Fast Facts:
Location – San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas
Elevation – 1000-1300 meters
Coffee varietals – Arabica: Bourbon, Typica, Caturra
Founded – 2001
Members – 800 members

The Yachil warehouse is where all of the coffee from the cooperative’s farmers is collected and stored for export. Out of respect for the Zapatista farmers who wish not to appear on camera without their masks, we don’t have any photos of the farmers to share.

Yachil Xojobal Chulchan (New Light in the Sky), is made up of 800 coffee farmers in the Mayan Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. They are best known for their political solidarity with the Zapatista movement, growing and exporting coffee as a means to maintain autonomy from the Mexican government.

A farmer from the Yachil Cooperative dries their beans in the sun after harvesting and pulping them. Next they’ll be taken to the mill for hulling.

Thread visited Yachil in January 2015, and witnessed just how hard they had been hit by la roya.  The coffee disease had wiped out over half of their production, leaving some farmers with no coffee at all.  Other farmers growing more resistant varieties of coffee, like Garnica, were luckier and still managed to have a healthy crop, but many others had started growing lemongrass as an alternative to coffee. Thread brings you a coffee from the Yachil farmers that is light with notes of walnut, cocoa powder, and tobacco.

Read more about last year’s trip to Yachil here.