BOSS BARISTA
BOSS BARISTA
The Boss Barista Takeover with Cafetera Intelectual
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The Boss Barista Takeover with Cafetera Intelectual

Listen to Cafetera Inteletual's first English-language episode, 07: Rosalba

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Welcome to the Boss Barista takeover!

A few weeks ago, I put a call out to coffee folks, fans, and drinkers across the globe to pitch ideas about the podcast they’ve been dreaming of making—and today we’re turning the mic over to the first in our series of guest creators. 

Today’s episode spotlights Cafetera Intelectual, hosted by Doris Garrido and Sandra Loofbourow. Their show explores the connection between coffee-producing and coffee-consuming countries and is bilingual, sharing insights in both English and Spanish. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts, and new episodes come out every Friday. This is Cafetera Intelectual’s very first English-language episode, and Doris and Sandra are chatting with Rosalba Cifuentes, an international coffee exporter based in Mexico. 

The next voice you’ll hear is Sandra’s, and as always, you can find a full transcript of this episode at bossbarista.substack.com. Be sure to listen until the end to hear more about this takeover project, and to learn how you can get involved!


Sandra Loofbourow: Welcome to Cafetera Intelectual. We’re honored today to be featuring this interview with Rosalba Cifuentes of Mayan Harvest.

Doris Garrido: Cafetera Intelectual is a bilingual podcast hosted by Doris Garrido and Sandra Loofbourow. We’re two Latina coffee professionals living in the California Bay Area. Because of our shared culture and wide network of friends both inside and beyond the industry, we’ve heard a lot of amazing stories in multiple languages. We want to bring these stories to you.

SL: Today we’re featuring our interview with Rosalba of Mayan Harvest; you can listen to the original two-part interview in Spanish on all your favorite podcast platforms. Here, we’re giving you a glimpse of some of the amazing things that Rosalba shared with us in English, even though the interview was originally conducted in Spanish.

DG: Special thanks to Ashley Rodriguez for sharing our first ever English episode on Boss Barista. Thanks to our listeners and to our community. Bienvenidos a Cafetera Intelectual.

SL: In case you haven’t met Rosalba Cifuentes, let me tell you a little bit about her: Rosalba is a small Mexican woman from Bella Vista, Chiapas. Her outfit usually includes a shirt covered in colorful embroidery that’s traditional in her region; each style is from a specific town, and she can tell you exactly where it’s from based on the technique. Her hair is long and black, usually running down her back. While the decision-makers in coffee tend to be tall white men, Rosalba stands proudly among them. She’s a force to be reckoned with.

Rosalba Cifuentes: Es un placer estar aquí, de verdad. No es trabajo ni es un esfuerzo, es un placer estar acá.

SL: But how did Rosalba, who spent 20 years working at restaurant chains in the U.S., end up an international exporter of coffee?

RC: Lo que me llevó a estar en la industria de café son los recuerdos de mis familiares cuando yo era una niña. Segundo, la injusticia que hay en la industria del café. En el extranjero no saben todo. De ahí viene la idea de poder... de empezar esta exportación de cafe. Bueno, yo exporto e importo.

SL: She says that what inspired her first were the injustices she saw happening at origin, in her own hometown. Stories that don’t often make it out from the field. By taking control of the supply chain she was able to ensure that everyone was getting treated fairly.

I asked Rosalba, what is it about the coffee industry that has left an impact on her.

RC: Cuáles son las cosas que me han impactado mientras estoy en esta industria de café: la injusticia es uno de los impactos grandes. El saber que todavía existen personas que llegan allá y les dicen a los productores “te voy a pagar… no sé, el triple de lo que te están pagando en el mercado, pero te pago en veinte días” Los productores, por que el precio es tan tentativo, llevan todo su café. Luego esa persona de la noche a la mañana desaparece con su café. Es algo que a mi me impactó y me estremeció demasiado. Estar viendo la extrema pobreza de los productores, hasta personas que solo tienen que sobrevivir con dos o tres bultitos de café, y que alguien venga y se los robe, fue un impacto enorme para mi.

SL: First, she mentions the inequities of the supply chain. To this day, she’s disappointed to say that there are still so-called “coyotes,” coffee buyers who go to rural communities offering double or triple market rate for coffee. For smallholder farmers who only have a small handful of bags to sell for the year, this offer is hard to resist. Of course, the coyote can’t pay them today, but they’ll be back in 10 days to pay the full sum, promise. They obviously never come back, and the subsistence farmers end up losing their only cash crop. To know the harsh realities of life for these families and still perpetrate these crimes is to be truly heartless.

