La Suiza Cooperative
Located in the San Marcos Coffee Growing Region
La Suiza is an old German coffee plantation located in the remote tropical highlands of the department of San Marcos near the Mexican border. The plantation was sold under a government loan program implemented after the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996, which formally ended the 36-year-long Civil War between the Guatemalan government and revolutionary guerilla groups. 116 families (among thousands) who were internally displaced during the war decided to collectively purchase the land and build a new life as small-scale coffee producers.
These families were met with seemingly insurmountable challenges – the fields were overgrown, the machinery had fallen into disrepair, and the only source of electricity (for just a few hours a day and only during the rainy season) was a small hydroelectric-powered system. The advancement that this community has undergone since their first years as coffee farmers is truly impressive and a testament to their resilience and persevering spirit.
In 2012, La Suiza Cooperative was significantly impacted by the roya (coffee leaf rust), which almost completely wiped out their coffee fields. Considering the main source of income within the community is derived from coffee, this was devastating and caused great economic precarity for La Suiza families. The De La Gente and La Suiza partnership was established in 2014 while the cooperative was still recovering from the roya. As part of that process, we provided farmer-to-farmer trainings and fertilizer and fungicide assistance. Saving their coffee crop was a multi-year process that included pruning and treating the affected coffee plants and waiting nearly two years following pruning for production to resume. Along the way, our assistance expanded to helping with wet mill repairs and crop diversification.
Approximately three years after the onset of the roya, La Suiza Cooperative members were finally able to re-stabilize their coffee production, and in 2015, we first bought coffee from La Suiza to market and sell within the DLG network. Since then, La Suiza’s 45 cooperative members have continued to prioritize opportunities for collective advancement of the cooperative, including investing in solar panels to assure reliable power supply all year long and continuing training to ensure that all farmers have the capacity and opportunity to sell coffee within the specialty coffee market.
