José Antonio Gelabert brought coffee to Cuba in 1748. After the Haitian Revolution, French planters fled to eastern Cuba and built coffee estates in the Sierra Maestra foothills.
UNESCO inscribed 171 of these cafetales in 2000 as the Archaeological Landscape of the First Coffee Plantations in the South-East of Cuba. Each had an owner's house, terraced drying floors, mills, and flimsy quarters for enslaved workers.
Production fell after the 1959 revolution and collapsed after the Soviet Union ended. Ration-book coffee has often been mixed with roasted peas.
The Cuban cafecito carries a layer of espumita. It is sugar whipped with the first drops of coffee, and the habit moved to Miami with exiles.
Cafecito with espumita · café cubano / cafecito / colada
How it's made. Dark-roast coffee is brewed on a stovetop moka pot or espresso machine. The first, strongest drops are whipped hard into sugar until a pale foam (espuma or espumita) forms, then the rest of the coffee is added.1,2
How it's served. A cafecito is one demitasse. A colada is several shots in a larger cup, shared out into tiny cups among friends or coworkers. It is offered to guests, after meals and in times of good or bad news.
What time is taking away
Cafetales of the Sierra Maestra
171 French-built coffee plantations from the 19th and early 20th centuries, mostly in ruins. Cafetal La Isabelica has been restored and shows tools and slave chains.4
What the record says
- José Antonio Gelabert introduced the first coffee plant to Cuba in 1748.2,3
- French colonists fleeing the Haitian Revolution brought new methods and spread coffee into Cuba's eastern mountains.3,4
- UNESCO inscribed the Archaeological Landscape of the First Coffee Plantations in the South-East of Cuba in 2000. It includes 171 plantations in Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo provinces.4
- In the mid-1950s Cuba exported more than 20,000 tonnes of coffee a year.3
- Cuban output fell from 440,000 bags in 1989–90 to 7,000 bags in 2007–08.3
- In 2011 Cuba moved to add roasted peas to subsidised coffee and ended the daily coffee ration for children under six.5
- Felipe Valls Sr. installed Miami's first ventanitas, walk-up coffee windows, in the 1960s.2
The UNESCO World Heritage page returned 403, so site facts come from Wikipedia's summary. Pea-blend timelines conflict: the BBC says peas started in the 1980s, Wikipedia says after 1959. Some reports say chickpeas rather than peas. Cuba's harvest season (September–January) is from Wikipedia.
- Cafecito 101 · University of Miami, News@TheU, 2018 in the bibliography
- Misunderstood Drinks: Meet the Café Cubano · Barista Magazine, 2022 in the bibliography
- Coffee production in Cuba · Wikipedia in the bibliography
- Archaeological Landscape of the First Coffee Plantations in the Southeast of Cuba · Wikipedia in the bibliography
- Cuba cuts down its coffee fix · Marketplace / BBC World Service, 2011 in the bibliography
