On International Coffee Day and during the Veracruz Coffee Festival, held at the Legislative Palace, Representative Victoria Gutiérrez Pérez, president of the Special Commission for the Care, Monitoring, and Development of Coffee Growing in Veracruz, announced the activities that the State Congress will undertake to promote improvements in this crop.
On the esplanade of the Legislative Palace, and in the presence of the representative of the Governor of Veracruz, Rocío Nahle García, the Director General of Religious Affairs of the Ministry of Government (Segob), Edgar Eduardo Ruiz Cervantes, and the head of the Ministry of Culture (SecVer), Xóchitl Molina González, the legislator kicked off the International Coffee Festival, which featured a host of artistic and cultural activities, with a high level of participation from producers from various regions of the state.
Following the ceremony, titled “Four Directions,” Representative Victoria Gutiérrez acknowledged the support of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo’s administration for the Mexican countryside, where the guiding principle is small and medium-sized producers, “taking into account those who need it most and setting aside the corporatist union politics of pretense.”
She added that the President’s support has included direct programs for communities, projects that seek to modernize production without destroying tradition, and a comprehensive vision that emphasizes coffee as culture, justice, and sovereignty.
She also acknowledged the invaluable support of Veracruz Governor Rocío Nahle García for Veracruz producers. “She has opened the doors of her government to the cries of coffee-growing communities. She has promoted nurseries to secure new plants, training to combat pests, roads that connect coffee plantations to markets, and, above all, she has listened,” she stated.
Speaking before representatives from the Secretariats of Tourism (Sectur), Veracruz Education (SEV), and Economic and Port Development (Sedecop), as well as Eric Domínguez Vázquez, Undersecretary of Finance and Administration of the Secretariat of Finance and Planning (Sefiplan), the representative reported that the Commission she chairs plans to hold regional forums in coffee-growing regions to listen to producers and, based on this, make proposals to improve the regulatory framework on the matter.
She said that, in addition to the above, she plans to monitor budget programs aimed at supporting coffee growers, “reviving the leading role of the State and reversing the damage caused by neoliberal governments to the country, the countryside, and especially to coffee.”
Among the actions to be promoted, the representative highlighted sharing competitive experiences with other countries so that, based on the exchange of knowledge and expertise, production can be increased and, in the future, we will be among the world’s leading coffee producers in terms of quality.
Participating in this event were Representative Guadalupe Vázquez González, Secretary of the Special Coffee Commission, as well as Representatives Carlos Marcelo Ruiz Sánchez, Ramón Díaz Ávila, Omar Edmundo Blanco Martínez, Luis Vicente Aguilar Castillo, and Juan Tress Zilli, members of the same body.
Also present were Rosita Martínez Facundo, of the Veracruz Indigenous Council, and María Graciela Hernández Orduña, of the Veracruz Coffee Council; representatives of the 67th Veracruz Legislature, state and municipal officials, and the general public.
As part of the Festival, performing arts activities from everyday life involving the aromatic plant were also available. art exhibits, regional music, a presentation of the Ares scientific project; an exhibition of the coffee planting, production, and grinding processes, along with the sale of this product by citizens of Veracruz; as well as keynote lectures by Lourdes María Balanzo Palacios, director of communications for the Cuban Institute of Music, and Cuban poet, narrator, essayist, ethnologist, and politician Miguel Barnet, among others.
Source: veracruz.quadratin
