Ambrosio ran out still wearing the shorts he wore to rest at home. Seconds before, he received an urgent call from his cousin’s wife, telling him that men dressed in civilian clothes had dragged him out of his home: a “kidnapping” was all he thought. In reality, it was the arrest of Minervo Cantor Peña, 62, accused by the company Agroindustrias Unidas de México Sociedad Anónima de Capital Variable (AMSA SA de CV) of setting fire to its facilities.
Ambrosio and Minervo are dedicated to planting, harvesting and selling coffee in Ixhuatlán del Café, Veracruz. The name of the municipality makes it clear what activity the families depend on, where the sculpture of a cup of coffee in the main park is one of the icons.
The two farmers work in the High Mountains region, on the slopes of Pico de Orizaba, which the Agri-Food and Fisheries Information Service (SIAP) calls the “Fortín district.” This region was positioned – according to the most recent report from June 2024 – as the first national producer of cherry coffee, which meant 128,889.53 tons of the fruit.
The purchase of this productivity boost is monopolized by a Mexican company, AMSA, established in the municipality for 20 years, and is part of the ECOM Trading group, a company of Catalan origin founded in 1849 by the Esteves family, with a presence in 40 countries, dedicated to the processing and marketing on a global scale mainly of cotton, cocoa and coffee.
ECOM’s commitments to “improve the livelihoods of workers and farmers” as well as “protect and regenerate nature” – according to its official website – contrast with the complaints of unfair payments and river pollution that farmers in Ixhuatlán del Café accuse of being caused by the facilities of the processing plant in the municipality.
This investigation documents for the first time two recent cases of reprisals suffered by Veracruz farmers after taking over the facilities of transnational companies, at the height of their demands accumulated for years in this entity. The complaints were silenced after the release of arrest warrants and two crimes.
Both cases open the sewer of a deeper problem. State authorities have added to spreading terror in small towns, where protesting can cost peace or life, contrary to the “policy of no repression” of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The arrests
Ambrosio Peña has an arrest warrant for the crime of havoc. He is sure that if he had not left home that morning of May 26, 2023 to help his cousin, he would also have been arrested in front of his wife, children and minor grandchildren.
Ministerial police showed up at his house and called him to try to get him to return; they said that “he was supposedly accused of kidnapping,” he recalls. This was not the case. In reality, he was part of the 12 arrests that were sought to be carried out and of which five were made.
Minervo Cantor Peña, Crisanto Valiente Miramón, Abraham Cabal Pulido, Ciro Ruiz González and Viridiana Bretón Feito were arrested and accused of setting fire to an AMSA office on January 24, 2022. Viridiana Bretón is the former mayor of Ixhuatlán del Café – supported by the National Action Party – while the rest are coffee farmers, including Ciro Ruíz, a strong activist and president of the Regional Coffee Council of Coatepec.
Prior to the fire, there were three days of protests with the takeover of AMSA facilities to demand that coffee be given a fair value, as they went from paying 16 to 11 pesos per kilo. They also demanded dignified and supportive treatment for farm workers, and an end to pollution with sewage from the river. The sit-in was lifted when they were alerted to the presence of police officers.
On January 31 of the same year, Governor Cuitláhuac García stated in a press conference that Viridiana Bretón encouraged “coyotes” to cause the fire. This is how the intermediaries who buy coffee from producers to resell it and then pocket the difference in the money in the process are known.
Francisco Faus Sotelo – AMSA’s director of operations – was asked for a position on the company’s payment complaints, to which he replied: “On Sunday, January 23, 2022, a meeting was held at the Veracruz State Agriculture Secretariat, with state authorities, the Secretary of SEDECOP (Secretary of Economic and Port Development), the Undersecretary of Agriculture, Director of Regional Policy, the municipal president of Ixhuatán, a committee of protesters where Cirio Ruiz, Lucio García, among others, were present. There, the protesters’ requests were seen and it was concluded that AMSA had not lowered prices, but that they were intermediaries/coyotes and that on the contrary, it was the company that paid the best.”
Before the end of January, the problem was personally addressed by Santiago José Argüello Campos, director of Agricultural Promotion of the Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER). After a meeting with coffee growers, which they believed would end with agreements in their favor, ended with a public support from the federal authority for Faus’ position.
“I see the company’s prices in line with the international market, the difference is only a few cents, so for that reason we do not understand the conflict,” she said, and pointed out that the presence of the company was “important” for the economic impact of the municipality.
Argüello Campos worked in “supply chain management” for AMSA from 2005 to 2008, at its facilities in Chiapas. Then, from 2009 to 2014, he was the national manager of the company, of the coffee division, from Mexico City.
