- The Indigenous Paiter Suruí people of Brazil have reclaimed the coffee farms established by invaders on their land, in the process opening up a new source of livelihood and strengthening community bonds.
- Through training and partnerships, this Indigenous community has learned how to process coffee beans to specialty standards, yielding a high-quality and highly valued product.
- Today, coffee production is a significant source of income for 132 families of various Indigenous ethnicities living in Rondônia state.
- Growing coffee has also become an opportunity for the Suruí to tell their own story, through ethnotourism and the training of Indigenous baristas like Celesty Suruí.
- Coffee was not a crop traditionally grown by the Paiter Suruí people, an Indigenous community in the Sete de Setembro Indigenous Territory, deep in the Brazilian Amazon. The Suruí’s first contact with the plant was in 1969, which was also their first contact with non-Indigenous people.
At the time, Brazil’s federal government was encouraging settlement in the country’s Amazonian region, with promises of land concessions and better living conditions. The region was soon occupied by loggers, miners and others taking advantage of the opportunity. Hundreds of Indigenous people died, mostly from introduced diseases like measles.
“The people who invaded the territory planted some coffee trees. But they weren’t good plants, they damaged our soil,” says environmental engineer and community leader Xener Paiter Suruí, son of Chief Almir Suruí, a well-known figure in the fight for sustainability.
Following many conflicts with the settlers who had exploited their land, and with the government, the Suruí eventually won official demarcation for their Indigenous territory in 1976; the land was permanently handed over to them, albeit partially, in 1983.
That was when the Suruí began to reforest the degraded areas and learned to cultivate coffee. The plantations inherited from the people who had colonized the territory gave the Suruí their first experience as merchants — they started by selling the beans, unprocessed, in neighboring cities.
Based on their knowledge of the forest’s dynamics, the Suruí understood that coffee needs shade. They began planting coffee alongside other crops such as cacao, Brazil nuts, bananas and cassava, all without the use of pesticides. The agroforestry areas contrast starkly with the deforested landscapes surrounding the territory.
“They don’t plant large areas, but rather small patches and always at the edge of the forest. That way, the coffee absorbs everything the forest can provide, including water,” says Indigenous technical consultant Thamyres Ribeiro, who works for the Kanindé Ethno-environmental Defense Association and who has also worked with the Paiter Suruí for about 25 years. “The dynamic of this forest is nothing more than the much-studied agroforestry system, of which the Suruí possess authentic, ancestral understanding.”