RC: El segundo impacto que tuve fue al yo traer mi café acá, sin tener mercado, sin saber dónde lo iba vender, solo lo traje y lo metí en la bodega aquí en Annex. Okay, ya esta el cafe aqui y… que hago con un contenedor de cafe? Mis veinte años de trabajo están en granitos de café. Me impactó tanto que yo iba a las cafeterías pero no miraba que tenían en sus menús café de México, siempre era café de otros países. Y yo digo, de chiapas principalmente, de Oaxaca, se manda toneladas y toneladas de café, como puede ser que no hay café mexicano aquí. Pero si, el café mexicano está en todas las cafeterías, pero está en mezcla. No es un café de origen. Tal vez han ido descubriendo más, pero muy poco. Eso me impacto.

SL: The second thing that struck Rosalba early on is that she wasn’t seeing Mexican coffees on specialty coffee menus. She knew first-hand how much coffee was leaving Chiapas, but it didn’t seem to appear anywhere on menus in consuming countries. With time she learned that Mexican coffees are often used as blends, not as single origins. She was disappointed to learn that Mexican coffees weren’t typically considered high-quality, and since then she’s been working to change this perspective. I would say that she’s achieved this; Rosalba is part of a new wave of high-quality Mexican coffees reaching the specialty industry, and thanks to her there are bags of single-origin coffee Bella Vista in hundreds of coffee shops around the world.

RC: Yo también. Me impactó yo misma al ver todas las locuras que hago.

SL: En eso estoy de acuerdo, yo casi a diario estoy impactada con las cosas que estás haciendo. Es increíble.

DG: Yo me acuerdo que una de las cosas que la Rosalba me dijo cuando yo recien la conoci es que queria poner el cafe de Mexico—mas bien el nombre de Bella Vista en el mapa de cafe.

SL: Bueno, ya lo logro eso

RC: Podría decir que ya está casi logrado.

SL: The last thing Rosalba says has impressed her in the coffee industry is herself, and all the crazy projects she’s been able to complete successfully, even though people said it was impossible. Out of all the incredible stories I’ve heard in this industry that I love so much, Rosalba’s is one of the most powerful, and one of the most unique. She has a tenacity, and a perseverance that’s unmatchable. Where others say “you can’t” she says “I can!” and then she does. In this interview we talk about just one or two of her success stories, but she has countless more, and none of them came easily. She has worked incredibly hard to get where she is today and I’m so glad that she’s able to take some pride in all that she’s accomplished.

Rosalba is particularly sensitive to the plight of women in her community. Machismo is alive and well in most of Latin America, and rural areas often experience it even more intensely. Being a woman, being Indigenous, are all factors that work against her. It’s part of what makes Rosalba’s story so inspiring: not only did she get out and build a life for herself, but she came back to Bella Vista and now runs a big successful company that helps support the people in her community. Everything Rosalba does is intentional, and this is one of them: She wants to make sure the young women in her community see what she’s accomplished, because if she can do it, why can’t they? She says women have to stop thinking we’re not capable, and instead get the “yes we can” mentality into our heads. We are capable of more than we think.

RC: De ser una persona con descendencia o raíces indígenas… Primero, en mi país es bastante complicado, por el machismo que hay. Hay mucho machismo en nuestras comunidades. Y fuera de las comunidades hay mucha discriminacion. Es muy difícil para nosotras que tengamos esta identidad indigena es bastante complicado para nosotras las mujeres. Solamente estamos para la casa, para ser amas de casa. Las pocas que hemos salido fuera de nuestra comunidad, pues ya viene la discriminacion, por la identidad de persona. Eso es bien importante, que como mujeres nos metamos en la mente el “sí se puede” y quitarnos el “es imposible”

SL: At the beginning of 2020, Rosalba was in Bella Vista getting ready to export that year’s harvest. She’s been exporting since 2015, and has achieved significant growth year after year. Rosalba is incredibly hands-on, and her growth is largely thanks to the fact that she herself travels all over the world checking in with her customers and meeting more. 2020 was set to be her biggest year yet. But everything changed with the pandemic.

RC: Ahorita estamos pasando un problema bastante difícil con la pandemia. A mi me agarro allá en la comunidad. Quedé prácticamente atrapada. Me di cuenta que se empezó a para mucho la venta de cafe. Bastante. Y así, de verle esas caritas sufriendo que si el café se iba vender o no se iba vender, señoras de 80, 86, 90 años de edad sufriendo por que es su única entrada de dinero. Están viviendo solas, y ahora su café se va quedar ahí porque no se puede vender. Entonces yo les dije “Bueno mis chicas, es tiempo de dejar de llorar y actuar. Vamos hacer algo.”

