Economics

Seven of the Yuma 14 were from San Pedro Altepepan, Vera Cruz. They were 1500 miles away from home when they entered the southern desert of Arizona. The living conditions in San Pedro, Altepepan, are very hard. All roads are dirt, most homes have dirt floors, no running water, and few have electricity. They have to go by horseback to farm steep, far away parcels of land in the mountains.

Some of these men were victims of the coffee crisis because they were farmers who depended on their coffee crops to make a living. In the 1990s Brazil was the number one coffee producer in the world. They suddenly stepped up production, and Vietnam “came out of nowhere” to become the second-largest exporter in the world. Urged by The World Bank, they started producing low-end coffee in huge quantities. The competition knocked the bottom out of the world market. Other problems in the community from where these men came was that in the past decade the plaga de braca, a plague of insects that feed on the coffee beans, hit the fincas and their banana plantations were attacked by the Mexican fruit fly. Then three months before the group left, two clothing maquiladoras in Teziutlan and in Atzalan closed, leaving 400 people without work.

For years, the citizens who lived in the state of Veracruz did not have to migrate to the United States, like the citizens from Zacatecas, Michoacan and Jalisco, where the land is less productive and reliant on seasonal rains. Veracruz produced bananas, coffee and citrus for both the national and international market. Farmers were able to make a living and did not need to go to the U. S. In 1995 they could get $180 and $200 for a quintal, (about  220 pounds of coffee). Within six years a coffee quintal was earning them about $30. The effect on these farmers was that they had to go north, through the desert, to find jobs. In the United States they can get work that pays more in a day than the $25 they typically make in a week working on the farms. This story repeats itself. Some of the immigrants cross over easily, sometimes they are caught or saved by the border patrol, already in dire straits. Sometimes, like the Yuma 14, they aren't found in time and they die in the desert, men, women and children.

In the three years since the fourteen immigrants died in the desert near Yuma, friends and relatives in these poor mountain settlements formed a coffee growers cooperative in their honor. The idea is to get more money for their product so there won’t be a need for citizens from Vera Cruz to risk their lives by going to the U. S. looking for work.  The more than 200 members of the El Azotal Cooperative aren’t wealthy, nor do they have much property but the cooperative is their only hope. More information can be found on their website Mayan Winds, Inc.