Tito | Episode 5
This is the fifth episode of Filter Stories, a podcast revealing the untold stories hidden in your cup of coffee.
Imagine you have a cup of coffee in hand and you think to yourself “who are the people behind this cup of coffee?”
Now imagine every time you take a sip of coffee you’re taken on a journey into their lives.
I hope to turn everyday coffee drinkers into wise sages, people who actually know how their morning cup of Joe impacts the world.
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Tito lives on a mountain in Panama, is a rebel and doesn’t listen to anyone.
Which is why he makes a terrible decision: he buys a coffee farm instead of getting an education.
Tito is now stuck, chained to a system that will keep him poor.
But Tito doesn’t give up without a fight.
He will spend the next 30 years trying to prove he hasn’t made the worst decision of his life.
Transcript
James Host: I’m riding in an old school bus towards a volcano covered in clouds, way off in the distance.
I’m in Western Panama — arriving into a small town called Boquete.
I’m here to meet Tito Bargas, a man with an extraordinary story.
We head for dinner — Tito orders burgers while a TV blares in the background.
Tito doesn’t speak English, so you’ll hear a voice actor.
Tito: Hi. I am Tito. Well, everybody here calls me Tito Bargas.
I come from a humble family. We all work in coffee plantations.
James Host: And to begin Tito’s story, we’re going to teleport to a different dinner table, all the way back in 1980s Panama.
Tito is 18 years old. He’s sat at the dinner table with his parents. Y’know, his mother passes his father a bowl of beans, the TV in background is blasting another advert Lada, a Russian car.
It’s an ordinary night for the Bargas family.
But not for long. Tito is squirming in his chair, his palms are sweaty, his heart’s pounding.
In a few minutes, he’s going to reveal a huge secret.
And to understand why Tito is so nervous, there are three things you need to know about Tito.
For one, he loves coffee.
Tito: I began with with his idea. A dream. I’m going to have a coffee farm. I will say to my family, to my father, to my mother. I said when I grow up I’m going to have a farm.
James Host: And as Tito grows up into a teenager, his dream of owning a coffee farm is finally in reach.
Tito has worked throughout high school and squirrelled away his savings. And now he has saved up a fortune.
Tito: There was a lot of money. I mean like $20,000. It’s just too much money to just throw it into an education.
James Interviewer: So what do you do instead?
Tito: Well, the idea was to buy a property, a coffee farm. But my parents didn’t agree.
James Host: And Tito’s parents wanted Tito to invest the $20,000 for a completely different career.
James Interviewer: What dreams did you parents have for you?
Tito: They wanted me to study. They wanted me to study engineering.
*musical interlude*
Tito’s eyes well up. This is the second thing you need know about Tito — he deeply loves his parents. He chokes almost every time he mentions them.
Tito doesn’t care whether the farm will make money or not — he sees this as an opportunity to be closer to his retired father — a piece of land where father can teach son how to grow coffee.
But Tito’s father doesn’t care about his retirement. He wants his 18 year old son to invest the 20 grand to becoming an engineer!
And this is the third thing you got to know about Tito — he is the ultimate contrarian.
Tito: The truth is, I’ve always been a rebel. Like, I have always done the things against the recommendation of advisors, consultants, professionals.
James Host: And back in 1980s Panama, there was a lot for Tito to rebel against.
Tito: There was no equality. No respect. It was a system of dictatorship.
At this time, Panama has an ugly government.
Noriega is the military dictator, and he’s making a personal fortune trafficking drugs, rigging elections, intimidating and murdering his enemies.
Tito: Maybe also the situation of the country forced me to choose a way of life…I didn’t want to support the dictatorship.
James Host: For Tito, a little piece of land, high up on the slopes of a volcano is the perfect sanctuary from the ugliness of 1980s Panama.
And that’s why, back at that dinner table, Tito is so nervous right now. Because, well, he had $20,000 to spend on his education.
No longer. Tito buys five hectares of land, where he plans to grow coffee.
James Interview: How did that conversation go?
Tito: They didn’t agree. They didn’t accept it. But what is done is done.
*music interlude*
James Host: Young, rebellious Tito is on a mission to prove to his parents that buying the farm is a better decision than getting an education.
