Viviano Gutiérrez is seventy three years old. He is married twice and became a widower twice as well. He has eight children, thirty two grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. “Life has not been easy”, he emphasizes. Since he was thirteen, he worked in picking coffee, just like his mother. “My father died when I was 1 year and 6 months old and my sister was one year old”. His mother taught him how to work since he was very little”.

“She used to tell me: do not to still, do not to lie and do not to drink alcohol”, he recalls when explaining the basis of his prosperity. “I started to work and save money. First, I bought a horse with the savings of picking coffee and then I sold it to by my first peace of land which was about 0.56 Hectares.

He married when he was twenty two years old. “My wife was very smart so she used to buy animals and feed them. When they were fat, she would sell them and that is how we manage ourselves to earn some money”.

He is now part of a community program called Organized Small Coffee Growers that manages a wet mill called El Esfuerzo. “The leaders of this program arranged a credit so that we could do everything to register a sample of our coffee lot”, he explains. “I had no idea that my coffee could ever be sold at those prices”.

When he received the money of the auction, he bought corn, beans, rice, sugar and terrains for his children. “We are now building a place to do organic fertilizers”, he adds when referring to the investment he did in coffee.

His mother also taught him that life is full of hope. That is why when the coffee crisis began, he continued growing coffee. “My neighbors cut off coffee plants when they were not worth it”, he remembers. “But I always continued growing coffee…at least it provided us with a little money”.

He hopes that next auction the prices are as good as last year’s. “I want to keep on helping my sons and daughters. They are the ones taking care of me, they make my tortillas and my atoles everyday”, he says. But of course, he can’t forget about coffee. The Social Found Investment, FIS (in Spanish), built the wet mill of the community. “We would like to build two more patios, two tanks and a channel”, he concludes.

Bibiano Gutierrez Vasquez was also a previous winner in the 2006 Cup of Excellence competition.