Uncommon Grounds by Mark
Pendergrast, 1999, Excerpts
The coffee industry has dominated and molded the economy,
politics, and social structure of entire countries. On the one hand, its
monocultural avatar has led to the oppression and land dispossession on
indigenous peoples, the abandoning of subsistence agriculture in favor of
exports, over reliance on foreign markets, destruction of the rain forest, and
environmental degradation. On the other hand, coffee has provided an essential
cash crop for struggling family farmers, the basis for national
industrialization and modernization, a model of organic production and fair
trade, and a valuable habitat for migratory birds.
Coffee is inextricably bound up in a history of inequity in
which the haves took from the have nots. The drink, primarily a stimulant that
helps keep the industrialized world alert, is grown in regions that know how to
enjoy a siesta. There is no question that coffee laborers have been oppressed
in the past; even now they are being murdered by paramilitary groups in
Chiapas.
The coffee economy itself is not directly responsible for
social unrest and repression; we should not confuse a correlation with a cause.
Inequities and frustrations built into the economic system nonetheless
exacerbate conflicts. Compared with many other products developed countries
demand in cheap quantity, however, coffee is relatively benign. Laboring of
banana, sugar, or cotton plantations or sweating in gold and diamond mines and
oil refineries is far worse.
The inescapable irony of the coffee industry is that the
vast majority of those who perform these repetitive tasks work in the most
beautiful places on earth, with tropical volcanic peaks as backdrop in a
climate controlled heaven. Most live in abject poverty without plumbing,
electricity, medical care, or nutritious foods. The coffee they prepare travels
halfway around the world and lands on breakfast tables, offices, and upscale
coffee bars of the United States, Europe, Japan, and other developed countries,
where cosmopolitan consumers routinely pay half a day’s Third World wages for a
good cup of coffee.
