In 2020, four compañeros, or friends, who met at CU Boulder’s Aquetza summer program began planting the seeds for a community-driven coffee shop called Ollin Cafetzin. The official brick-and-mortar location will open in 2024 in Aurora. It invites customers to reclaim culture through coffee, connection and education and will also feature an ethnic library.
The name of the shop comes from the Mexica indigenous language of Nahuatl, with the translation of “movement coffee.” From the start, the compañeros knew they wanted to source their coffee beans—arguably the most important aspect of any coffee shop—from an indigenous community. Three of the founders traveled to Chiapas, Mexico in February 2022, to build relationships with prospective growers in the collective Maya Vinic. They knew they were stepping into a place that was the heart of a social movement.
“When I was in college studying different social movements in Latin America, one that for us is really close to home is the Zapatista movement and just understanding the importance of indigenous people having autonomy over their lives and not being forced to be any other way,” said co-founder Cynthia Moreno-Romero.
The Zapatista movement began in 1994 when a group of rebels declared war on the Mexican government on behalf of Mexico’s indigenous people on the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect.
Living as an autonomous community on the outskirts of Chiapas, Cynthia explained that the Zapatistas support themselves by building their own schools and clinics and rely on the coffee bean crop as one of their main sources of income. The compañeros considered the Zapatistas’ history and established a relationship with their partners before making the trip. The group was in Chiapas for a week getting to know the Zapatistas and learning the ins and outs of the coffee industry.
“Through that experience, I was able to also witness the land and to see how the crop actually grows and that was really beautiful,” Cynthia said.
In April 2022, the compañeros were able to import the coffee beans to Colorado. As owner of Ollin Cafetzin, Cynthia said it’s important to her to continue the relationship with the indigenous communities in Chiapas.
“Our goal is ultimately to always ground our work in history and be able to build consciousness among our community of who the Zapatistas are and their political struggle and that there’s also a lot of [similar] social issues that we experienced here in the United States. Many communities are also experiencing oppression and it’s like, how can we share those stories of resilience and support one another across borders?”
Along with sustainably sourced coffee, Cynthia and her compañeros decided to include an ethnic library where guests can learn more about their history and reclaim their education.
“I always identified as a Mexicana, but I think understanding the historical context of the land that we are in, it definitely kind of bridges this consciousness to kind of dive in deeper and question a lot of my surroundings of what I was conditioned to in schools,” Cynthia said.
Co-founder of Ollin Cafetzin, Jason Romero, is a high school Chicano Studies teacher and director of the Chicano and Latino History project at CU Boulder. He shared that the coffee shop currently has over 500 books that have been donated by various members of the community. The library’s shelves will stock children’s books, young adult novels, academic and Chicano studies textbooks and non-fiction works, including several titles that have been banned. Although many of the books will center on Mexican and Chicano topics, the library will feature books for a variety of ethnic groups.
“When I think about this idea of an ethnic studies library and this book program, it really comes out of the idea that in the traditional education system, our history and our identity are not taught. It’s taught with a very specific agenda to try and make people more passive,” Jason said.
Cynthia said one of the central reasons the compañeros decided to incorporate an ethnic library into their coffee shop was the claims from politicians that critical race theory teaches children to “hate” the U.S.
“But really our thing is, ethnic studies does not teach you to be that. If anything, it grounds you and allows you to understand that you are also a part of history and there’s a place for you,” Cynthia said.
Their ethnic library will be wrapped into Ollin Cafetzin’s program called Books Not Bullets.
“The goal of the program is to increase literacy, so if folks read a certain amount of books if they come in and they have a list of books they’ve read, then they’ll earn a certain amount of points and they’ll get free drinks,” Jason said.
To inspire curiosity amongst guests to learn more about their history, Ollin Cafetzin will feature drinks that highlight historical figures, events and books that are featured in their ethnic library. An example of this can be seen in a drink that includes sabores, or flavors, of pear and green apple, with chunks of mangoes. This green-yellow ombre iced drink with hints of red, called La Adelita, embodies the “soldaderas who stood and fought in many battles during the Mexican Revolution.” The drink pairs with the book “Las Soldaderas” by Elena Poniatowska.
“The overall mission of Ollin Cafetzin as a collective, as a whole, is to reclaim community through different things, including coffee, the library, and the culture,” Jason said. “We’re going to be relearning and unlearning the things that currently exist in order to really build community. [And we’ll] consider alternatives and think about different ways that we can continue to build movement in our communities, whatever that looks like for whoever is coming into the space.”
