San Mateo Yoloxochitlan

Description

The San Mateo Yoloxochitlán working group is an attempt to gather the most committed growers in the Cañada region. They’ve been active, informally, for a few years (2019-2020), and formalized a partnership with Terra Coffea Mexico (TCM) in 2022. In this partnership TCM provides direct support on post-harvest processing, direct feedback on lots, and direct access to international buyers. It’s a challenge to balance commercialization with equity, especially in cultures that value equality. So far, however, premiums have been reinvested back into the group, providing members with more autonomy and options every year.

Yoloxochitlan is an area high up in Oaxaca’s La Cañada region. The name translates comes from the Zapoteca phrase ‘flower of the heart’, homage to how unlike this area is to any other in Mexico. La Cañada is unique in almost every regard – culture, language, geography, cuisine, and coffee. In part because of how difficult the mountains here are to navigate this has been a place that attracts and preserves ways of living that elsewhere have been lost to time. Today the people who live here are mostly Mazatec, a people who pre-date the Aztec empire and who have earned a nation-wide reputation for their role in social movements (the War of Independence and the Revolution of 1910). Internationally their reputation was built on the back of spiritual leaders such as Maria Sabina who received visits from the likes of Jim Morrison and the Beatles.

Terra Coffeas Mexico is a new (2022) collaboration to bring 80 years of operational expertise from the mill to export – in the form of long-time family-business Galguera Gomez – together with fresh perspectives from a young, CQI-calibrated team of on-the-ground mobilizers – led by the passionate Frida Mendoza. Their team includes engineers, agronomists, biologists, chemists, cuppers, artists and, of course, coffee lovers, all together for the common goal of agroecológico – the intentional purposing of international standards for quality, productivity and traceability, towards the advancement of local cultural practices, environmental resources, and economic outcomes.