During that raid, the pueblo lost all their tools, household cooking things, clothing, animals, everything, and their milpas (the household plots where they grow their vegetables) were burned. Although many of those pueblos became the displaced, somehow this village recovered, but have very little. We brought a bag of food for each host family, but we were served only eggs, frijoles, a weak broth, and, of course, tortillas. They women start making tortillas at 5 in the morning and the men go off to the coffee fields and pick for a few hours before breakfast.

We climbed the muddy mountain to the coffee fields (it took over an hour) and spend a morning picking beans with the campesinos and learning about harvesting, planting and maintaining. All their fields are organic, and although they get a guaranteed minimum price from Equal Exchange, their living in Mexico is barely subsistence, while in VietNam or other countries, the same money goes much farther. During harvest, each home has coffee beans spread everywhere in the dirt or on cement areas drying, and the women and children sit and sort the beans according to color and discard the bad ones.

I will be writing more about fair trade coffee and some of the other things we learned about Chiapas, coffee, the idigenous, and the economic/political situation. I will post them and some pictures on my blog eventually, but nothing is there now.

I hate being back in this cold weather and will try to escape again as soon as I can. I will be going back into the hospital again on Monday, Feb 5 for my five day chemo drip.

Love and Blessings to you all, Ana