SL: “Mis chicas” le dijiste a estas señoras maduras! “Ya chiquillas, nos fuimos”

RC: Si, si. “Buenos mis chicas” les digo, ustedes no se van a poner. Les vi esa cara de alegría, y eso… Mi impulso de loquera al fin, cuando veo esas sonrisas que mi loquera les impulsó a algo bueno, eso me da mucho orgullo. Digo “Wow. Una cosa más que logro”. Y ya logre esto y tengo tantas más adelante esperándome. Tengo una línea ya de proyectos esperándome, la línea ya no tiene fin. Es complicado porque cada proyecto es un tope que hay que pasar, y hacerlo.

SL: She saw early on that coffee sales were slowing down. For many of the people in Bella Vista—especially the older women, single women, or heads of household—coffee is their only income. And now, their coffee was just sitting there, already harvested, processed, dried, and bagged, with nowhere to go and no buyers to take it. Rosalba had to do something. “Listen girls” she said—yes, she called the octogenarian grandmas “girls”—“Listen girls, we’ve got to stop crying and take action. Here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to roast the coffee ourselves.” And although she saw a flicker of hope on their faces, the women weren’t convinced right away. “But Rosalba!” they said, “it will take all year to roast this much coffee on the comal!”

But as always, Rosalba’s plans were much bigger. In fact, Rosalba only makes big moves. Her reasoning is this: If it takes the same amount of time to do a small project, with a small impact, as it does to do a big one … she may as well go all in. Rosalba found someone in a nearby town to teach her to roast. She took a two-week intensive training, and came back ready to show the women all about a different kind of coffee production: roasting, bagging, and selling coffee to the national market.

RC: Nos vamos a poner a tostar el café. Alguien me dijo: “nos vamos a llevar todo el año tostando café en el comal!” Pero porque ellas no sabían cómo se podía tostar tanto café en un día. Ellas sabían que en el comal se tuesta, y esa es la única manera. Es bastante difícil para el grupo de productoras allá pensar … dicen “que estás diciendo, vas a tostar en el café” Si les digo, pero no en un comal”. Me voy dos semanas a aprender a tostar café, regreso y nos ponemos a tostar café. Me fui las dos semanas, volví con lo poquito que mire, y empezamos a buscar un lugar más cerca que me quedara para poder llevar y tostar el café. Empezamos a tostar, envasar, y el café ahora está disponible y voy hacer apenas un tour por todo México para poder llevar muestras y empezar a hacer promociones.

SL: At the time of our interview, the coffee from the women of Bella Vista was already in several Mexican states, including large hotel chains, and Rosalba was preparing to embark on a tour of Mexico to make more contacts and increase sales. She knew that her compatriots wanted to drink high-quality coffee grown right there in their own country, and she was right. Her roasting market is thriving, and she continues to see it grow.

And the women of Bella Vista, who only knew how to roast coffee on a comal, who had never cupped coffee or even seen a roaster, are now running a full production line fulfilling orders of thousands of pounds of coffee and shipping it all over the country.

DG: Incluso antes de que empezara todo el proyecto de café, siempre estaba buscando cosas que podrían mejorar el nivel de vida de las mujeres de Bella Vista verdad? Yo recuerdo un cuento de unas ollas eléctricas, entonces … por qué no nos cuentas, Rosalba.

RC: Si, allí, aparte de todo este trabajo que les acabo de mencionar que hace una mujer allá en el rancho, hay que cortar leña. La leña es de las ramas secas de los árboles, y hay que cortarla y hay que hacer fuego para cocinar. En mi cocina tengo una ollita para cocer frijoles y arroz, y se me prendió la idea y dije, “Les tengo que llevar a ellas esto, porque esto es super fácil para ellas”. Entonces me voy a las tiendas a comprar las ollas eléctricas y se las llevó. Y le ha ayudado tanto que… yo no he podido llevarle exactamente todas pero… de hecho tengo una lista grande de seguir trayéndoles, porque ellas están tan fascinadas con algo tan básico como eso. Es una gran ayuda, y algo tan pequeño les hace más fácil el trabajo al grupo de mujeres.

SL: Even before starting her coffee exporting business in 2015, Rosalba was always looking for ways to help the women of her community. Women in Bella Vista are expected to work the fields side by side with the men, but they also have to cook, clean, and raise the children—responsibilities the men rarely share. This means waking up in the early hours of the morning to cut firewood, get beans on the stove and make breakfast before everyone wakes up. After working all day in the fields they come home again to chop wood, cook for the family, and clean. They work all day long. So Rosalba asked herself: How can I give them more time?

