Coffee came to Mexico from the Antilles at the end of the 18th century, first to Veracruz. Exports only grew large in the 1870s.
In 1890 Porfirio Díaz and Otto von Bismarck arranged for 450 German families to settle the Soconusco, near Tapachula in Chiapas. Their coffee estates took names like Hamburgo, Bremen and Prussia, and by 1910 the region was Mexico's main coffee producer.
The workers often came from elsewhere in Chiapas, recruited through deceit, and from Guatemala. In the 1930s much of this land became communal ejidos.
At home, Mexico drinks café de olla. It is coffee boiled with cinnamon and piloncillo sugar in a clay pot.
Café de olla
How it's made. Coffee is boiled in a clay pot (olla de barro) with cinnamon and piloncillo or other brown sugar. Some cooks add clove, cardamom or citrus peel. The clay gives an earthy taste.1
How it's served. Traditionally served at wakes and on cold mornings.
What time is taking away
Street coffee from clay pots
In the 1800s women sold coffee on Mexican streets from clay pots set over small fires. By the mid-20th century most women made café de olla at home morning and night, but today many kitchens use instant coffee instead.1
What the record says
- Coffee reached Mexico from the Antilles at the end of the 18th century and was first planted in Veracruz.2
- In 1890 Porfirio Díaz and Otto von Bismarck sent 450 German families to the Soconusco near Tapachula.3
- Between 1895 and 1900 the Soconusco harvested 11.5 million kg of coffee.3
- Soconusco plantations recruited indigenous workers from other parts of Chiapas, often through deceit and entrapment, as well as workers from Guatemala.3
- By 1946 about half of the Soconusco's coffee land was held by roughly one hundred ejidos.3
- When the state coffee agency INMECAFE broke up in 1989 and the International Coffee Agreement collapsed, small Mexican producers lost price protection.2
- One version of café de olla's origin places it in the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917), made by the 'Adelitas', the women who followed the armies. It is nearly impossible to say who first made it.1
- Finca Covadonga, a coffee plantation in the Soconusco, is described as the rainiest place in Mexico, with about 5,000 mm of rain a year.3
The Revolution origin of café de olla is one story among several and is told here as such. The popular claim that it was Emiliano Zapata's favourite was left out because it is unsourced legend. Sources disagree on who first brought coffee to Chiapas: German settlers or the Italian Geronimo Mancinelli. Veracruz has only light coverage because no strong English source on Córdoba or Coatepec was opened.
- ¿Cuál es el origen del café de olla? · El Financiero, 2021 in the bibliography
- Coffee production in Mexico · Wikipedia in the bibliography
- Soconusco · Wikipedia in the bibliography
