Nearly all of the region’s coffee growers are indigenous Tseltal families who dedicate most of their time to subsistence farming, but set aside a part of their land for coffee, which serves as their main source of cash income. In general, families harvest the coffee “cherries” and go only as far as extracting the beans from the fruit and then laying them out to dry before selling their raw product to intermediaries who then sell them to large companies at a hefty profit. The real money is made outside of Chiapas along the next steps of the value chain, in which the beans are processed, toasted, and ground before they are finally turned into a beverage for consumers.
