DOCUMENTARY/ MÉXICO / 2023 / 7:57 MIN

DIRECTION: Neiber Maldonado Suárez

This documentary is based on the premise that the living conditions on the planet are at risk. This is partly due to the dominant model of extraction and consumption, which is materialized in the exploitation of natural resources, the degradation of ecosystems, the loss of biodiversity and the transformation of landscapes to be replaced by monoculture fields for large-scale agricultural production. As an alternative, we seek to make visible the efforts of some communities in the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca to confront the extractivist model.  Through the promotion of ways of life with minimal environmental impact, as is the case of shade-grown coffee based, we built forms of community organization that are based on reciprocity and social redistribution. Shade-grown coffee provides this region with environmental services such as carbon sequestration, water capture, soil conservation and biodiversity conservation. Additionally, the biological diversity provided by coffee plantations allows producing families to take advantage of other products derived from their plots such as fruits, medicinal and ornamental plants. Through their life stories, the documentary shows that in these communities´ coffee is produced by conserving and conserved by producing, thanks to the fact that the varieties of coffee grown in the region require shade. The coffee varieties grown in the region require the shade of trees with a wide diversity of species, which generates a harmonious relationship between the coffee plants, the mesophilic mountain forest and community life. For these communities, coffee production is not limited to a commercial activity; it is a family activity, since preserving the coffee plots means maintaining a link with the parents and grandparents from whom they learned this activity. Furthermore, coffee growing has become a community practice that gives meaning and identity to the inhabitants of this region. Finally, this documentary seeks to encourage the maintenance of coffee growing as a community system linked to traditions and family values that seeks to establish a harmonious relationship with the environment, rather than becoming a system based solely on consumption.

How does the project contribute to a more socially and ecologically just way of life and economy?

This project shows the way in which the coffee producers of Villa Talea de Castro contribute with their daily work in their plots to the environmental services that benefit the entire region. It also makes visible the way in which the management of the coffee plots allows for family and community integration and participation, which in turn strengthens the economy by obtaining food for self-consumption, the exchange of labor through the tequio and the gozona, and the commercialization of coffee beans produced with agroecological principles.

Therefore, the purpose of this project is to make visible, through life stories, the environmental, community and family implications of shade-grown coffee, in order to promote responsible, fair and conscious coffee consumption.