Huehuetenango
As we sped along the runway of the private airfield outside of Guatemala City I was gripped by a frisson of excitement. It felt like this point of departure in a light aircraft has been more than ten years in the making. Ever since I first visited Guatemala on an origin trip more than a decade ago, I have heard stories about the incredible coffee from the remote region of Huehuetenango (nicknamed Hue Hue) in the far North of the county. Renowned for mountainous beauty and coffee with altitude, I have dreamed of visiting the region ever since.
There is an incredible lightness of flying in a smaller propellor plane as you feel every bump and sway of turbulence. The barrier between you and the long drop to lego roads and houses seems thin, paper thin. Luckily flying conditions were perfect as we soared up into the early morning, the light concentrated and as sharp as glass. The city below us quickly braided and ran out into wrinkled green hills. In the distance shredded cloud veiled the summit of the active Volcan Fuego (Fire Volcano).
The half hour flight in the twin prop Otter cuts out more than eight hours of torturous drive from Guatemala City to Hue Hue on small winding roads. This makes the 269 kilometre journey to the city of Huehuetenango too far for most tourists to venture. Outside of the city the mountains of the Sierra del los Chucumatanes take hold of the landscape with peaks reaching as high as 3,793m (La Torre). Their cooler slopes are ideal for coffee production.
Huehueteango means ‘Place of the Ancients’ and just outside of the city are the archeological remains of the Mayan Centre Zaculeu. The Mayan culture reached it’s zenith long before arrival of the Spanish with the network of city states mysteriously abandoned around the 9th century. However the culture has long survived these ruins with the Mayan nation consisting of 22 distinct indigenous groups in Guatemala. In Hue Hue many of the small coffee producers are Mam where they have their own language, dress and deep rooted traditions.
Like the rest of Guatemala the region of Hue Hue is beset by endemic political, social and economic challenges. The county was wracked by bitter civil conflict for 36 years with a peace accord signed in 1996. This had left a long tail of state weakness, endemic corruption, poverty and a country still awash with arms. Drugs are channeled though Guatemala into Mexico from Colombia which makes the border crossings in the Hue Hue mountains porous and decidedly dodgy. So much so that we had to change our plans and visit farms that are 25 kilometres away from a three way conflict between rival gangs and the military. We took care to only travel during daylight as the roads at night are too dangerous.
We stayed in a hotel near the airport and were driven by agronomists from the country wide, overarching federation of small producers FEDECOCAGUA on two day trips to neighbouring towns and departments in Hue Hue. In the town of La Libertad we met the Cooperative San Jose El Obrero and in the town of San Pedro Necta we met the Cooperative Agricola Integral de San Pedro Necta.
Both are long established with the oldest in La Libertad dating back to 1964 when just 25 producers initially signed up. Since then it has grown to represent 610 small producers, helping farmers with financing, routes to market and technical support. In recent years these cooperatives have been promoting a reforesting programme with over 60,000 trees planted since 2022 on producers land. They also encourage selective pruning of trees to help make them more productive, rather than fumigating the plantations with chemicals.
Each farmer is responsible for their own processing, rather than bringing coffee cherries to a central wet mill. This is often a very simple process with a small electric or manual de-pulper that is operated like an old meat grinder with a crank handle. All of the coffees produces by these farmers are washed with the town and surrounds dotted with small drying patios were the coffee is spread out and regularly turned in the sun to dry.
These processing techniques are simple and labour intensive, but the combined efforts of the cooperative members yield impressive results. The 201 farmers who make up the San Pedro de Necta cooperative collaborate every harvest to send as many as 25 trucks loaded with some 200 (69 kilo) bags of coffee down to FEDECOCAGUA ’s enormous dry mill in Guatemala City for export.
Meeting the producers started with some typically Latin American formalities. We were ushered into the central offices in town and sat at a long table set with coffee, fruit and freshly baked banana bread. The Director of the Co-operative made a formal introduction, welcoming us to their community before passing over to a technician who ran through a slide presentation. They were all clearly brimming with pride in their co-operative as well as somewhat bemused the strangers in their midst. In the case of San Pedro de Necta we were the first coffee roasters to ever rock up in their community from foreign shores.
Once the awkward introductions were over we were shown out of the offices to visit nearby small producers. The farmers that we met picked their coffee just outside of town, but some plantation are as much as one and a half hours away from the town on dirt roads. I was immediately impressed by how insanely steep the dense rows of coffee trees are in Hue Hue’s mountainous terrain. Tiny trails snake through slippery slopes that require fine balance and focus to negotiate. As we laboured up these hills we had to stop regularly to let pickers dance past us with 100 pound sacks of coffee cherry their backs.
In January coffee production is in full swing and the coffee plants were laded with red cherries being picked and carried every day to the small concrete patios where they are de-pulped and laid out to dry. We visited a few of the patios, perched on high vistas overlooking steep valleys. The upper slopes are covered in virgin forest and watched over by vultures or eagles making slow loops in the thermals. Myself, Kat and Bruce, known collectively as the ‘gringos,’ took turns to turn the drying coffee with a long wooden rake, much to the mirth of the locals.
At every turn we were met by generosity and kindness. We were given a yam soup on one indigenous Mam community where the village were chopping up a turkey for a birthday celebration. We were treated to a delicious lunch in the homes of one of the farmers on his farm with his family. The table spread with fresh fruit, avocados, beans and hand made tortillas, all grown and produced around the house. When we retuned to our cars to leave, a cooler appeared filled with chilled beers and one of the longest running members (Don Ligo) conjured up a bottle of Jonny Walker for a dram to send us on our way.
Hue Hue lived up to all of my expectations and so much more. We have left not only with a much deeper insight and amazing coffee but also touched by the easy going warmth and generosity of the people there. We will be working over the coming weeks to source beans from these producers through Javier at Caribbean Goods. Look out for this high grown origin in our Roastery, famed for pairing notes of crisp green apple with richer tones of milk chocolate, caramel and stone fruits.
