 El Quetzal was formed in June of 1997, and received its non-profit status in 1999. The primary mission of this non-profit corporation is to provide a non-exploitative income and support services to Guatemalan artisans who have little or no access to resources and capital. El Quetzal is pleased to have successfully completed in November of 2004 a two-year, two-level adult women’s literacy project in San Antonio Palopó, one of our partner cooperative communities. We are proud of the women and their varied levels of success, and we are happy that CONALFA, a semi-governmental Guatemalan agency, has promised to provide additional literacy classes in the community. The Board of El Quetzal has recognized the need to concentrate limited resources, and has decided to re-focus this year on our primary mission, that of providing a safe and living wage base to marginalized Guatemalan artisans. There are many good reasons to re-focus on developing a fair trade model in this increasingly one-sided trading world. First, there is the input from the artisans themselves, an essential but often-ignored factor in any development effort. In every meeting, every letter signed by group members and governing councils, the final and most heartfelt request is for more work with fair pay, more income to buy school supplies, to buy medicines, to buy clothes, to eat. Non-exploitative income options are disappearing throughout the country.  Demands for land from campesinos who lost their titles in the 36-year civil war, or never held titles, continue to fall on deaf ears. The flood of cheap, subsidized corn and grains from corporate farms up North as well as the fallen prices of cash crops like coffee, cardamon, sugar and bananas have made many farmers desperate. When poorly paid garment workers at a Phillips Van Heusen clothing assembly plant in Guatemala finally won the right to unionize to improve their working conditions in 1998, the company shut down the factory within two months and moved to Honduras. With the privatization of all basic utilities and communications, living costs have increased steadily.
Just as economic needs increase among producers in Guatemala , the number of fair traders from the U.S. who work with these producers decreases every year. Reasons cited have included high textile import costs and increasing competition from other poorly paid artisans around the world. Fairly traded products from Guatemala seep in via the underground network of textile and basket buyers in churches and socially active groups, but this rarely provides producers with consistent sales. Although the fair trade movement has definitely gotten off the ground in the U.S. in the last five to ten years, so far student organizations and national campaigns have focused on coffee and chocolate, two labor-intensive industries with wide consumer bases. El Quetzal not only pays its partner producers fairly, but it also provides them with valuable services not available in regular buyer/seller relationships. We do not demand exclusivity on the designs it introduces and is happy for producers to share them with other clients. El Quetzal has funded the repair of sewing machines and footlooms in San Juan la Laguna, as well as paid the best artisan on each to teach classes to fellow cooperative members. With the one third down payment or anticipo we give to all producers when we leave new orders, they are able to buy thread, beads and other raw materials in bulk, at reduced cost to each artisan. El Quetzal chooses to work directly with the artisan producers in Guatemala whenever possible. Although we have in the past ordered from fair trade distributors up North like Mayan Hands and UPAVIM, we have found that with direct relationships we learn and grow much more on each end of the partnership. We are happy to share our producer partners with any of our clientele or readership, however, to contact or visit them directly.
 We applaud and support the efforts of related network activists like the national Fair Trade Federation, now partnered with Coop America . El Quetzal has been a full member since 1999. We also support the work of national and local organizations promoting U.S. policy change towards Guatemala and human rights in Guatemala , such as the Washington-D.C. based Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA). All of these functions are essential to promote a world future other than one dominated by the quarterly profit reports of international corporations, and El Quetzal’s piece of the pie involves a different and less one-sided model of conducting trade and business between consumers and producers.
El Quetzal has traditionally had two successful annual “seasons” of sales: a summer festival season which is kicked off the last weekend in May with our booth at the Northwest Folklife Festival (May 27—30 this year), and the Christmas season highlighted by six or seven alternative holiday sales hosted by Seattle and Tacoma churches. The Board has known for quite some time that steady sales throughout the year are needed to provide producer groups with dependable income. We believe this can best be accomplished by providing Internet purchasing, and hooking up El Quetzal’s website with other fair trade sites.
We appreciate your support and collaboration in working towards a brighter future for all of us. Both consumers and producers benefit when the relationship between them is respectful, mutually beneficial and empowering. The Board of Directors of El Quetzal |
