On a crisp morning this past fall, cooperatives from around the world set up shop in an Austin, Texas, church for the annual Women and Fair Trade Festival. While most of the vendors were veterans of collective organizing, one group of single immigrant mothers used the festival to debut their food cooperative, Cooperativa Posada. Three Mexican women—Silvia, Elideth, and Erika—and a Guatemalan woman named Hilda spent a near-sleepless night preparing dozens of their distinct regional varieties of tamales, some wrapped in corn husks and others in moist banana leaves. Nebat, the lone Ethiopian member of the cooperative, prepared some luscious, dark, traditional Ethiopian coffee by roasting the beans on a metal plate over an open flame, then grinding them by hand.