Jaqueline is one of our producers in the Nuevo Paraiso area in La Concordia, her farm, La Tuna is located 5 and a half hours from the Chiapas airport.
Jaqueline comes from a coffee-growing family. Her grandparents started the family in the coffee business and bought the first family hectares. Jaqueline grew up with her grandparents and they instilled in her a passion for coffee. Now Jaqueline is in charge of La Tuna (tuna is spanish for prickly pear) farm. She gave this name to the farm since the prickly pear was her grandfather’s favorite fruit. She alone manages the farm, drives the truck to transport the bags of coffee to the collection center and harvest (when the harvest is abundant she usually hires external harvesters).
Jaqueline is known in her community for being an enthusiastic woman, who likes to innovate and who follows the recommendations of the field technicians about the proper management of the farm.
La Tuna has an area of 5 hectares and we can find the Typica, Bourbon, and Sarchimor varieties.
Jaqueline carries out the fermentation process for 36 hours in cement tanks and dries the coffee for 12 to 15 days in patios and raised beds. She usually uses fruit trees or ice-cream bean trees for shade and fertilizes her farm with organic compost made from a mix of coffee pulp and herbs.
The community where Jaqueline lives of Nuevo Paraiso is located in the district of La Concordia in the state of Chiapas, this community is relatively close to large cities (it only takes a 4 hour trip to get to the Chiapas airport) but despite its closeness to large cities, this community has a unique characteristic that differentiates it from other communities, which is that the majority of its coffee producers are women, strong and brave women.
In recent decades, Nuevo Paraiso has suffered a massive migration of its male inhabitants to other countries in search of better job opportunities, leaving their wives and children on the farms. Due to this, it is very common today to see women managing the farms and raising their children alone, this at first was a difficult challenge for the women of the community to overcome but soon became clear that this was a task that they were going to be able to handle perfectly and even excel at.
Nuevo Paraiso is characterized by its mountainous and high but moderately flat terrain. Due to this, most farms have access to the roads. Producers in the area usually transport their coffees in their own cars or hire communal trucks to transport the coffee collectively, as a third option, they can call the collection centers (there is a good telephone signal in the area) to send a collection unit.
The producers’ farms in the area are usually located next to the houses, so the journey that the producers have to take to work every day is not very long, likewise, producers usually have their washing and drying stations in their homes.
Jaqueline’s main goal in life is to be able to provide a quality education to her children and to achieve this she knows that she must improve day by day in the care and management that she gives to her coffee farm, her main source of income.
