There is a true cherry called capulin (Prunus salicifolia), when the
fruit is dry it looks exactly like a dried coffee cherry.
In Mexico it became a local reference to a particular stage
of the coffee seed during the traditional drying process,
when it had acheived its highest natural stage of quality.
A stage in which the coffee bean is protected in its
dried, sugary skin just before milling.
This is very important to Grasp!
CAPULIN has never been touched by water
or alcohol as other commercial washed coffees have!
None of the finest, most subtle flavor oils, sugars,
and caffeine alkaloids have been dissolved away.
With CAPULIN you receive 100% of the
reasons folks started drinking coffee.
Now, here are a few truths to ponder.
In the earliest days of the introduction of coffee
in the Americas, only 100% fully mature coffee cherries
were picked and spread in the sun to dry, like raisins.
All their natural sugars were dried in.
Remembering that all of the inhabitants of the Americas
were
indigenous peoples when the European conquest
of the Americas
occurred. Coffee was not here when they arrived.
In most of the Americas, coffee was introduced by the
Spaniards, The Portuguese and the Dutch, who brought
coffee given to them by the Arabs, who had taken it
from Ethiopia and guarded it in Arabia for 800 years
prior to releasing it to the western world.
Coffee was introduced as Arabian Wine.
Coffee was given to the indigenous peoples of the Americas,
but it was given to them as a yoke, to work as slaves.
They worked under the guise of religious converts under
the caretaker-ship of the church, or they were owned
by the Land Grant Holders whom had been given the
indigenous people's lands by the Kings and their courts
from foreign countries
The indigenous people's lands were given as favors and part of
the spoils to the Royal families supporters, or the lands were taken
out right and sold as part of the 'lock, stock, barrel and inhabitants'.
In Mexico, after the struggle for independence from their
foreign overseers, followed a hundred years later by a
victorious revolutionary struggle for democracy, where the
yoke was cast off, when the land was taken from the land
grant holders and the lavishly wealthy families controlling
Mexico, coffee took on new meaning.
Tracts of land were divided up in part, amongst the various groups
whom petitioned the newly established 'Partido Revolutionario
Institucional' government.
A group of petitioners could request a tract of land. These tracts
of land were referred to as 'ejido lands'. It was how the, once
foreign controlled coffee regions and other resources, were re-
distributed back into the hands of the 'common people' and the 'mexla'
that had formed from the indigenous people's absorption of Europeans,
into the new culture of Mexico.
Almost all of Latin America continues to struggle
with the major issues of the expropriation of the
traditional peoples lands for interests of foreign
investments, not just their coffee lands.
In Mexico, after the Revolution, there were no slaves
to do the work, labor began to cost money.
Faced with the social changes in consciousness and an
escalating cost of coffee production, the business world
of coffee responded with the implementation of
the labor saving water process. A Dutch coffee
merchant practice utilizing a long known
phenomena, 'Bad Seeds Float'.
With the world wide demand for the finest natural
stimulant climbing, the risk of financial loss having
been demonstrated to be excessively higher the longer
the product is exposed to nature's elements, and
whereas the cost of labor, due to the social
abolition of slavery, was soaring, changing the
way things were done was imperative.
Establishing the 'status quo'.
World war II took the world's attention away from domestic
changes, every thing was different, everything tasted different,
food was produced differently and processed differently too.
By the late forties, nearly all coffee from production
regions having water available, was being processed
utilizing the practice of fermentation and floating.
The public's reaction to the loss of the natural fruit
flavor of dry processed coffee, was responded to by
the industry with darker and darker roasts, masking
the lack of the natural flavor of their coffee.
(Prior to the war, almost all coffee was light roasted.)
Commercially, coffee production no longer occurs
with the same high standard, with the sugars dried in.
The commercial production uses a process, most
commonly referred to as 'water processing', or
'water-bathing', 'washed coffee or 'cafe lavado'.
Primarily, water processing reduces the financial risk
of weather damage, expands the marginal regions
that are capable of producing coffee (all be it
marginal in quality) and replaces the labor of the
men who traditionally were needed to turn the
coffee in the sun every day. The labor force
who did the heavy work of piling the coffee up in
the evenings, covering it from the dew fall, spreading
it out in the sun again in the early morning so it would
not grow mold, ferment or sour as it dried. The men's
labor was used for moving tons and tons of coffee
from one phase of processing to another.
In the traditional dry process, when the coffee cherries were
thoroughly dried, again it was the men who used wooden
mallets to beat the bean's chaff loose from the seed, sometimes
two stone surfaces were used to mill the beans from their sun
dried hull and inner shells. Many a child went to sleep to the
rhythmic beat of the mallets that went on long into the night.
But that is not all that the water processing displaces,
the work of the families was displaced too.
Along with removing a man's income for his labor, the
water processing displaced the socially bonding work of
the old people, the women and the children whose hands
were used to sort large beans from small and good from
bad, a very labor tedious, intensive and costly process,
plus they also helped with the picking, the traditional
labor of winnowing the chaff from the beans.
There were no other occupations available, there was no other
income available to replace their share of the loss of income
from the harvest. They have never been able to recover.
Poverty is rampant in paradise villages, the people are
being forced to consume every living thing of value within
miles of their villages, the trees, the plants, the birds,
and then, having eaten the animals, the inevitable, some
member of the family has been forced to join the mass
migration of the labor force in search of income to send
to their desperate families or worse yet, sell their lands.
The old people and the children are forced to travel further
and further for sticks for their fires, taking more and more
time and energy in order to survive.
This does not even touch on the millions of gallons of water
usurped from village resources and polluted by their water processing.
'Caveat Emptor'.
You can help make a difference!
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