This story by Jan-Albert Hootsen was originally published in the Vice Versa Power of Voices special (June 2024).
Angélica Paz does not like to sit still. The project manager of Las Capucas, a cooperative of coffee farmers in western Honduras, can usually be found outside taking on her many projects, rather than in her office within the cooperative’s main complex.
“I like to be busy with anything and everything and there is always something to do,” she laughs. “When I finish one project, I move straight on to the next.”
The good-humored Paz, not yet 30 years old, is pivotal to the growing success of what is officially called the Cooperativa Cafetalera Capucas Limitada (COCAFCAL), but is simply called Las Capucas or la cooperativa by the surrounding communities. The cooperative was founded in 1999 as an initiative to bring together local coffee farmers in the Copán region of Honduras. The united farmers have decision-making power at Las Capucas, and have found access to new means of processing and selling coffee. It now has over 700 members.
With pride, Angélica Paz repeats that number several times during the interview.
“The work at Las Capucas,” she says, “has ensured that farmers’ livelihoods are improving both economically and socially. We have made a lot of progress in our region, in many different areas.”
Las Capucas: More than Coffee
The journey to Las Capucas is a long one, and the exciting drive takes around 12 hours by car from Palmerola National Airport. Once the visitor reaches the higher ground in Copán province, the tropical lowlands full of banana plantations give way to rugged mountain ranges covered by deep green vegetation, with bright specks of cultivated plots scattered across the hills.
The route winds through valleys and along slopes, and the roads become noticeably narrower at higher elevations. Compared to the plains in the central part of the country, the climate is slightly cooler. This is one of the regiones cafetaleras, the coffee regions, and the visitor begins to see numerous signs announcing fincas – coffee plantations – and coffee houses en route to the area.
Las Capucas itself is a large complex of several buildings, located amid numerous small fincas. The main building is reminiscent of a typical Latin American plaza, a square surrounded by offices, a shop, a restaurant and a meeting room, and the productive heart of the cooperative: the metal and concrete, industrial-looking coffee roastery.
Scattered around the main building are others that include a greenhouse where coffee beans are dried and the office of an exclusively women-owned coffee brand. If you follow the muddy road past the entrance to the cooperative, you will arrive at a collection of cottages and a restaurant where guests can stay overnight.
It quickly becomes clear that Las Capucas is not just any cooperative and is progressive in its outlook. It brings together farmers, provides support for processing and selling coffee, taps into new markets and strengthens social cohesion in the surrounding community.
Paz points to the small clinic a little further down the road:
“We have also made strides socially. For instance, there used to be a clinic here run by a doctor paid by the Ministry of Health, but now we pay for a doctor ourselves from the cooperative. And we have established Honduras’ very first virtual school.”
Traceability Strengthening Farmers’ Positions
Las Capucas is more than just coffee, Paz stresses. Not only in terms of quality – the coffee produced is organic and has a number of certificates endorsing its special quality – but also in its commitment to the role of women in the cooperative and the use of new technologies. Angélica Paz plays a key role in both areas, in partnership with the organizations Fairfood and Solidaridad, which have been working closely with the cooperative for several years. She is the driver of the innovations Las Capucas has started to implement.
She talks about the introduction of Trace, Fairfood’s application that allows farmers to use their mobile phones to track their own coffee beans from the initial harvest to the final cup. Within Honduras or around the world, this access to traceability is highly innovative for a traditional agricultural sector.
The coffee sector is dominated globally by multinationals that make huge profits on the production and massive sales of coffee, while farmers in countries like Honduras hardly benefit from the huge demand for their product.
This leads to what some economists call the ‘coffee paradox’: while the purchase price of cups in Western coffee houses became increasingly expensive, farmers in Honduras saw little of that price increase. Additionally, it was impossible for them to trace exactly where all that value was added to their product, because the beans were traditionally sold to big companies – and then the coffee disappeared from their sight into the global production and distribution chain.
Trace is an innovation that aims to put an end to that unfair situation. By providing farmers with information about where their coffee ends up, they gain more insight and therefore more control over what happens to their product. For this purpose, Trace uses the blockchain, known as the underlying technology of digital currencies like bitcoin.
According to Angélica Paz, Trace is a crucial tool in the work to improve the socio-economic position of farmers:
“It ensures participation and the empowerment of producers. When farmers know what is happening to their coffee, they are better equipped to make decisions within the cooperative.”
It took the members of Las Capucas a little while to get used to using Trace. “At the beginning, there was some fear of such a new technology – some wondered what to do with it,” laughs Paz.
“That’s why we also reached out to the families, the women and the children. The younger generation in particular was interested: if the father was reluctant, we could still use the app by reaching out to the mother and the children.”
Angélica Paz
Closing the Gender Equality Gap
Trace is also a powerful tool to improve the position of women in the coffee economy. The gender gap is still wide in Honduras, a country where the classical notion of the man as the head of the household and the family’s breadwinner is deeply rooted within society.
The idea that women might actively participate in the economy, run their own businesses and take control of coffee production is a novelty in many places, especially in the country’s rural areas.
According to Paz, it was not surprising that the RECLAIM Sustainability! programme’s progressive ideas on gender equality and empowerment of women took some time to take root at Las Capucas.
