Nestlé seems the clear villain in the plight of coffee growers—it’s not so simple

Mexico's coffee economy can’t progress while firms, growers, and government remain frenemies.

At an old mansion in Coatepec—the heart of the state of Veracruz’s coffee growing region—a pretty bland explanation takes a tragicomic turn.

A timeline at the entrance of La Orduña remarks on the enormous investment made in technology and infrastructure to grow this former great hacienda’s coffee, citrus, and sugar cane operations. Its owners expressed certainty that their improvements across their close to 6,000 hectares—half the size of Paris proper—would be safe from the Revolutionary government’s redistribution of agrarian land; they simply were too important to the local economy and hired too many people to be expropriated. The government would be crazy to!

“1922:” reads the next date on the timeline. “La Orduña hit by the Agrarian Reform. Its lands go from 5,336 hectares to 300 in 17 years.”

A hundred years later and the debate around what exactly is the correct way to develop the country’s rural economy rumbles on. Discussion isn’t just limited to the halls of power in Mexico City, it continues to this very day around the very coffee-growing lands that once belonged to Hacienda La Orduña.

Mexican coffee: Back to the future

To many in Morena, the ruling party, Mexico is right back where it started when it wrested power from the powerful landowners in the early 20th century. Only this time, it’s not wealthy local families but powerful multinational corporations who have taken control of agricultural production.