Mexican Rainforest - The Home of the Aztecs (Including My Tribute To Them - Which Of Course Is A Story)

During my hands-on training in the church “Marienkirche” in Reutlingen I was asked to make coffee for a meeting last Sunday. They had fair trade coffee only and while I prepared this stuff, my supervisor told me this and that about the fair trade coffee this church uses. He said that as a Christian constitution this church considered it its duty to serve fair-trade coffee only and that some of the money to buy this coffee – after all fair trade coffee is a bit more expensive than the average coffee – came from the donation-money church visitors make. The following is a summary of what he told me about fair trade coffee:
GEPA: This company sells fair trade coffee-products after buying coffee-beans from farmer. The thing is that they actually pay more than the organisation “Fair trade International” (FLO) requires them to pay.
“FLO”: a global organization working to secure a better deal for farmers and workers based on trading that is fair and sustainable towards workers and nature alike.
Bio Cafe organico: a brand of fair-trade coffee
Kooperative San Fernando: In Mexico many farmers ad coffee plantation owners – even those who have a long ancestry of coffee-growing farmers – give up on farming and go to the cities instead. They say that due to a lack of money exporting fair trade coffee to other countries is impossible for them and selling their product within Mexico just isn’t profitable for them. Thus they decide to either leave the coffee-growing business or to use not sustainable methods like child-labor or deforestation to grow even more plants. “Kooperative San Fernando” understands this problem. Thus they lend them credits to export their products, they give them money to participate in educational programs and they offer the kids of these peasants scholarships to make them have a perspective in their own home country.
Small Organic Farmers Sri Lanka: This organisation is distributed in different districts in Sri Lanka. It’s a 100% independent farmer organization managed by a Board of Management consisting of Presidents/representatives of branch societies with a total of more than 2000 small organic farmers. Producers annually elect the members for their respective societies democratically in order to carry out the suggestions and implement the programs forwarded at village level by the small farmers. Office bearers of the SOFA mother organization are annually elected at the General Assembly. SOFA is registered as a Fair trade farmer organization under the Fairtrade Labeling Organization (FLO) and is strengthened with organic and biodynamic certified primary producers.
SOFA sees fair trade as a helping hand for small producers to reduce poverty by improving their income and social standards and moving towards a sustainable future. SOFA has a large community of small producers who have experienced the reality of the benefits derived through child-labor-less fair trade, such as drinking water projects, pre-schools, environmental programs, roads, community centres, etc.
They produce tea, spices and vanilla.

Last Saturday I had lunch with my friend Jennifer. We talked about this or that and suddenly our conversation came to the subject of a movie that aired on German TV in February and that was about a gentleman who spent about two and a half decades on death row, before the “Innocence Project” proved his innocence. “You know that this is not the only organisation that helps wrongfully-convicted men?”, she asked “In fact there is another similar organisation named ‘Centurion Ministries’ that does at least as much as the ‘Innocence Project’ for poor guys like these?” “Really?”, I asked. The answer was “Yes! I heard about it when I read about a Mexican named Richard – whose name I don’t recall. Racist people who were involved in this case urged the only eyewitness to lie that he was 100% sure that the murderer was Mexican.”
Then she continued to tell me facts about this organization as I wanted to hear more. According to her Centurion Ministries bears all costs for its indigent clients. They receive no funds from those whom they serve. Centurion Ministries depends upon the contributions and grants from private individuals, foundations, churches, and synagogues as they receive no state or federal funding.
Centurion Ministries is the only entity that has its focus on the USA – including areas where despite the latter being the official language of the USA a Hispanic majority usually speaks Spanish far more often than English – and Canada. They take advantage of DNA and other forensic testing to prove innocence when they can; however most wrongful convictions do not have evidence that can be scientifically tested to prove innocence. Therefore, the bulk of their case work is non-DNA and requires “in-the-field” investigation of wrongful convictions that have taken place throughout the nation.
Until this day they helped in almost 30 spectacular, mentioned-by-media cases – not counting the many less spectacular, unnoticed cases – to prove the innocence of their wrongfully-convicted client.

The newspaper “Deutsches Aerzteblatt” now published an article which – of course translated from German into English – means “Illegal Latinos – The New Bond-Slaves?”. It was told from the point of view – and perhaps even written by – a US-American doctor who works for a medical aid-organization that treats lawfully-seen special cases like these. He says that there are probably millions of illegal aliens from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Ecuador who in the country the came from just didn’t have any real future. Since they live in the USA illegally they try not to draw any attention at all towards themselves. Except for Sunday they merely take any rest at all from their illegal work – as to void any complaints or denunciations by co-workers or their bosses -, they do hard and low-paid-work to avoid that anybody could denounce them out of jealousy and even when they are sick and even if they know about this doctor’s aid-organization, they just struggle on instead of going to see a doctor. Now you might say “Of course they just try to go on! If they don’t show up to work, people will report them as illegal aliens out of anger!” However the case is much more complicated: This US-American doctor says that he already met sick people who despite their poor health – and who sometimes even risked dying due to being so sick – worried more about their job than about their very life. After all they officially aren’t even supposed to work there and no official US-American agency knows about their existence. Thus the people they do their illegal work for can treat them the way they want to. As an illegal worker you can be dismissed at any time and don’t have any court to submit this case to. They can just refuse to pay you whenever they don’t feel like paying you. Thus illegal workers usually just ignore their illness or injuries and even if they get to receive some treatment try to restart working as soon as possible.

“Tagesschau” says that in Iguala (Mexico) a mass grave of about 28 bodies was found – soon after 43 university students disappeared during a demonstration that was ended by the police firing at them. Despite these blames on the police a drug-gang claims to be responsible for 17 of these murders. According to “Tagesschau” there in fact are reports about Mexican police officers using unnecessary violence during and after arrestings as well as reports about police officers torturing people they consider guilty without even waiting out the results of a fair trial. What is almost worse is that these police officers usually get away with torture and mistreatment.

By the way the snake you see here is a boa constructor – perhaps one of the world’s most famous snakes. At least it looks like one to me.