A recent post in greenlagirl.com has rekindled a dialogue that she and I initiated about 4 months ago: Why isn't most coffee (organic, Fair Trade or otherwise) roasted and packaged in the country of origin? My argument has been that in some cases cooperative groups are roasting their coffee locally, as [...]

After returning home I was struck by a loss of words. There is always the irreconcilable gap that exists between a world falsely divided between First and Third: the scarcity of abundance, the desperation that borders on social collapse; then, in an almost transitionless moment (save for the interminable waits in [...]

After four months in Bolivia, today is officially my last day and the next couple of days I will spend traveling back to my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It has certainly been an interesting time to be here. I have witnessed the nationalization of gas, elections to the [...]

The cluck was born into a conservative family in the suburban sprawl of the western United States. Since anybody can remember, he was always one of the smartest and funniest kids in school. He was hyperactive, yes, but that didn't seem to bother anyone, except for maybe his teachers. [...]

The Cocalero was born into a Quechua speaking family in the arid, rural valleys of Cochabamba, Bolivia. At the age of 15, his father left his mother, with 10 children, for another woman. Out of sheer necessity, his mother forced him to drop out of school to work full [...]