The Montecristo de Guerrero district lies between the mountains of the Sierra Madre del Sur in the state of Chiapas. 4.5 hours from the Chiapas airport, it’s part of the buffer zone of the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve (Spanish for “The Triumph”).
The El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve protects 10 specific environments, among them 2 of the most threatened in Mexico: the cloud forest and the rainforest.
El Triunfo’s cloud forest has some of the greatest diversity of tree species in North and Central America. The variety of vegetation inhabiting the reserve makes it a critical refuge for a huge number of species of wild flora and fauna, including the mythical Quetzel.
The producers in Montecristo are enthusiastic about environmental stewardship and always working toward this balance in their coffee cultivation. They work to maintain native tree species present on their lands, they’ve prohibited hunting in the area, and they know that deforestation, though tempting to make room for more productivity, doesn’t lead to a healthy landscape for coffee production.
They use native trees such as the leguminous ice cream bean tree for shade and nitrogen retention. For fertilizer, they use organic compost from coffee pulp.
The farms in this area are usually small, between 1 and 2 hectares, so harvest only requires family labor. On the slightly larger farms, producers usually hire external labor from other districts or Guatemalan migrant workers who show up for harvest.
Most farms have access to the road and transport their coffees in trucks. The farms are located an average 20 minutes from the collection centers.
The majority of producers have their farms next to their houses. After harvest, fermentation takes about 36 hours in concrete tanks, while drying takes 12-15 days on patios or raised beds.
Coffee is the main income source for Montecristo’s population, and they know that it has no future if nature and coffee are viewed as separate competing interests. So instead, they view coffee production as part of environmental stewardship, and superb coffees are the result.
