Union of Indigenous Communities of the Isthmus Region

[1] In 1982 the farmers of the two municipalities, with advice from a Jesuit mission team from the Diocese of Tehuantepec, formed the UCIRI to help gain better prices for their coffee crop.

UCIRI gained legal status in 1983 and established contact with ARIC (Asociaciones Rurales de Interés Colectivo), a growers organization which had part of the Mexican export quota under the International Coffee Agreement.

The UCIRI launched an appeal that led directly to the creation of the Dutch Max Havelaar Foundation, which now unites 23 fair trade producer and labelling initiatives.

[3] UCIRI now exports to Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA.

Each community that is part of UCIRI names a board of directors and officials responsible for different aspects of the programs who serve for one or two years.

[3] The cooperative gives technical and financial assistance for local manufacture, handling storage and transportation as well as national and international marketing of the products, of which the most important is coffee.

[7] In 2003, the Fair Trade Research Group at Colorado State University conducted seven case studies of Latin American Fairtrade coffee producers including UCIRI and concluded that Fair Trade has "in a short time greatly improved the well-being of small-scale coffee farmers and their families".