But of all the farms Tito could have bought, he chose quite possibly one of the worst.
Here’s Tito’s sister Jacky, also played by an actor.
Jacky: Well, actually the farm, was before a cattle farm. That’s why the soil was very damaged. And when my father came and saw it, he says “let’s see if anything is going to grow here. Because the farm was very deteriorated”
[Coffee brewing sounds]
James Host: Tito is boiling some water in an old, worn out kettle, making me a cup of coffee.
Tito wakes up at 5am everyday and works on the farm in the morning alongside his retired father.
To make a living, he hustles in town from 3pm to midnight, operating a mechanic shop and sometimes driving taxis.
His coffee trees grow and grow. And then, in the early 90s, he finally gets his first full harvest.
And then, all of sudden, the global price for coffee, collapses.
We’re going to need a cup to get through this next part of the story.
The international price for coffee is a quarter of what it was just a few years before.
*musical interlude*
From $2 a pound to as low as 35 cents.
Tito: All my friends, everybody was telling me I was crazy. The only lunatic growing coffee with so low prices was me.
James Host: This is a disaster for every coffee farmer in the world.
Now, we’re going to pause Tito’s story for a sec while we investigate what’s happening over the fence in the farms neighbouring Tito’s.
Because they are in a massive crisis and they are very different.
They’re huge — ten times the size of Tito’s farm. And they’re rich —because these are coffee estates. Many of these farms had been bought by wealthy Westerners and had been passed down in the families for generations.
I bumped into one of the owners of these estates — Ricardo Koyner — in a convention centre recently.
Ricardo: Oh yes, I remember 60 cents a pound. The cost of our production was much higher than that. We had to give everything to the picker.
James Interviewer: Is that when you decided to get out of the coffee business?
Ricardo: Not only us, but every coffee grower was saying ‘we’re either going to plant potatoes, or onions or something else because it’s not possible to keep this.
*musical interlude*
But, these estates saw a ray of light in the dark coffee market. Some coffees were getting consistently high prices — Hawaiian Kona, Jamaican Blue Mountain.
When the international price of coffee collapsed to below a $1 a pound, the Hawaiians and the Jamaicans were selling their coffees at much higher prices.
And that’s because these coffees have unusual, distinctive flavours. They are sweet, with flavours of maybe fruit or spice and a luscious feeling in the mouth.
The Panamanian estates were growing something much less interesting. I find Daniel Peterson at the same conference — his family owns one of the large estates near Tito’s farm. I ask him — what did Panama coffee taste like back in the 90s?
Daniel: Coffees of Panama…and when I say traditional coffees of Panama it’s going to have a chocolaty flavour with a bit of citrus to it and a light floral.
So the neighbouring coffee estates near Tito ask themselves: How can we make our coffee taste as unique as the Hawaiian and Jamaican coffees?
And they look to the wine industry and they realise what they need to do. The owners of the wineries experiment all the time — they plant different varieties of grape in different places, play around with how the wine is aged — wood casks, metal casks.
The coffee estates had none of this. They weren’t experimenting.
And for the next ten years, the estates have their work cut out for them.
Meanwhile, Tito is on his little farm, and he’s getting paid just 40 cents a pound for his red coffee cherries.
*musical interlude*
Tito: It was very hard. Very difficult times. You see your friends, they graduated, they get jobs, professions, institutions. And I’m still here. I haven’t gone anywhere.
So I finally listened to my parents. I decided to sell the farm. After so many years of sacrifice and I haven’t got anything out of it.
James Host: Tito starts spreading the word in the community that his farm is up for sale.
But, as you can imagine, no one’s interested in Tito’s unprofitable coffee farm.
And that’s when he gets an idea.
Tito: After putting the farm up for sale, nobody wanted it. So I had this brilliant idea. I’m going to process coffee.
*musical interlude*
James Host: Let me explain. At the moment, Tito makes money by picking off the red coffee cherries and delivering them to a local mill. The local mill buys Tito’s red coffee cherries for 40 cents a pound.
Then they processes the red coffee cherries into green beans. The mill jacks up the price and then sells the greens beans up the supply chain, eventually arriving to a roaster, who turns them brown, and then they jack up the price again, and they sell it to you.
