Café de Cordillera

History
Zenovia Charca de Huayhua is 35 years old and the mother of three children. She arrived in Alto Beni from Achacachi in the Bolivian high lands (the altiplano) with her parents when she was 10 years old. She is married to Luis Huayhua, a coffee producer for over 20 years. Zenovia learned about coffee production as a child, while working alongside her parents, but she had never processed coffee. For this reason, de-pulping, fermenting, washing and drying her coffee to participate in the competition presented a challenge for her. Nevertheless, she met this challenge working with her children and with the advice her husband gave her when he arrived from La Paz at the plantation on the weekends. To participate in the 2008 Cup of Excellence, she worked from 3 in morning and didn’t get to sleep until 11 at night. Her children helped her after school, taking on their homework after nightfall.

Faced with so much work, there were moments when she wanted to stop. She tells us, “it was really hard. I was tired and I thought that everything I did wasn’t worth the trouble, that I couldn’t win because the other men producers were working on their coffee. I only did what my husband told me, but I’m really happy now, and really proud. My children will also be happy when they hear that we won.”

The winner doesn’t yet know how much her coffee will sell for in the international market, but she is already dreaming about what she will do with the money. The first thing she will do is renew her coffee plants and improve her production. The second is fulfill the dream of her oldest daughter, Elizabeth, who wants to learn to speak English and study accounting when she graduates from high school.

Environmental Care
Organic compost from the discarded coffee pulp, the use of organic barriers, soil protection.

Other Statistics:
Soil Type: Clay Loam
Annual precipitation: 1600 mm/year
Shade Type: Inga edulis sp - Citric
Weed Control: Sanitary and formative
Pruning: Sanitary and formative
Productive practices: Organic compost from the discarded coffee pulp, the use of organic barriers, soil protection