Saint Mark
San Marcos is the largest town in our region. Including its villages and hamlets, it has about 23,000 inhabitants.
It's already a small but very dynamic city, and at the same time, it's the regional center for commerce, healthcare, and education, attracting people from all the neighboring mountain villages. Therefore, it seems more like a city twice its actual size.
In our city, we have a variety of events, two of which deserve special mention. In April, we celebrate our patron saint festival in honor of Saint Mark. Throughout the month, dawn serenades, festivities, and coronations are organized. Tourists also come from neighboring countries, as Guatemala and El Salvador are only an hour away. The second event is the Floral Games, which take place during the last week of October. The Floral Games promote our country's culture, literature, and the arts.
San Marcos is located at 970 meters above sea level. The climate is milder than on the coasts, yet still warm, which is excellent for drying coffee beans. The dry season begins right after the harvest, so we can dry using solar methods, which are environmentally friendly and result in a cleaner cup of coffee. The town is also strategically located in the valley that connects us to the Pacific Ocean to the south (El Salvador) and the Atlantic Ocean to the north.
We have been cultivating coffee in our mountains for many decades. Some producers are the fourth or even fifth generation of their family to work in the coffee industry. And although San Marcos is 45 minutes from Mercedes, and although there are several cooperatives in the city and its immediate surroundings, no fewer than 25 producers from San Marcos are members of the Cafesmo family. They appreciate the cooperative's emphasis on quality, fair pricing, and micro-lot preparation.
Some of our producers have very small farms, just one or two hectares. Most manage between four and eight hectares. A few have more than twenty hectares. But regardless of size, they all work with great commitment, and all the farms are located well above 970 meters from the city. Most are between 1,200 and 1,450 meters. In some cases, they are even above 1,600 meters.
There is ample natural shade thanks to the pine forests surrounding the city, and all the producers who are members of Cafesmo have been actively working to create shade with timber and fruit trees for many years. Agroforestry received a significant boost in the last decade, and during the devastation caused by Hurricanes Eta and Iota in Honduras in November 2020, we realized that the trees helped reduce landslides and erosion.
Several of our producers dedicate a substantial portion of their time to preparing micro-batches. They have direct relationships with roasters around the world, many in European countries such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany, as well as in the United States, and in some cases with China, Chile, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates.
However, no single producer can exclusively harvest and prepare specialty coffees, and besides, there isn't enough demand for the large volumes we collectively produce around San Marcos. Therefore, we all focus primarily on cultivating good washed coffees, which we classify and then group according to their varieties. This allows us to offer multiple containers of clean coffees, with attractive descriptors and consistent quality, to our direct international clients.
Community technical data
Area: Approx. 213 hectares
Altitudes: 1,100 – 1,600 meters above sea level
Most important varieties: Parainema, Pacas, Obata, Icatú, Colombia
Member producers: 25
Approximate production in a harvest of SCA 81-83 coffees: 200,000 kilos
Certifications: Fair Trade, Organic, RFA
