANACAFE),Guatemala’s coffee-growers association, liberally selected and appropriatedMayan imagery. ANACAFE employs a variety of Mayan images in their adver-tisements and industry publications. In fact, one could state that the Maya havebecome the marketing face for Guatemalan coffees. For example, imagesinclude Mayan weavings featured on their English-version Internet page andrenderings of Mayan barriletes gigantes—giant kites—on brochures (Figure 2).Both the weavings and kites are important cultural symbols and tied to specificethno-linguistic Mayan identity in Guatemala. The kite-making tradition canbe traced to the early 16th century, with designs depicting specific family stories,including, at times, government oppression and economic conditions (Fig-ure 3). The use of Mayan weavings is especially interesting because during thecivil war, the military were trained to identify the geographic location of spe-cific forms of dress. If an Ixil Maya (based on dress) was found in a non-Ixilarea, the military suspected that he or she had ties to subversive groups. Free-dom of movement was almost nonexistent in Guatemala during the civil warin many departments where identity cards and village checkpoints kept tabs onanyone coming and going. While the use of specific cultural artifacts is subtlein that most outsiders don’t understand their meaning, among the Maya, orinsiders, they are widely recognized cultural features or identifiers (Hendrickson1995; Little 2004).
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ANACAFE also produced a series of artist renderings promoting the eightdifferent coffee growing regions within Guatemala. Each of the images containsa coffee laborer, most of who can be identified as Mayan through their dress.These images of smiling Mayan peasants have since been turned into Guatema-lan stamps, thereby using Mayan culture and icons to promote national identityand the objectives of the state, thereby creating a more overt co-option ofMayan culture (Figure 4) (Brunn 2011). Perhaps the use of these images asstamps indicates a shift in Guatemalan cultural relations and a celebration of itsdiversity. After all, state-sanctioned stamps use Mayan imagery to present itselfto its population and the world. However, this view is likely naive given thatmost of the political violence during the civil war was directed at the Mayanpopulation, the very laborers featured on the stamps. Among the victims duringthe civil war, 83 percent were Mayan, and 93 percent of the human-rights viola-tions were attributed to the elite-controlled army (Sanford 2004).
FIG. 2—Mayan iconography used in coffee promotion. (Photo taken by Michael Steinberg).
FIG. 3—Giant kite or barriletes gigantes. (Photo taken by Matthew Taylor).
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ANACAFE’s co-option of Mayan imagery is ironic given that some of themost violent episodes of the civil war involved coffee-finca owners and their land-less or land-poor Mayan laborers. For instance, in 1975, the Guerrilla Army of thePoor assassinated Luis Arenas, a coffee planter in the Ixc�an who had an especiallybrutal reputation. The Guatemalan army, seeking retribution, unleashed a bloodycounterinsurgency movement in the Ixc�an that resulted in hundreds of deathsand disappearances shortly after the assassination (Perera 1993; Manz 2005).
It is important to reiterate that ANACAFE, as Guatemala’s coffee-growersassociation, shapes the international image of Guatemalan coffee. Given theireconomic and political clout, they control the dialogue regarding what theworld sees and associates with Guatemalan coffee, and ultimately Guatemalaitself. By using Mayan culture to promote its product, outsiders are unknow-ingly convinced that Guatemala is a coffee paradise supported by contentindigenous laborers. In turn, outsiders then feel it is permissible to also useMayan imagery because that is the image of Guatemala. Any brief Internet
search for “Guatemalan coffee” finds products for sale wrapped in fake Mayanweavings and images of smiling Mayan child laborers picking beans with out-landish captions such as, “The Guatemalan coffee plantations are located in abreathtakingly beautiful landscape and the pickers in their colorful costumescontribute to an impressive scenery.” (See the documentary, Coffee, ThoseMagic Beans – Guatemala.)