Tito realises he can earn more money if he just copies what the mill does. He just needs to get his hands on the same machines.
Tito: I talked to my father. I told him “we’re going to process coffee.” He told me “now you are crazy. Because processing coffee is a very big thing. The machinery for processing coffee, only big companies, big farms have that machinery.
James Host: But this doesn’t stop Tito. He carries bundles of paper from bank to bank to persuade them to give him the money to buy the machines. And, of course, they think he’s insane as well.
James Interviewer: How did it make you feel getting rejected?
Tito: I felt let down. I felt betrayed, actually. But it was okay. I promised myself I won’t go to those guys ever again. It was like a second time being a rebel. I thought, if we cannot buy the machines, we’re going to build it ourselves.
James Host: So Tito begins tinkering away, building every machine he needs to turn his red coffee cherries into packaged roasted coffee sitting on a shop shelf.
He finds random scrap parts from rusty old vehicles and busted up kitchen appliances and tries to imitate the industrial machinery.
For example, he tries to build a roasting machine to turn the green beans brown. He finds the drum from an old washing machine and an old car engine and fiddles around to get them to work together.
The day finally arrives to turn on the roaster. Compressed gas is about to shoot into a tank with fire and electricity wires everywhere.
Tito: The first time we turned on the machine, we put it behind a wall to protect ourselves. We didn’t know if it was going to explode or if it was going to function at all.
James Interviewer: What did the first coffee taste like that you roasted yourself?
Tito: Awful. Nobody liked it.
James Host: After a few years, Tito builds everything he needs to produce roasted coffee on the farm.
But now Tito has another problem. He can’t find anyone to sell the coffee to!
The big coffee estates surrounding him have export licenses and they ship most of their coffee outside of Panama.
Tito is trying to sell his coffee in his small little town, but there are only enough people to buy all his coffee.
As his house is fills with bags and bags of unsold coffee, his friends just make fun of him.
Tito: People were asking me “where are you going to sell this coffee?” I was like “if I don’t sell it here in town, I sell it to Japan!”
James Host: I mean, Tito is joking. He may as well have said he’s going to sell his coffee to the President of the United States.
James Interviewer: What did your friends say when you said that?
Tito: Before they thought I was crazy. And now they confirmed I was absolutely insane.
James Host: Undeterred, Tito now tries to get an export license. He wants to copy the big estates and sell his coffee outside of Panama.
Tito: So I was finishing the paperwork, and then my dad passed away.
*musical interlude*
Tito’s sister Jacky remembers this time well.
Jacky: At the beginning it was very difficult for him. Psychologically he was very affected. But then, little by little, he got better and he understand that’s life. That is our reality. We’re born, we have a family, and then we pass away.
James Host: And, two years later Tito’s mother also passes away.
*musical interlude*
And just as he gets his papers all finalised to export his coffee, coffee prices again collapse. They collapse to their their lowest level in 30 years.
Tito: It was such a traumatic time. As I told you, my parents had passed away. The economical situation. The business is not running. We had a lot of problems.
So I thought, and many of my friends also suggested it to me, I have to free myself from farm. I have to sell. I have to sell it and get money, as much money as I can and maybe live a good life after that.
The internet had arrived, so we advertised it in internet. We even paid advertisements in national newspapers. We were trying to get as many buyers as we could for getting the best price.
James Interviewer: And what was the reaction? Interesados?
Tito: No.
James Interviewer: For any price.
Tito: Nada. There was absolutely no interest. No one was crazy enough to pay for a piece of land, coffee trees and a pile of junk, rusty junk. My machines… no one.
James Interviewer: And how did that feel at the time?
Tito: A lot of thoughts came and went. Well, I understood I had to continue with the farm.
James Host: This is how Tito remembers the story. But his sister Jacky sees things differently.
Jacky: He did receive offers, yes. But then he said “no.” Maybe because he thought about all the sacrifices our father made for the farm. So he decided not to sell it.
James Host: The trees across the farm are the same trees Tito’s father helped Tito plant and he chooses not to lose that connection.
