26 February 1998:
Try to imagine a small village near a river in a beautiful valley in the tropical forest of Southern Peru. In this village small coffee farmers have set up a cooperative since 1964 and survived through good and bad coffee years. The cooperative, called Huadquiña, is part of COCLA, one of the most important Coffee Cooperatives in the region, certified by FLO since 1989. The village is connected with the “world” through a train rail that passes by at two kilometers heading for Quillabamba, where the headquarters of COCLA are located and where the coffee beans are being processed before the coffee is exported.

27 February 1998:
Now try to imagine this same village being flooded by the same river that suddenly became their most dangerous enemy within a few hours. Afterwards specialists say that this was a phenomenon of El Niño: Higher up in the mountains an ice rock broke down and suddenly ten or twenty times more water had to go through that valley. The result was devastating: the whole village was torn away, the rail way was eaten up by the water and the people of the village were cut off of the world for several weeks.

9 August 2002:
If you visit Huadquiña again nowadays, the village is reconstructed 40 meters up the hill. All you see left over of that day in 1998 are incredibly big white rocks around the river. These rocks have created a layer of almost 20 meters on top of the place where the old village used to be. You can not reach the village anymore by train, because the railway has never been restored by the government. There is a small road now leading towards the village, and this road is highly important for the people, because this is the only way to transport the coffee bags out of the village.

But Huadquiña is still existing and producers feel linked to the cooperative more than before. The storage centre of coffee for the time being is an old church. But with the premium money and money from donors, Huadquiña is constructing a new storehouse in the village. Farmers are proud to be a member of Huadquiña and COCLA, because all affiliated cooperatives of COCLA have helped the people of that village come through the first difficult weeks and have decided in a General Assembly that that year’s premium money would go completely to Huadquiña for the reconstruction of the cooperative offices. Together with COCLA, Huadquiña looked for alternative ways to transport their coffee, so that they could still sell that season. Helicopters were arranged to pick up the coffee beans. “All other traders and government just turned their backs against us and left the region, but COCLA and the affiliated cooperatives showed their solidarity with us and helped us through difficult times” said Guillermo Aguilar Lorenzo from Huadquiña.

An old Quechua word AYNI is at its place here. It means something like “Help each other like a team”. This is the spirit you can find in the cooperative and this is the spirit Fairtrade wants to support.

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