Spain introduced coffee to Puerto Rico from Martinique in 1736. By the late 19th century the island was the world's seventh-largest coffee producer.
Corsican families began arriving around 1830, and most settled in Yauco. By the 1860s they owned seven of every ten coffee plantations on the island. Yauco is still called Pueblo del Café and Pueblo de los Corsos.
After the United States took the island in 1898, coffee declined as sugar cane took priority. Today traditional haciendas are reopening in the Cordillera Central.
What time is taking away
The Mariani cotton-gin dehuller
In the 1860s the Mariani family of Yauco converted a cotton gin to mechanically de-husk coffee, a job once done by hand.2
Coffee harvest festivals
Yauco's Festival del Café, first held in 1975, is the oldest coffee festival on the island. Adjuntas and Maricao hold the Fiesta del Acabe del Café at the end of harvest.1
What the record says
- Spanish colonial rulers introduced coffee to Puerto Rico from Martinique in 1736.1
- In the late 19th century Puerto Rico was the world's seventh-largest coffee producer.1
- By the 1860s Corsican settlers owned seven of every ten coffee plantations in Puerto Rico.2
- Ángel Pedro Agostini Natali is credited with inventing a coffee grinder that helped bring Yauco's 'Golden Age'.2
- After the United States took Puerto Rico in 1898, coffee production fell as the focus shifted to sugar cane.1
- About half of Puerto Rico's coffee crop reportedly goes unpicked because of labour shortages.1
The 1899 San Ciriaco hurricane's damage to coffee is widely reported, but the Library of Congress page loaded empty, so it is left out. The claim that Yauco coffee was served at the Vatican was not found in any opened source and is left out.