“Not even that long ago, it was still unthinkable that women could head a finca, it just didn’t happen.”Angélica Paz
“People said women should stay at home, that their role was that of doing the housework and taking care of the children. Especially at the beginning, it was very challenging. I had a lot of support from my boss here, but in the meetings there were a lot of men who were older than me – and as women, we always tend to limit ourselves a bit anyway.”
Nevertheless, during the nearly eight years since she joined Las Capucas, and with Solidaridad’s support, she has managed to bring about a fundamental change in mentality in the cooperative. As of 2023 (when this interview took place- ed.), there are now countless women who manage coffee plantations themselves, and who have a say in the decisions made by Las Capucas, and who manage some, or even all, of the family’s income.
Referring to new technologies such as Trace, Paz notes something striking: while men, as mentioned, are often somewhat reluctant to accept new technologies in coffee production, it is the women who embrace innovation within the cooperative, along with the younger members of the family.
“I dare say that at Las Capucas we have already achieved gender equality in a sense, through an awareness-raising process with Fairfood and Solidaridad,” says Paz, elated. “And it’s not just the women who are now aware that they can manage a finca; increasingly more men accept that.”
And although Honduras as a whole still has a long way to go, she argues that it is not just Las Capucas where these changes are happening.
“I think that a change in mentality is visible in the coffee sector in general – the taboo that only men can do it is being broken.”
Trace has helped considerably in the case of Las Capucas: after all, women can only gain more control over their own role in the sector if they know exactly how coffee production works.
In the meantime, it is important to acknowledge that Sofía Núñez, the former country manager for Solidaridad Honduras, has been recognized by the coffee sector as the lead promoter of an agreement signed with the Honduran National Coffee Commission in 2021 to develop a national gender policy that will improve the position of women in the sector and close the gender gap.
The Sophisticated Flavors of Honduran Coffee
Honduras is a big player in coffee, but it is less well known in Europe than in Latin America. When it comes to coffee, many people think of Brazil, Ethiopia or Colombia, countries that export huge quantities every year. Yet Honduras, with around 10 million inhabitants, is also a big producer.
According to the Honduran Institute of Coffee (IHCAFE), the country accounted for over six million quintales in the 2021-2022 harvest season, a local unit representing 100 kilograms of coffee.
Honduran coffee is of exceptional quality, even in a region where it has to compete with the renowned coffees of Guatemala and Mexico. In the rugged and mountainous terrain, the often small plantations in the different regiones cafetaleras may be at different altitudes, with accompanying differences in humidity, shade and sunlight. As a result, the microclimate in the coffee zones vary from municipality to municipality, and with it there are unique variations in the taste and characteristics of the local coffees.
Yet, Honduras has never been an international coffee superpower, and that has everything to do with its economic state. Even for Central America, a region of Latin America where insecurity, poverty, political instability and natural disasters have forced hundreds of thousands of people to emigrate, Honduras has a poorly developed infrastructure.
As a result, for years the country exported less than 10 percent of its coffee and could never benefit from the product’s potential contributions to economic prosperity, especially compared to the much richer coffee superpowers like Brazil and Colombia. Those problems are still unresolved at the national macro level, says Paz, but that is not to say that great progress has not been made at the micro level of Las Capucas.
“We now have more than 50 international buyers of our coffee,” she says. “Since last year, I have also been working with the cooperative on getting certified so we can sell coffee in China – and we succeeded, making us the first Honduran producer to gain access to the Chinese market.”
However, Las Capucas’ growth, innovation and success belies a shadow that hangs over Honduran coffee production: the population working in the sector is aging. The average age of coffee farmers in Honduras has risen to 55, and there is a serious lack of younger Hondurans willing to work in the sector.
Primarily, this is the result of the huge migration of young Hondurans to the US. According to the Washington Office for Latin America (WOLA), a US think tank, Hondurans constituted the third-largest group of migrants found by US authorities at the southern border with Mexico. The number of Honduran immigrants in the US rose from over a quarter of a million to more than one million in the first two decades of this century, according to Washington.
These are mostly young people, who would rather try to build a new life in the US than take over their parents‘ business, according to some of Las Capucas’ younger employees.
It is a problem for the future, but Angélica Paz thinks there are also opportunities to reform the coffee sector for that same reason.
“It’s often men who leave Honduras and the women are left behind – so we are increasingly seeing more women taking charge of the fincas.”
Paz is therefore far from finished with her work at Las Capucas. Not so long ago, she traveled with Solidaridad to Colombia for a meeting with women from Latin America. It was a special experience, and not only because she went outside of Honduras for the first time. In her contact with other women from the region, she discovered that their experiences in the sector were similar.
“I would like to continue studying to do more projects,” she says enthusiastically. “I now have a licenciatura (the Latin American equivalent of a Bachelor of Arts), and I would like to pursue a master’s degree in project management. Las Capucas already has five national-level projects in Honduras – I would like to continue working on them.”
Note: After this article was published, Angélica changed roles to become a Project Coordinator of PROEXO, an organization of coffee producers belonging to the Social Sector of the Honduran Economy. She continues to advance for a more inclusive and professional coffee sector. PROEXO seeks to increase the competitiveness of its members through technical assistance and access to differentiated markets, with fair, stable and consistent trade relations.