Southern Political Advocacy for

itself the “World’s First Fairtrade Town.” This English experience has been followed by thousands of cities in 18 countries that share five basic principles: “1) Local council passes a resolution supporting Fairtrade, and agrees to serve Fairtrade products (for example, in meetings, offices and canteens). 2) A range of Fairtrade products are available locally (targets vary from country to country). 3) Schools, workplaces, places of worship and community orga- nizations support Fairtrade and use Fairtrade products whenever possible. 4) Media coverage and events raise awareness and understanding of Fairtrade across the community. 5) A Fairtrade steering group representing different sectors is formed to co-ordinate action around the goals and develop them over the years.”4 In Latin America, in 2009 Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica, was declared Ciudad por el Comercio Justo (City for Fair Trade), thanks to the efforts of the cooperative CoopeAgri, which in 2012 turned 50 years old. It is the first fair trade town in a Central American producer country.5 Of course, the criteria for this selection differs from those used in a consumer country, but the recognition from the public authorities stays as a fundamental pillar. Gilbert Ramírez explains how this goal was achieved: “In our region, one hundred percent of the sugar producers are certified by flo, as well as 70 percent of the producers. In this context, CoopeAgri brings together ten thousand coffee producers that correspond exactly to 70 percent of all the region’s producers, and three thousand sugar cane producers that represent the total of the cane producers. It is because of this reason that public authorities understood the importance of the fair trade movement in the development of this area.” In approaching public institutions and citizens, CoopeAgri has long been using various communication media, including radio and television, but, above all, it attends community public assemblies, where it describes all the activities carried out to benefit local and community development and the productive process for coffee and sugar. “We attend 200 communities, and once a year we visit each one of them, speaking about the cooperative model, about fair trade relations and the different businesses and services offered by CoopeAgri to its members and the inhabitants of the involved villages…. In the communities, we not only inform, we also receive feedback from the people. Through these community practices, the City Council and other institutions see, therefore, our commitment and the impact that the commercialization of these two products is having thanks to fair trade.” In this sense, the recognition arrives from different institutions, not only from the City Council. Gilbert underlines, for example, that the Ministry of Labour and Social Security in Costa Rica recognizes the important contribution that CoopeAgri is providing by permanently employing around a thousand people and that the Ministry for Environment, Energy and

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Telecommunications appreciates the work that the small producers do in defense of natural resources. “Among the different conversations that we maintain daily with the City Council,” Gilbert continues, “we presented to the authorities the objectives of the Fair Trade Towns’ movement, which was spreading especially in Europe. From there, little by little, we discussed the possibility of declaring Pérez Zeledón a fair trade town, until our Town Council, in its ordinary session 180–09, of October 6, 2009, endorsed our proposal and made the official declaration.” This declaration, more than an end in itself or an arrival point, constituted the starting point to develop activities jointly with the public authorities, churches and other workers’ movements in the area: “Firstly, we organized the First Fair Trade Business Workshop, in which several import- ers, buyers and coffee roasters participated; we intentionally invited them in order to begin a dialogue between them and the Latin American small producers. We wanted, symbolically and concretely, the different actors of the chain to sit face to face in order to establish a more direct relationship with the producers. In fact, as I commented before, too many intermediaries still persist in the supply chain.” The main objective of this activity was to re-validate the three fundamen- tal principles of fair trade: the direct relationship between producer-buyer, the payment of a minimum price and the social premium, and transparent and long-term relationships. “On another occasion, we received delegations from the U.S. Fair Trade Towns and we were able to establish good relations; we visited some of those cities, especially in California, and also in and England. The second phase of this process would be to integrate more Southern fair trade towns and make our experience known, to influence even more the public policies of the local, national and regional authorities. Moreover, with a community of cities for fair trade from the South we could be creating ties for a South-South fair trade.” Gilbert also speaks of other aspects related to this process: “We realized that we have focused all our efforts on the sale of raw materials to the North, but something was missing. Can our producers really feel proud if people cannot buy their products in our supermarkets? We already received from flo the authorization to start placing coffee packages with the Fairtrade label in the country’s supermarkets. And for the immediate future, we will begin to collaborate with a small cooperative of cocoa producers in order to produce, along with our sugar, a high quality chocolate.” The next step of this process would be the use of the Small Producers’ Symbol; however, Gilbert tells us that they first want to see what impact a product with the Fairtrade label is going to have among local consumers, to analyze if the conditions to use the symbol in the national market really exist. This experience not only makes evident the importance of a direct recognition from the public authorities

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to the labor of the organized small producers, but also shows how, through the fair trade movement, a small and unknown Central American canton such as Pérez Zeledón can gain visibility and notoriety at both national and international levels.6 The third case relates to a commercial process at a local level (but with national prospects) that, at the same time, may have very positive consequences in political advocacy and consumer awareness in the South. It is the case of Café Honor, from Honduras, described by Xiomara Paredes. Before joining clac’s team, Xiomara worked five years with Honduran fair trade organizations, essentially coffee exporters. During those years, all these organizations always thought that it would be excellent to have their own cafes in order to directly offer consumers different types of coffee produced by the fair trade cooperatives. A very interesting process took place, involving different local and international stakeholders, which led to the establishment of Café Honor,7 whose brand is already registered. “It was founded by five coffee cooperatives, with two other allied partners: Asociación Aportes (previ- ously flo Central America), which already has an independent structure from flo, and the Hondurans network of ngos Asonog (Non-Government Organizations’ Association).8 Currently, there are seven partner cooperatives: Coagricsal, Coarene, Coprocael, Comsa, Raos, Cocafcal and Caruchil…. Honor, in this case, means ‘Honduran Original,’ and it seeks to honor the country’s small producers that everyday strive to produce a high quality coffee in harmony with the environment.” Xiomara underlines that in Southern countries, it may be easier to sell the concept of a national quality coffee than the idea of a coffee produced by farmers in a weak economic situation; however, Café Honor gives the proper importance to the small producers. Its promotional campaign states: “When you buy Café Honor’s products, you are promoting local economic development, supporting small producers and contributing to the realization of more development projects for a fair and equitable society.” Each partner contributed part of the capital and two cafes were opened in Santa Rosa de Copán, in the west part of Honduras. “They began there because several partners are from that area and could closely follow the first and most difficult steps. Besides, in Santa Rosa many people know what it means to drink quality coffee with a marked social component. Our central objective was to sell quality, setting the different products’ origins, but all from Honduras. And the clients and our friends in Facebook say they are very proud to consume a good national coffee, produced by small producers who respect the environment.” The cafes offer special , all organic: they have flo certification, the organic one, protected designation of origin (pdo) Marcala,9 Honduran Western Coffees10 and also the Small Producers’ Symbol. In the future, they

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