This is not the first time, however, that the Guatemalan state and elites usedMayan culture to promote national identity in an international setting. As seen inthe documentary film When the Mountain Trembles, Mayan indigenous garb wasused by a nonindigenous woman to represent the country during a Miss Universepageant in 1975, just prior to the most violent era of the civil war. The Guatema-lan participant won the costume division of the contest that year by wearing thered-colored dress that originates from the Nebaj region in the Department ofQuich�e, a Mayan cultural region at the center of violence during the war. Thehuipil (traditional blouse) is heavily decorated with embroidered designs and typ-ically worn with a shawl draped over a shoulder. An elaborate headdress is alsoskillfully wrapped into the hair. Because of its vibrant color and elaborate embroi-dering, many consider the Nebaj traje (dress) as one of the most striking in Gua-temala. Indeed, the Nebaj traje has been heralded as the most beautifultraditional outfit in the world (Hendrickson 1995). Following this internationalrecognition, Guatemala’s official tourism office took the opportunity to use thisexample to present the country in a positive light by printing hundreds of postersand postcards with the white-skinned contestant decked out in the vibrant Mayandress. But in doing so, it also defined Guatemalan identity. In contrast, Guatema-lan opposition forces used the image of a beauty contestant in Mayan garb in apropaganda poster. In their version, a darker-skinned peasant lies dead behindthe smiling contestant (Figure 5). The period in which Guatemala came into theworld’s spotlight because of this costume award was a time when the westernhighlands, dominated by the Maya, began to experience greater political turbu-lence and violence.
Mayan culture has also been appropriated by the tourism industry. Whenone enters Guatemala’s international airport, large photos of volcanoes andsmiling Mayan children greet visitors along with the plethora of Mayan craftssold in well-stocked kiosks. Like colonial architecture, Maya-ness is a resourcethan can be packaged and sold as a commodity as thousands of tourist flock tothe country in search of experiencing and seeing “authentic” people (Little2004). Thus from a marketing standpoint, the state and elite coffee producersare dependent on Mayan culture. In the past this dependence largely focusedon land and labor. Today, it also includes image and cultural identity.
GUATEMALAN RESPONSES TO CHANGES IN THE GLOBAL COFFEE INDUSTRY
Beginning in the 1960s, changes in the global coffee market ushered in an eraof increasing insecurity among Guatemala’s coffee elites. With global coffee
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production growing and prices plummeting, coffee-producing countries estab-lished a quota commodity agreement in 1962 that sought to limit the amountof coffee each nation could export—this was known as the International CoffeeAgreement (ICA). The ICA brought a degree of stability and equilibrium to thesupply and demand of coffee and minimized the drastic price movements asso-ciated with weather-related phenomena (Johnson 2010). However, in 1975, Bra-zil experienced a devastating frost that severely cut its production. As a resultof increasing prices and reduced supply (due to the crop damage in Brazil), theICA allowed quotas to expire. While producing nations such as Guatemalabenefited by high prices for several years, Brazil’s rebound coupled with Viet-nam’s entrance into the world coffee-production market, again depressed global
FIG. 5—Propaganda poster protesting the use of Mayan traditional dress in Miss GuatemalaPageant. Source: AN�ONIMO, 1980. Cartel de solidaridad del EGP (Poster in solidarity with theGuerrilla Army of the Poor). Colecci�on Mario Payeras / Yolanda Colom, Fototeca Guatemala,CIRMA (The Mario Payeras/Yolando Colom Collection of the Photograph Archives, RegionalCenter for Mesoamerican Studies), Antigua, Guatemala.
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coffee prices. By December 2001, green-coffee commodity prices hit a thirty-year low. By January 2003, the average price of coffee on the commodities mar-ket was fifty-four cents per pound, the lowest price for coffee (adjusted forinflation) in 100 years (Johnson 2010). These changing conditions within theglobal coffee economy began to alter the relationship between coffee oligarchsand Mayan culture, or at least the use of Mayan culture.
The Guatemalan coffee industry not only faced intense global competition,but also suffered from image problems given the brutality of the civil war andintense rural poverty. Discriminating coffee drinkers had many new coffeeoptions given the plethora of Internet coffee venders and explosion of localshops led by Starbucks. For the first time, consumers could easily select specificcountries from which to purchase coffee. Coffee was no longer just generic cof-fee. Instead, it became more heavily associated with favorite production coun-tries, and even individual farms. As a result, coffee elites in Guatemala, knownas caficultores, turned to Mayan cultural imagery to re-brand its product inorder to appeal to consumers. Guatemala’s public image, shaped by past vio-lence, became a public relations and economic liability with the developmentof more transparent commodity chains as a result of the Internet, and again,intense competition among gourmet-coffee producers (Mutersbaugh 2002;Lyon 2007b; Transfair 2010).
