San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1888-04-25
A COFFEE ESTATE.
METHOD OF RAISING THE POPULAR
BERRY IN GUATEMALA.

Selecting the Ground for a Plantation.
A Nursery of Coffee Twigs-Labor Per-
formed by Misunderstanding and Pick
ing-Ready for Market.
He who makes up his mind to create
his own coffee estate or "fnca," must
also be prepared to endure from four to
six years of the hardest work. In clear
ing he must chop wood, cut away under
brush and weed his land. He must be
ready to work from sunrise to shutdown.
Neither the damp cold of the morning,
the heat of the noon, nor the heavy after
noon rains should deter him from his
work. 1t is true he may hire native
labor to assist him, but that labor cannot
be depended upon should he turn his
back upon it. In selecting the ground it
is the best to choose a well drained sur
face, so that the heavy rains of the wet
season will not prove too much for the
trees and rot them. 1t is not necessary
to have one general slope, but hillocks
and hillsides give as good results as any
other surface; in fact, it has been my ex-
perience that the more inaccessible the
point the better grows the tree.
After his ground is well cleared he
starts his nursery by planting coffee twigs,
which for three years must be carefully
nurtured and attended to, when they are
transplanted to their proper places, each
being eight feet distant from its immedi-
ate neighbOrs. At the close of the fourth
year comes the blossoms, closely followed
by the fruit. Then may the proprietor
cOmplacently contemplate his growing
fortune; the beautiful Cube rose like
wi bo L., VI
fustrous green of the leaf, passes away;
then appears the green berry, ripening
gradually, first a delicate pink, changing
by degrees to a dark cherry red, when it
is ripe and ready to be gathered. The
management of tinca requires experience,
great activity, and attention to details
AS few are better able to care for children
than a mother who has raised them, few
are more competent to manage a finca
than he who has cared for it since its very
birth.
All the labor is performed by Indians,
called in Central America mozos 1t is
paid very low, and great tact is necessary
in it's management. The demand for
mOzos is no greater than the supply, but
the mOzo laborer can find enough work to
keep him alive almost anywhere, and as
he requires very little, even less than
Chinaman, he will not work more than is
necessary for his own comfort. He well
knows that his class of work is paid low,
and he recognizes the fact that he cannot
acquire sufficient wealth to hire others to
work for him; that is, he is labOrer for
life Thus, having no ambition, he will
suffer nothing that may seem to him to
be hard or unjust treatment merely for
the purpose of earning few dollars more
The average mozO character is composed
of few virtues and many vices-he is in
termittently fond of his family; he will
make them work, take their wages, get
drunk, and repay them with brutal treat
ment; he is born gambler, will steal any
thing he can lay his hands upon, and is
an unmitigated liar. His principal food
is the tortilla, slap jack made of ground
corn and water, raw sugar cane, baked
plantain, cinnamon, and all the whisky
he can get. The important work on a
coffee estate is to keep the "cafetal," or
coffee tract, "Clean;' that is, the ground
well cleaned of weeds and the trees them
selves freed from moss and all parasitical
growth which thrives in the damp locali-
ties. This wedding every three months
not only adds to the richness and abund-
ance of the berry in the ensuing crop, but
che ground being clean the berries which
ripen and fall during the gathering are
easily seen and saved by the coffee pick
ers. The value of the berry is so great
that many precautions are taken so pre-
vent the pickers from stealing it. For
this mozos of high class are employed.
designated as corporals and paid salaries;
each corporal is placed in charge of a
squad of pickers, and it is his duty to see
that no thieving occurs and that those
under him work. But even this some
times fails, and not seldom these corpo-
GALS are discovered to be in collision with
their subordinates.
The picker is paid in proportion to the
amount of coffee he gathers, a good steady
hand being able to earn so centavos per
day in the Guatemala currency, or about
30 cents in American gold. Few, how
ever, earn so much, for the mozo is a
devil may care" fellow; he will laugh
and talk instead of attending STRICTLY to