The Jesuit José Gumilla is credited with bringing coffee to Venezuela in 1732. A boom in the 1830s made Venezuela the world's third-largest coffee exporter.
Oil ended that era. Commercial drilling began in 1917, and by the 1930s oil made up over 90% of exports. Today Venezuela grows less than 1% of the world's coffee.
Ordering coffee in Venezuela takes its own vocabulary. A guayoyo is light and mild, a negrito is small and strong, a marrón is half coffee and half milk, and a tetero is mostly milk.
Ordering a guayoyo, negrito or marrón · guayoyo / negrito / marrón / tetero
How it's made. Guayoyo is a light, mildly sweet black coffee, made with less coffee, by adding hot water, or by re-pouring water through grounds in a cloth filter. Negrito is a strong, sweetened black coffee. Marrón is equal parts coffee and milk; tetero is milk with no more than about 10% coffee. Guarapo is a very light coffee sweetened with papelón cane sugar, linked to rural areas.1
How it's served. Orders are tuned by size (largo, corto, doble), temperature (hirviendo, tibio) and the suffix '-ito' for a smaller cup.
What time is taking away
Guarapo
A very light coffee sweetened with papelón (unrefined cane sugar) instead of white sugar, associated with rural Venezuela.1
What the record says
- Jesuit priest José Gumilla is credited with introducing coffee to Venezuela in 1732.2
- A coffee boom in the 1830s made Venezuela the world's third-largest coffee exporter.2,3
- In 1919 coffee and cacao made up 75% of Venezuela's exports.2
- The first commercial oil drilling in 1917 and the oil boom of the 1920s ended the coffee era; by the 1930s oil was over 90% of exports.3
- After a 2003 price-cap policy, imports mostly from Brazil and Nicaragua reached about half of local production.2
- Venezuela now produces less than 1% of the world's coffee, and most of it is drunk at home.2
Drink definitions vary between sources, especially marrón ratios. We used the Matador Network guide's definitions. An RT Spanish-language list of terms was opened but not cited because it gave no definitions. Some sources wrongly call Venezuela the second-largest exporter; the third-place claim is from the Library of Congress country study.
- Mini guía para pedir café a lo venezolano · Matador Network (Español), 2015 in the bibliography
- Coffee production in Venezuela · Wikipedia in the bibliography
- Venezuela: A Country Study (economy chapter) · Library of Congress, Federal Research Division (via countrystudies.us) in the bibliography
