San Juan

San Juan La Laguna is a Tz’utujil Maya town on the south shore of Lake Atitlán, where small-scale coffee production structures much of the local economy. La Voz Que Clama en el Desierto, a producer cooperative based in the town, organizes growers to cultivate, sort, and bag coffee for specialty export markets. The cooperative’s operations run from hillside plots above the lake through processing and quality-control work carried out in the town itself. Its model gives smallholder farmers collective access to export channels that would be difficult to reach independently.