Meeting the Women Behind Bankilal Café
Morning light settled over the hills of Tenejapa as we arrived. The air was cool, the landscape quiet except for the sound of water moving through the manantiales (water springs) the community bought decades ago. Each year, families gather to give thanks for them and we had just missed the festival the day before. Here, water is more than a resource. It is what makes life on these steep mountains possible, and it is where coffee begins.
We had come to meet Mariana and Araceli, the sisters behind Bankilal Café, a small but fast-growing family project that has turned their parents’ parcelas into one of Tenejapa’s most promising specialty coffee farms. Over a home-cooked breakfast and steady refills of fresh brew, they shared the story of how their family arrived here.
Generational Coffee
Their father once walked for weeks from Tenejapa to the big fincas (farms) near Tapachula for harvest work. He brought coffee seeds back in his pack. Those seeds became the ancestors of the plants still growing on their land today.
But for years, coffee barely covered basic expenses. Their parents considered giving up on the crop entirely. Like many families in Chiapas, they wondered if the effort was worth it.
Araceli stayed behind to keep the farm going. Mariana moved to Monterrey for work, where she discovered the world of specialty coffee. That discovery changed everything.
Learning to See What Was Already There
When Mariana first tried approaching cafés in Monterrey to buy her family’s coffee, she was turned away. She didn’t know the technical language, varieties, processing, altitude. But instead of quitting, she looked for answers.
A roaster she connected with on Facebook invited her to cup her family’s coffee. Sitting at the cupping table, she tasted her own beans next to others. Hers stood out. It was sweet, clean, and far more expressive than she expected.
“I was embarrassed to say I was a coffee producer,” she told us. “I wanted to seem more urban.” But those early mentors encouraged her, taught her cupping protocols, and helped her understand what she had.
She returned to Tenejapa determined to elevate her family’s coffee. The pandemic slowed things, but not her momentum.
Building Something New
Today, Bankilal produces washed, honey, and 72-hour anaerobic lots. An agronomist who visited recently confirmed what the sisters had begun to suspect: their altitude and soils are excellent for specialty production. Their coffees now reach roasters in France, the United States, and Guadalajara.
When their harvest fell short this year, they bought cherries from a neighboring micro-producer at a fair price, ensuring he could benefit from the same processing approach. For them, progress only matters if it lifts the whole community.
Throughout our visit, one point returned again and again. When we asked who tends the farms, who harvests, who maintains the trees, both sisters answered without hesitation:
“Without women, there is no coffee.”
Their mother kept the farm alive during the hardest years. Many families in Tenejapa share that same story.
What We Tasted
Before we left, we shared one final cup. It was balanced and sweet, shaped by generations of effort and a new wave of experimentation.
Coffee from Tenejapa is not just specialty grade. It is a story of women who kept the plants alive, of daughters who returned with new knowledge, and of a community that gathers each year to give thanks for water.
Mariana and Araceli didn’t need someone to tell them their coffee had potential. They needed someone to show them how to see what was already there, and once they did, Bankilal was born.