In the winter of 1939, at the San Francisco Golden Gate trade fair, an advertorial film called Behind the Cup told the story of El Salvadorean coffee, from seed to cup. America was the world’s biggest consumer, drinking nearly 60 billion cups a year. It opened with a picturesque image of local Indians in traditional costume dancing under the Santa Ana volcano. A trade commentator intoned:
Far to the south, high in the mountains of Central America… studded with volcanic peaks, rich in tropical grandeur… Here at the beginning of the coffee season we find gaiety and laughter.
Bankrolled by the coffee planters, it portrayed a Potemkin village of plantation life. Just seven years before the film’s premiere, nearly 30,000 native Salvadoreans, in revolt after decades of toil and exploitation on the coffee plantations, were butchered by the state.
Augustine Sedgewick has written an dark, exhaustive, survey of what one commodity can do to a poor country that has the world’s richest neighbour as a market.
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