In the early 2000s, tourism begins picking up in Tito’s small town and he sees he can earn a little money from tourists who are curious to see his Frankenstein-like machines.
Tito: I don’t remember the day or the year. We had a tour of the farm. We had visitors visiting the farm.
And one of the visitors, he liked my coffee. And he said he was maybe interested also in buying.
It was nothing out of the ordinary. The whole time come people that liked the coffee and they’re interested blah blah blah. But at the end of the day, you don’t do any business.
And then some days or weeks later, an email came and it was our first order.
We had to do our first shipment out of Panama, to Japan.
*musical interlude*
And the price. We got $1.90 per pound. That was a great day.
James Host: To understand why all of a sudden Tito was exporting his coffee at a much fairer price, we need to jump the fence to Tito’s neighbours — the estates.
Because the experimental trees they’d been planting for ten years were finally producing coffee cherries.
And one day, the guy we heard from earlier, Daniel Peterson, he slurped a coffee from one of his experimental trees.
Daniel: This coffee…it was loud. Elegant. Loud. Delicate. Coming out with jasmine fruity notes and it blew me away because that’s not what you would expect of a Panama coffee back in 2004 on a cupping table.
James Host: This coffee variety is called Gesha, it’s an unusual variety that nobody had paid much attention to. As an aside, there’s a debate in coffee right now as whether it’s called Gesha or Geisha. I’m going with Gesha.
Gesha was brought to Central America in the ’50s from Ethiopia . From the 50s onwards, Gesha quietly spread to Panama because farmers liked that it was resistant to a nasty disease. But nobody really cared what it tasted it like.
But Daniel discovered that the coffee tastes amazing in the soil around his and Tito’s volcano farms, especially when its grown really high up.
And the Japanese buyer realised that Tito had Gesha. And not only that, the fact that Tito’s farm is so high, his Gesha variety tastes especially amazing.
*musical interlude*
Tito now owns some of the most highly prized coffee growing land in the world. Tito has joined an incredibly small group of coffee farms who sell their entire harvest even before the coffee is picked.
As our interview winds up, I see a bag of roasted coffee on the shelf behind Tito called ‘Coffee Royal’. I ask Tito to explain why he chose the name “Royal.”
Tito: These are initials of the name of my mother, Rosa, and the name of my father, Alfredo. Rosa & Alfredo.
They haven’t left. They’re still here.
*Credits music*
James Host: Thank you for listening. Stick around until after the credits to get a sneak peak into the next episode of Filter Stories.
This episode was really challenging to put together because Tito doesn’t speak English. But I really wanted to do justice to his life story.
That’s why I spent weeks finding a professional Spanish actor and we huddled over a microphone doing take after take for hours to find Tito’s true character. It would have been so much easier to get a generic voice over or just asked a friend.
If you think going the extra mile has been worth it, please share this episode with your friends and write a review in iTunes. The bigger we can grow the Filter Stories community, the more episodes I can make for you.
Now afew thank yous before we get to the sneak peak for the next episode.
I am so grateful to Oscar Peña Sanchez of Mucho Gusto Panama. Oscar hooked me up with Tito, acted as a translator and was so incredibly generous with his time.
Oscar: I will show you around this beautiful country, Panama. if you come to Boquete, just ask for Oscar.
The episode was mixed by Dom Edgley, a Berlin sound engineer. If you need to perfect audio for your videos, visit https://domedgleysound.com/. Links at Filterstories.org.
The Filter Stories logo was created by Headquarters, a branding and packaging design team. Are you a roaster and looking for new packaging? Send a hello to Headquarters. You can check out their beautiful work on their website.
A big thanks to Jacky, Axel and Tito Bargas, Daniel Peterson, Manual Barsallo of Paddle Coffee Roasters in Panama City, Francia Gonzales, Maria Ruiz, Ricardo Koyner, Wilford Lamastus and John Matíaz.
Thanks to Ciara Gillan, Aurora Sanchez, Carlotta Aon, and Kinga Pencak and Nate Sawatzky for providing editorial help.
Tito and Jacky were acted by Eneko Sanz and Ana Kavalis.
I produced and edited this episode and wrote and performed the piano music.
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