Download La Zona Cafetalera - Escuela de la Montaña

La Zona Cafetalera
Written by Administrator
Wednesday, 25 September 2013 20:16 -
The area surrounding the Escuela de la Montaña and the town of Colomba, called the Boca
Costa is the home of large coffee plantations, or fincas, which produce the “mountain grown”
coffee that is one of Guatemala’s major exports. The workers on the fincas are usually landless
rural workers, campesinos, who earn less than $5 per day, without job security or any of the
legally-required labour benefits. Increasingly, finca owners find it more advantageous to replace
their long-term permanent workforce with contracted workers who have no entitlements to
housing, education or other benefits which may have been supplied in the past. In a linked
process, daily work assignments are also increasing so that what was a “day’s work for a day’s
pay” often now means the equivalent of two or three days’ work for a day’s pay. Workers in
Guatemala who attempt to organize are blacklisted, threatened or even killed. Many small
communities have been displaced from the fincas losing, in many cases, not just their jobs but
also the places which have been their homes for generations. These changes come in response
to changing economic and social patterns in the area and particularly
changes in the world market for coffee which have taken place over the last decade.
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