Most of the rest were peasants or migrant coffee pickers.

Its eruption in October, 2005 triggered landslides that killed two coffee pickers and forced the evacuation of thousands.

In Kenya, nearly a third of the coffee pickers were children, a 2001 World Bank Report found.

An experienced coffee picker can collect up to 6-7 baskets a day.

Arturo is a coffee picker and his wife a homemaker.

United Nations human rights observers arrived in the midst of the showdown and persuaded the police to leave and the coffee pickers to lay down their machetes.

The plantation changed hands several years ago and a new absentee landowner is seeking to drive 80 coffee pickers and their families off the farm.

In the border province of Jinotega, two men on a military truck carrying supplies to coffee pickers were killed and five others wounded when a mine exploded beneath them.

Mr. Cristiani, in an interview at his office in the capital, said he was saddened by the news that the guerrillas had executed his coffee pickers.

Last year at this time, Mrs. Castro was on the road every day, carrying food to coffee pickers working in nearby fields.