Just Coffee: Caffeine with a Conscience

This is a story about the collaboration between a Presbyterian Pastor, a displaced coffee farmer and an outsourced industrialist who came together on the Sonora Mexico, Arizona USA border to help form a small coffee cooperative in a community in Chiapas, Mexico. The 3 friends dreamed, schemed and gleaned a plan that involved creating a Fair Trade Plus Coffee Cooperative. Fair Trade Plus is the, spirit of fair trade; where the growers actually own and control the most value added steps and therefore receive the majority of the profits from the sales. In this case the small community of Salvador Urbina, in mountains of Chiapas discovered a way to roast and ship their coffee to customers in the USA with in a week of receiving the order. They innovated and created synergy between the cultures of Mexico and the USA to build relationships between the growers and drinkers of this fine, high mountain coffee that is famous for its drink-ability and smooth, acid-free character. The cooperative directly address the root cause of undocumented migration from this part of Mexico into the USA; poverty. Humorous insights into the clash of the cultures are interspersed with first hand observations on poverty and migration. The book brings to life the growers in Mexico and folks from the USA that came together and helped the cooperative. It is a story of relationships. The Just Coffee Cooperative story is a journey where people of faith on both sides of the border came together to help make this dream become a reality. The 128 page book details the birth and growth of the cooperative as it struggled to become a visible example of the link between faith, migration and coffee. The book has lots of excellent photos of the coffee, growers and their community, interesting facts on migration in an innocent yet provoking invitation to put faith in action to address one of the most controversial and contentious issues of our times; undocumented immigration into the USA from Mexico.

The Rev. Mark Adams and Tommy Bassett wrote this book together, In real life, however, there is not much that overlaps between us because we are from the "opposites attract" clan. Mark is a genteel southerner coming from the reserved environs of South Carolina. Tommy is a Minnesotan who left for the west as soon as he learned there were places that were warm year-around with few mosquitoes and just as friendly people. After graduating from Furman University (BA in History), teaching high school Spanish, and receiving his MDiv from Columbia Theological Seminary, Mark arrived at the border in 1998. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he serves as Mission Co-Worker at Frontera de Cristo, an unusual bi-national ministry centered in Agua Prieta, Sonora and Douglas, Arizona. Mark's background in history and theology-enriched by ten years of life on the border--affords him a unique and fundamental perspective on migration and our connections to and with one another across borders. Tommy arrived at the border in 1992 to work as manager of an electronics manufacturing maquiladora in Agua Prieta. Tommy graduated from the University of Arizona with a BA in Sociology and Philosophy. His twenty- plus years in industrial manufacturing and experience in cross-border business helped forge his perspective on social justice. He serves as Developer for the Just Trade Center, which is a partnership of Cafe Justo, Frontera de Cristo and the Catholic Relief Services of Mexico. Although we arrived at the border from different origins, via different paths, we share similar experiences with respect to the disheartening ravages of migration and the difficulty of life on the border. Collaborating on this book brought us closer together and deepened an already rich and vital relationship. We hope our friendship, shared vision and similar goals are as apparent in these pages as our commitment to the cause of justice on the border. despite our differences--or perhaps because of them--we have collaborated on many exciting initiatives to build relationships and understanding across borders. And through these efforts, God has made a difference.