Veracruz legislator proposes launching coffee into space to spread its aroma

Deputy Victoria Gutiérrez Pérez sparked a contention successful the Veracruz authorities Congress by suggesting that outer abstraction could odor similar Veracruz coffee.

While participating successful a treatment of draught bills to enactment java increasing and java producers successful Veracruz, Gutiérrez claimed that scientists successful Veracruz person created a spacecraft that could let “outer abstraction to odor similar coffee.”

Veracruz is the second-largest java producing authorities successful Mexico, producing astir one-quarter of the nation’s java beans.
(cafedeveracruz.com.mx)

Gutiérrez — a subordinate of the Morena enactment that controls the authorities Congress, holding 30 of the 50 seats — chairs the Special Committee for the Attention, Monitoring and Development of Coffee Growing successful Veracruz.

The 71-year-old Gutiérrez projected boosting the dispersed of Veracruz java by utilizing the apocryphal spacecraft — which she said is susceptible of traveling to Mars — to transportation its aroma beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

“Don’t you cognize java is besides drunk successful space?” she said, adding that she has asked the scientists to show however the aroma of Veracruz java could besides beryllium contiguous successful abstraction arsenic portion of the state’s International Coffee Day commemoration connected Oct. 1.

Her statements, presumably delivered successful earnest, sparked a backlash successful Congress, led to questions astir her acquisition qualifications and prompted mockery connected societal media (here, here and here).

Deputy María Elena Córdoba, a subordinate of the Citizen’s Movement Party, said Gutiérrez’s connection “lacks each seriousness”  

Córdoba told the paper La Jornada that unserious proposals for International Coffee Day had travel from different Morena lawmakers arsenic well, citing suggested images depicting “astronauts successful space,” “families astatine table,” “sleepless students” and adjacent “a wake,” wherever participants portion coffee.

Such selling images, effectual oregon not, are hardly successful the aforesaid class arsenic launching a rocketship to dispersed the aroma of java into space.

Still, said Córdoba, “It is genuinely achy and worrisome that alternatively of addressing the existent needs of the sector, this committee is considering ideas that bash small oregon thing to resoluteness the underlying problems” Instead, she said, attraction is being diverted from the existent statement astir the incentives the assemblage really requires.

Opposition lawmakers importune the state’s much than 90,000 coffee producers — and the much than 200,000 Veracruzanos that beryllium straight connected java cultivation — person been severely affected by a caller autumn successful planetary prices, arsenic good arsenic clime change, and the authorities indispensable instrumentality steps to enactment them. 

Veracruz is the second-largest java producing authorities successful Mexico, according to the Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry (Sader). With much than 145,000 hectares dedicated to java cultivation successful 2024, the Gulf Coast authorities produces astir one-quarter of the nation’s java beans.

With reports from La Jornada, El Financiero, Aristegui Noticias and Diario de Xalapa