A Favorite Returns: Mexico Bella Vista Women's Group

If you've been with Andytown for a while, Rosalba Cifuentes of Mayan Harvest and the Bella Vista Women's Group needs no introduction. A true champion for Mexican coffee, she's become widely known in the coffee industry for her grit and determination to put her hometown community on the specialty coffee map.

Rosalba Cifuentes Tovia grew up around coffee in the rural Bella Vista community in Chiapas. The hardship she experienced in her youth motivated her to seek greater opportunities abroad.

In the US, Rosalba worked factory jobs for many years and, during that time, she noticed the rise of specialty coffee shops—many of which did not carry Mexican coffee. She knew there was plenty of good coffee grown in her motherland, so why wasn't it being sold in stores? In an effort to elevate the reputation of Mexican coffee and put Bella Vista on the map, she founded Mayan Harvest Coffee in 2017.

The original Mayan Harvest micromill in Bella Vista.

Early on, she learned that predatory middlemen (called "coyotes" in the Mexican coffee industry) would exploit smallholder farmers by operating in remote regions like Bella Vista and offering incredibly low prices for their coffee, often telling them that their coffee was not good. Without solid knowledge of coffee quality and with no other options for sale, farmers would settle for these low prices.

Froilan, Rosalba's cousin and head of Buying (left), and Dennis, Rosalba's husband and QC Manager, show us how to use their homemade tool to extract a coffee sample. Unlike traditional coffee sample tools, this one does not pierce the bag and helps prevent coffee loss.

To fight this, Rosalba offered to buy coffee from farmers in Bella Vista and neighboring towns at higher prices. However, the coffee would need to be clean and better sorted. Her insistence on strict quality standards was initially met with skepticism and contempt from many farmers. Many thought it was a scam. But Rosalba and her team soon earned their trust. Every bag that a farmer submits is fully inspected. When a bag is rejected, Mayan Harvest shares feedback with farmers and tells them how they can improve. While some farmers sell their rejected beans to buyers who accept lower-quality beans, others sort their rejected lots and resubmit the cleaned coffee to Mayan Harvest. For those farmers, the higher premium is worth the extra labor.

Our 2019 visit to Bella Vista, we had the opportunity to invite farmers to taste their coffees together. This was also the first time farmers had tasted their coffee prepared for export.

In Bella Vista, coffee is the only source of income for many, especially for older single women. Meanwhile, women with families are responsible for all household labor, including cooking, cleaning, and caring for children, while also managing their farms. Despite this heavy workload, Rosalba and her team noticed that women farmers consistently submitted cleaner coffee. Coffee from women farmers was rarely rejected. In a society where women rarely receive recognition for their hard work, Rosalba decided to separate coffee grown by women and pay them higher premiums to match the higher quality.

During our 2020 visit, we had the opportunity to meet with the El Progresso chapter of the Women's Group. Roasters brought coffees from around the world to share with the farmers. Rosalba is in the center, wearing an orange shirt with floral designs.

Rosalba knew that women needed more support than simply paying them higher prices for their better-sorted coffee. She decided to organize women farmers by district, and each chapter votes for a leader. The chapters meet once a month, share best farming and processing practices, and also develop other projects that can provide them with additional income. Any woman farmer can join the Bella Vista Women's Group as long as she attends meetings regularly and her farm is registered in her name.

Year after year, coffee from the Bella Vista Women's Group continues to charm us. When hot, the cup is dominated by flavors of "piloncillo," a Mexican unrefined sugar, and vanilla. As it cools, its sweet acidity crescendos, lingers, and reminds us of clementines. It has just the right amount of sweetness and brightness to be the perfect daily drinker!