Cafés in Mexico from Mérida to Oaxaca

From Veracruz to Soconusco: how coffee came to Mexico

Coffee reached Mexico from the Antilles at the end of the 18th century and was first planted in Veracruz, but it was not exported in quantity until the 1870s. Chiapas took it up at the end of the 19th century and became the country's main growing region.²

For decades a state agency, INMECAFE, gave growers technical help, managed export quotas and worked to keep prices stable. It was dissolved in 1989, the year the International Coffee Agreement of 1962 was dismantled, and small producers were left exposed to world prices.²

The next blow was roya (coffee leaf rust), a fungus that weakens the plant and makes the fruit drop before it ripens. In 2016 Mexican output was 46% below its level five years earlier, according to the industry association Anicafe, and green-coffee exports fell from US$1,207 million in 2012 to US$394.4 million in 2015, on figures from the government statistics service SIAP.⁴

Café de olla and the Veracruz lechero

Mexico's own coffee drink is café de olla, coffee boiled in an olla de barro (clay pot) with canela (cinnamon) and piloncillo, unrefined cane sugar. Recipes add clove, cardamom or orange peel, and the clay itself flavors the cup. A popular account dates it to the Revolution of 1910–1917, when the Adelitas, women of the revolutionary armies, brewed it for soldiers, though no single creator can be identified.⁵

Veracruz, the first coffee state, has its own ritual. At the Gran Café de la Parroquia on the port's malecón, which dates its founding to 1808, you order a lechero by tapping a spoon against your glass. The waiter pours coffee to your measure, then fills the rest with hot milk from a pitcher held as high as possible. The café traces the custom to about 1890, when tram drivers rang their bells for a café con leche.⁶

Café Pluma and the Oaxacan coast

Oaxaca obtained a denominación de origen (protected designation) for Café Pluma on 4 February 2020. It covers more than 28,000 producers in the Costa and Sierra Sur regions, and an official standard for the coffee was published on 14 October 2022.⁷

Pluma Hidalgo, one of the covered municipalities, was founded in 1870 and was the first coffee zone opened on the Oaxacan coast. It sits at 1,340 m, about 200 km from the city of Oaxaca on the road to Puerto Escondido, and gives its name to café pluma, a Mexican variety known for its aroma.⁸

Mexico City, Oaxaca, Guadalajara and Mérida

Mexico City keeps its old cafés in the Centro Histórico. Café de Tacuba, at Tacuba 28 in a 17th-century mansion, opened in 1912 and hosted Diego Rivera's wedding banquet in 1922. Café La Blanca on 5 de Mayo began in 1915 as a lechería (dairy shop) and is known for its café lechero. In Colonia Juárez, Café La Habana has served writers and politicians since 1952, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara among them.⁹

The capital's specialty bars cluster in Roma and Condesa. Sprudge's 2026 guide to Condesa describes cafés that buy from Oaxaca, Chiapas and Hidalgo and often roast in-house.¹⁰

In Oaxaca the growing regions are close, and the cafés show it. Sprudge's 2023 guide found coffee "seemingly everywhere" on the city's cobblestone streets; one café there serves coffee mainly from Finca Las Nieves in San Juan Lachao, and another buys from local coffee-growing families.¹¹

Guadalajara came to specialty coffee in the mid-2010s. El Terrible Juan opened in Colonia Americana in 2015 and, with Matraz, Palreal and Taller de Espresso, was among the first to bring it to the city.¹²

Mérida's café habit goes back to the 19th century. The first known café of modern Mérida, the café and restaurant of Montillet y Cía. on Calle del Degollado, opened on 1 December 1861 and stayed open all day; in January 1875 Agustín Rivas Font opened El Regalo on the main plaza, modeled on European cafés, with concerts every night.¹³ A 1957 magazine account found men in guayaberas holding tertulias (regular gatherings) in cafés and plazas, with no women present, and was told the café there could steer political campaigns.¹⁴