Guatemalan coffee oligarchs, realizing they couldn’t compete in terms of vol-ume with globally dominant producers such as Brazil, began to focus theirefforts on gourmet “hard bean” Arabica production, mainly from the highlands,using Mayan imagery as the primary branding tool. As mentioned above, aprominent feature of ANACAFE’s marketing campaign is the promotion of Gua-temala’s coffee produced in eight distinct regions that include Rainforest Cob�an,New Oriente, Antigua Coffee, Fraijanes Plateau, Volcanic San Marcos, Tradi-tional Atitl�an, Highland Huehue, and Acatenango Valley, with all regions featur-ing colorfully dressed Mayan laborers (see www.guatemalancoffees.com). Thenew strategy has resulted in industry success. Although not one of the largestproducers, Guatemala regularly wins cupping competitions awarded by the Spe-cialty Coffee Association of America (roastersguild.org). Today, Guatemala pro-duces some of the best and most popular high- elevation coffee in the world.
Guatemalan producers recognized the unique cultural landscape of Guate-mala and began to emphasize Mayan imagery in their marketing strategies. TheMayan landscape is what sets it apart from the coffees of El Salvador, Nicara-gua, or other small-production nations in Latin America, as well as its gourmetreputation. When one buys Guatemalan coffee, one is buying the cultural“richness” and “natural delights” (terms that ANACAFE employs) of the land-scape—no matter how severe the repression associated with the coffee econ-omy. Although rife with irony, Guatemalan producers needed to find amarketing niche to compete in the gourmet-coffee sector, and the larger Mayanculture met their needs.
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And while coffee elites use Mayan imagery to sell their products, a study byStarbucks on labor conditions on large fincas found that their use of imageryhasn’t resulted in better conditions for laborers, most of who are Mayan. TheStarbucks’s study found that Guatemalan producers failed to meet its ownlabor-code standards. This code, called a “Framework for a Code of Conduct,”states that Starbucks will seek to buy coffee from producers who respect free-dom of association, pay a decent wage, and abide by sound environmentalpractices, as well as other criteria. Instead of those conditions, the study foundthat almost half of its producers reported failure to pay the Guatemalan mini-mum legal wage, over 80 percent of coffee laborers were not paid overtime asrequired by law, and that 58 percent of laborers were not covered by legallyrequired Social Security. The Starbucks’ study only included permanent work-ers, not seasonal laborers (see U.S. Labor Education in the Americas ProjectReport 2007).
To be fair though, ANACAFE has expanded its outreach to smallholder cof-fee producers during the last two decades through workshops focused onincreasing production, quality control, and disease management. ANACAFEafter all, does represent all coffee growers in Guatemala, so some of its mem-bers are smallholder Mayans whom it features in its marketing images. Simi-larly, the treatment of Mayan laborers is uneven among fincas with someinvesting more heavily in education for the children of laborers, and betterhousing conditions and pay (usually linked to the fair-trade certification pro-cess), especially since the end of the civil war in 1996. However, other fincasremain fixed in the early 20th century.
CONCLUSIONS
In Guatemala, Mayan culture hasn’t been exploited just for its land and labor;during the past two decades, its imagery in the coffee export economy hasalso been commodified. The “colorful” Maya makes coffee more appealing,less of a homogenous commodity to foreign tourists and coffee drinkers athome and abroad. These images set Guatemala apart from competitors. Thisis clearly evident in ANACAFE’s 2007–2008 Coffee “Atlas” (2011). Mayan cul-tural references such as festivals and artisan production are mentioned promi-nently, including a brief glossary of terms describing traditional dress.Guatemala’s violent past and enormous economic disparity between fincaowners and Mayan laborers is ignored and forces coffee exporters to create anew, positive, marketable image. Coffee advertisements could not feature slo-gans such as “the finest coffee grown by the poorest-paid and historicallyoppressed labor force on the planet.” Instead, Guatemala’s unique culturaland physical landscape provides more positive associations in the minds ofcoffee consumers.
When a product is developed and branded using a specific cultural identity,it sheds light on power relations in a society. This is certainly the case regard-
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ing coffee in Guatemala. By strategically using Mayan cultural imagery andidentity, coffee elites demonstrate that the dominating sociopolitical processesbegun in 1871 with the rise of coffee continue today. Just as coffee elites appro-priated Mayan land and labor, they now appropriate, without permission,Mayan culture to sell a product that paradoxically is born in Mayan suffering.Thus in Guatemala, it is not only Mayan land and labor that have been domi-nated and manipulated by the coffee industry, but also Mayan identity.
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