“I was in the way of AMSA because I was looking for opportunities (for coffee growers),” says the former mayor, who does not doubt that the arrest warrant against her is a response to revenge for the actions implemented in her administration to give other marketing channels to producers. She confirmed that she was not in the state on the day of the fire she was accused of.
The five were taken to the medium-security prison of La Toma, in Amatlán de Los Reyes. “We were going with 20 patrol cars in front and behind, as if we were the worst criminals,” said the former councilor.
After the issue was exposed in the “morning” conference of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, federal authorities addressed the problem and three of them were released in one month and the rest in four months. On April 4, 2024, a control judge acquitted them by decreeing a dismissal for the crime of devastation, that is, he dismissed the accusations made by the prosecution against them.
Irregularities in the investigations lead to accusations from the Prosecutor’s Office
None of the detained peasants can explain how a complaint from AMSA, for a fire that could not be proven, motivated the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) to request arrest warrants and, subsequently, the linkages to proceedings against five of them.
The five peasants were released from prison because a judge changed their precautionary measure of justified preventive detention and then, Judge Daniel Orlando García, assigned to the Huatusco court, considered that there was “atypicality” in the crime of destruction, because the data provided by the Veracruz prosecutor’s office were contradictory, of which four points stand out.
Among the evidence presented by the prosecutor’s office, the testimonies of two workers stand out. That of Omar Xaca Xaca, dated January 21, that is, three days before the fire. Next, it was Miguel Ramos Cabrera, who narrated from the 20th to the 25th, however, the exact day on which his testimony was taken was not specified either.
The judge considered this evidence as “not suitable” as it did not provide information on the 24th, when the fire occurred.
The other point asserted in the document is that the prosecution and the ministerial police personnel did not fulfill their obligation to preserve the place where the fire occurred after being notified, in order to prevent the evidence and the scene from being lost or altered.
The work of the criminologist Faride Chávez Galán was documented two days after the fire, with the support of photographs of broken glass, ashes, furniture and burned papers, but the judge emphasized that the place was not preserved.
Another irregularity found by the judge in the investigation was the report on arson and explosives, which concluded that the fire was caused by burning paper and plastic and not gasoline, as the prosecution claimed and testimonies narrated.
Finally, there is talk about five witnesses whose identity has been withheld who admitted to having been present during the crime, after receiving payment from a person – accused – of 500 pesos to demonstrate. They were then allegedly encouraged to start the fire, which they refused to do.
The judge considered that the testimonies are not suitable to be considered as evidence, since the prosecution did not investigate them and they were not considered under any “criterion of opportunity.” To this, the judge added, that said testimonies insisted on the use of gasoline and Molotov cocktails, which does not coincide with the ruling.
Francisco Faus doubts that in the two hours of recess that the judge requested in the hearing to analyze “he was able to read the hundreds of pages of the file thoroughly.” He assured that “just as when the first Judge issued the arrest warrants, the accused opposed it, in the same way we will oppose it.”
Living in hiding
Just like Ambrosio, there are six other arrest warrants pending execution. They live in constant fear and trusting the prosecution if they decide to turn themselves in is not an option. The dismissal issued to the rest of the group is considered something “partial,” since it does not exempt the prosecution from arresting the rest of the peasants.
The coffee growers believe that the irregularities determined by the judge should be enough for the authority to drop the accusations against all of them and even cancel the six pending arrest warrants. AMSA can file an appeal to continue with the complaint, so they fear that the legal battle will drag on, draining their pockets with the hiring of lawyers.
Article 145 of the National Code of Criminal Procedure provides that the prosecution can request the cancellation of arrest warrants “when it deems them inadmissible due to the appearance of new data,” that is, recognize its error.
José Adolfo Herrera, another of the coffee growers who today has an arrest warrant, 20 years ago rebuked Francisco Faus Sotelo and called him a liar in a public meeting. The complaint was about the passage of a water pipe for AMSA through his land.
“If I cut the tube you will finish me off, because I am David and you are Goliath, as everyone is seeing,” was recorded in a video from the local media.
El Mundo de Orizaba
After four stomach surgeries, Herrera is experiencing the physical after-effects of a long recovery that prevents him from moving around normally and even from using a wheelchair. He cannot believe how he can be accused of participating in a demonstration, much less of starting a fire.
AMSA SA de CV
According to the Unique Registry of Commerce, AMSA SA de CV was incorporated as a company on November 30, 1998, in the registry office of Jalacingo, in the municipality of Perote, Veracruz.
Eduardo Andres Esteves was the representative of a refinancing credit contract for up to 100 million dollars, which was recorded in document 1003D. The mortgage of a property in Perote was kept as collateral.
Source: lasillarota
