I feel that by now I have hammered away at telling everyone I know how much we love la Sierra de las Minas, and how special and unique it is—how it is the home of the Resplendent Quetzal. After being there for so many years, I still get excited anytime I have a chance to share my message; instead of it getting old, I just fuel the fire that props me up on my soapbox.
But I often think that once I finish my storytelling, they might forget every word of mine. With a bag of coffee, however, our message might carry.
The idea is producing the very best coffee we can with the help of our microclimate.
Coffee is something most people enjoy daily—imagine a morning without a cup of coffee, or an afternoon without a cup of coffee to lift your spirits to finish the workday. Well, in every one of those moments, we want people to associate that great cup of coffee with Sierra de las Minas. We want the mountain to speak to people’s senses, and hopefully, this will create awareness of the importance of protecting our last natural and wild places around the world.
Coffee is used all over the world to promote different causes. Just look at what people call their coffee shops and the awareness they try to create. Bird Friendly coffee, Rainforest Alliance, organic trade stamps, and the such do similar efforts, but our coffee is aimed at specifically bringing awareness to a region that sometimes has to mix their coffee with other regions because we go largely unknown, or just under the Anacafé denomination of Oriente.
We want to bring awareness of the importance of cloud forests, but more importantly, the importance of our cloud forest. Our forest is the largest cloud forest in Guatemala and in Central America. Organizations like Defensores de la Naturaleza are helping out, but they are underfunded. We want Guatemalans and people abroad to think more about where Sierra de las Minas is, and how fortunate we are as Guatemalans to have such a special natural gift in our beautiful country. We are a country with problems, yes, but we are also a country with opportunity. We need to promote our good things more. Let everyone know that we can, as Guatemalans, do things right and that we can create sustainable jobs in our own fields. We do not need to go work the fields of another nation. We just need to love our country more, and demand that our governments create better living conditions, and we can do the rest on our own.
Sierra de las Minas, a Guatemalan treasure, a world treasure.
By – Salvador Melgar