It was December 2015, we were busy filming the Guatemala Rainforest Reserve segment of the Puro Rainforest Films. Our shoot came to a close at our Pink Headed Warbler Reserve and Marco Cerezo, CEO of FUNDAECO was excited to show us another area of outstanding beauty he was desperate to protect.
Marco led us into the Cuchumatanes mountains and allowed nature to do the talking. Stunning rivers twisting their way through the damp forest, where moss and amphibious life thought to have been lost from our world for over 30 years, can still be found thriving in the moisture.
But Marco told us of a large foreign coffee consortium’s plans to buy the land and turn into into a giant unsustainable sun-grown coffee plantation. Not the first time coffee would have made its presence known to this area. An old Dutch coffee company once processed their coffee here, with ruins of a building still visible through the over-grown foliage. A hillside also showed the aftermath of a former small coffee plantation that had been wiped out from coffee leaf rust disease.
