vi Introduction, 



coffee and I have received innumerable requests for copies of the 

 manual from various sections of Mexico, and also from young men in 

 the United States who, having heard of the great profits of coffee rais- 

 ing, are disposed to undertake coffee planting in Mexico. I have 

 therefore concluded, in the interest of that industry and its develop- 

 ment in Mexico, to publish an English translation of my manual. 



My public duties for the last eighteen years have not allowed me 

 much time to make new studies on coffee culture, but the interest I take 

 in coffee raising has made me read all that came in my way on the sub- 

 ject ; and I also made in 1896 special visits to the new coffee districts 

 in the State of Oaxaca, Mexico, to study their conditions. I am very 

 sorry that I have not the time indispensable to revise this edition, and 

 have to publish it as it came out in Spanish, several years ago. To 

 understand it well the reader must bear in mind that it was written in 

 Soconusco County, State of Chiapas, nearly a quarter of a century ago. 



I am very sorry that my present engagements have prevented me 

 from revising this paper up to date ; that is, changing such views ex- 

 pressed in the same as my experience has taught me not to be entirely 

 correct, at least in so far as other regions outside of the southern coast 

 of Chiapas are concerned, as that would require more time than I can 

 afford, and in my inability to do that work, I prefer to use the paper 

 I wrote long ago, exactly in the shape in which it then came out. 

 Since that time, all circumstances and conditions of coffee raising have 

 materially changed. The price of land has increased twenty times, as 

 a caballeria, which was worth $50 in 1874, has been recently sold at 

 $1000 ; wages have gone up twice or three times higher than they were 

 then, and all the estimates of the costs and expenses to be approximate 

 to present conditions would be required to be at least triple, and in some 

 cases even this figure would not represent the exact cost. Besides, any 

 mistake, especially in the selection of a site for a coffee plantation, may 

 cause very serious losses, in the shape of increased expenses for plant- 

 ing and keeping it, and reduced receipts caused by small crops. 



In 1893 and 1894 I was involuntarily drawn into a controversy with 

 an American gentleman, who advocated the low lands of the Isthmus 

 of Tehuantepec as the best suited for coffee and india-rubber culture, 

 and in that correspondence I expressed some views concerning that 

 subject in other regions than the southern coast of Chiapas, which con- 

 tained some ideas formed since the book was written. I append to 

 this paper that correspondence. 



When I settled in Soconusco it was a wild county, which on ac- 

 count of its distance from the capital of the Republic, its isolation 

 from the rest of the State of Chiapas, and the unsettled condition 

 which often prevailed in Mexico, had made it almost an independ- 

 ent principality, ruled with an iron hand by an unscrupulous and 



