SIBACTEL

The Benefecio Comunitario Sibactel is located in the Tenejapa region consisting of around 70 members. The Maya members who live there belong to the Tseltal community. Together with Jesús Salazar they put in place quality improvements: Selective picking of cherries, training to fight coffee plant diseases and to improve agricultural practices

Cafeologo

Jesús Salazar is originally from Tuxtla, capital of the Chiapas region. He initiated his project Cafeologia in 2010. His goal was to develop a coffee-project involving Maya communities. In 2010, he began working with 4 farmers and today he is in direct contact with 140 micro-producers. To Jesús it is essential that this project remains on a human scale "Caja a caja".

To become a true partner of this community, you have to be part of it: Jesus and his team participate in religious festivals, the corn festival, and they help the community to manage all types of problems such as access to water.

The farmers produce very high quality microlots, each about 10-20 bags per year on 2 hectares. Far from intensive agriculture, coffee trees grow in their gardens under the shade of endemic trees like Xalum. With so little yield, coffee is not viable for these families. Jesús' approach is to ask each farmer how much they need to live in a year. He then has to create value added coffee to pay this price. For this, the only lever is quality. Jesús is Q-processor (equivalent of the Q-Grader for processes). He brings his expertise to every farme. The coffees are not certified but are produced on the model of organic farming.

Just 1 hour drive around San Cristobal, the diversity of aromatic profiles is incredible. Jesús wants above all to promote the quality of Chiapas coffees and "change the reputatin of Mexican coffee". He surrounds himself with partners sharing his state of mind, his philosophy, his values to defend a different coffee growing in Mexico, returning to a high quality that is creating value for the indigenous production communities.