THE HERALD ONCE UPON A TIME, GUATEMALAN REFUGEES IN CHIAPAS, AND A FRESH CUP OF COFFEE

By Juan Montoya
I had a cup of coffee with my extended family in Austin over the Thanksgiving holiday and the talk got around to the etiquette and origins of coffee drinking.
Most of those around the table guessed coffee may have originated in Colombia, Mexico or some other tropical setting.
They were surprised to hear that some of the first first mentions of the plant were made by Turkish caravans traveling across Ethiopia and taking some of the beans from a bush they came across that they had seen goats eating.
The story is lost in the mists of unrecorded history, but it also involves a goat-herd, Kaldi, who, noticing the energizing effects when his flock nibbled on the bright red berries of a certain bush, chewed on the fruit himself. His exhilaration prompted him to bring the berries to a monk in a nearby monastery. But the monk disapproved of their use and threw them into the fire, from which an enticing aroma billowed and the monks came out to investigate.
I told those around the table that I had once used coffee as a cultural bridge when I went to Chiapas for the Brownsville Herald to trace the origins of the Central American refugees who flooded into South Texas during the early 1980s.
At that time, the Herald considered itself a real newspaper and didn't blink twice when I made the proposal before the editors and the publisher. Soon I found myself on a Mexican jetliner that departed from the Matamoros airport en route to Mexico City, and then on to Chiapas.
I didn't really know what part of Chiapas – on the border with Guatemala – was where the refugees were encamped. But at the time former Herald writer Bob Rivard was the Newsweek editor covering the strife in Cenrtal America and he and his wife were gracious enough to let me stay with them overnight in the Hotel Cortez in Mexico City and make my inquiries with the U.S. embassy to get my bearings.
The embassy, trying not to antagonize the host country, sent me on a snipe hunt to Tapachula, a city on the Pacific Ocean side and far removed from the mass exodus of villagers from the Guatemalan countryside who were being driven across into Mexico by their government's policy of establishing a 40-mile free-fire zone to fight the rebels.
At Tapachula, colegas (and they take this term very seriously down there) working an ancient press in a shop the size of a small garage set me straight and directed me to the area south of Comitan where the refugees had taxed the local government's ability to sustain the sudden onrush of entire villages full of poor campesinos and their families fleeing the indiscriminate massacres going on in the killing rain forest in northern Guatemala.
I flew on to Tuxtla-Gutierrez, was given the run around for three days by state government officials there and finally set out by bus through San Cristobal de las Casas, Comitan and on to the Parque Natural Montes Azules, where the world-famous Lagos de Meontebello are located.
An area inside the national park in the municipio La Trinitaria named Colonia Cuahutemoc was where I learned that hundreds of refugees were being housed awaiting for conditions to improve in their country in hopes of returning to their villages. Many never would.
The place was incredibly beautiful. I had also learned that the Chiapanecos were very proud of their state and its heritage, including their locally-grown coffee.
I had elicited gasps of horror from patrons at a restaurant in Tuxtla-Gutierez when I had asked a waitress for milk or creme to put in my coffee. Any Chiapaneco knows that apart from the unrefined brown sugar, one does not spoil the taste of the homegrown coffee by desecrating it with milk. Milk! What a barbarian, they must have thought.
With the only taxi in Comitan at my disposal, I arrived in La Trinitaria to get a pass from the mayor so I could go to the colonia where the refugees were located. However, Sunday morning was the time of the week that the mayor hosted teachers at his home who were working in the villages of the outlying settlements to gather information of the progress of their charges and of local politics and events.
When I go to his home, I had to wait my turn as he spoke with a teacher. Being in a hurry, as most reporters are by nature, I chafed at being detained from going on to the refugee site. Then I noticed the smell of fresh coffee being prepared for the men in the kitchen next door to his study.
"Es local el cafe?," I asked. (Is that locally-grown coffee?) "Huele muy rico. (It smells very good.)"
You could see the man visibly swell with pride as he answered pointing to some coffee trees outside his window.
"Lo crecemos alli afuera. Gusta una tasa? (We grow it right outside. Would you like a cup?")
To make the long story short, over a cup (and it was good), I told him the nature of my visit and he sent for his secretary to give me a letter of introduction that was critical for me to enter the campamento.
And that's how a cup of fragrant coffee helped me open the doors to do a five-part series on the Guatemalan refugee exodus into southern Mexico and further north to the U.S. -Mexico border. Or – as the mayor gently corrected me over his steaming cup – "nuestros desafortunados hermanos Centroamericanos."