The answer came in the form of electric slow cookers. For years now, Rosalba has been bringing dozens of countertop slow cookers to the women in Bella Vista; even after all these years she still has a list of women waiting to get theirs. The cookers mean that they don’t have to wake up early to chop wood, instead they plop beans in there in the morning and by the time they’re back from the fields there’s food ready to eat. It’s a form of liberation, freeing up their time to do something else.

RC: Es bien curioso que muchas personas me han preguntado a mi si yo trabajo para alguien, y si esa persona me esta poniendo como la cara del negocio para poder avanzar. Les digo, no, es mi negocio. No hay nadie poniendo me a dar la cara cuando es otra persona la dueña. Son 17 años trabajando y ahorrando mi dinero más otros años más, en total son 20 años de esfuerzo que yo puse en este negocio.

SL: Many people think that Rosalba runs the company with her husband. Some ask whether she has a backer who’s using her as the face of the company while they manage the business. Let’s make one thing clear: Rosalba is the owner and founder of Mayan Harvest. She started these projects entirely with her own money and it’s her own hard work and dedication that’s gotten Mayan Harvest where it is today.

RC: Ahora, con el grupo de mujeres para tostar el café, para pagarlos fletes que mueven el café de un lado a otro, para comprar las bolsas, para pagar los de sanitización y de SAGARPA, son bastantes gastos. El envío de la paquetería, es un monton de gastos y son gastos que corren por mi cuenta. Ni si quiera se los hago saber al grupo de mujeres porque ya tienen bastante carga sobre ellas. Claro en un momento cuando esto está fluyendo mejor, ya de ahi mismo tiene que salir para hacerlos envíos pero ahorita les digo “son mis bebes y tengo que crecerlas.”

SL: In this new endeavor, the roasting project, she’s once again fronted all the expenses to get the business started. She looks forward to one day passing the management and finances back to the women of Bella Vista, so they can run this new business independently. But for now she knows that they have enough to worry about, and plenty to learn. “They’re like my little chicks. I’ve got to grow them up first, until they day they’re ready to fly on their own.”

Rosalba’s main business is green coffee. I ask her, how did she learn to become such a skilled cupper? She’s taken aback at first—despite running her business for five years, exporting, importing, and selling coffee, and now roasting it and teaching the women of Bella Vista how to roast, cup and do production—no one has ever called her a coffee cupper, a catadora.

RC: Pues fijate, primer persona que escucho que me dice “catadora.”

SL: Es lo que eres, estás organizando compras y ventas y tuestes y perfiles, no hay otra palabra para eso.

RC: Ay, gracias gracias. Fijate que me fui a tomar algunas clases con Katie.

SL: A lot of her training came from Kate Carguilo of Counter Culture Coffee, who would host the Tastings at Ten in Emeryville.

RC: Empecé con ella todos los viernes, a ir. Lo hice por mas de un año, y empecé a descubrir que podía diferenciar bien un café de especialidad y un café que noches de especialidad. Entonces con esa experiencias, esos tiempos que fui aprendiendo a catar el café. Tambien con Rosi.

SL: Rosi Quiñones, who worked at Royal Coffee at the time and remains a near and dear Cafetera Intelectual, has been another big support. When Rosi was training for her Q certification, Rosalba did a lot of practice sessions with her, and they learned together.

RC: Entonces cuando ella estaba haciendo su Q, fui también a algunas clases para aprender más. Entonces aprendí a distinguir entre los cafés de especialidad. Y eso se lo quise enseñar a las mujeres productoras de Bella Vista. Nunca en su vida ellas supieron que era, ellas escuchaban “es que el café tiene que ser bien procesado para que cate bien”. Y ellas decían “pero que es que cate bien??” Y entonces yo dije bueno, les voy a enseñar.

SL: Introducing the idea of cupping to the people of Bella Vista took some explaining, but they understand now how important it is that they harvest and process their coffee with the utmost care, precisely so that it tastes good on the cupping table. While the people of Bella Vista have a rich tradition of coffee drinking, it looks nothing like a cupping.

RC: Ellas lo preparan, lo tuestan en el comal. Después de que lo tuestan lo muelen en piedra, en el metate. Algunos lo muelen en el molino de mano todavía, un molino chiquito que lo vas dando vuelta y va saliendo el polvito a un lado. Entonces de esa manera lo hacen. Mas antes todavía lo quebraban en tipo morteritos también. Hay una trayectoria en esos de café, pero así es más usual usar la piedra o el molino.

SL: Usually, they roast the coffee fresh on the comal, and grind it on a metate, which is a stone slab with a rolling pin you may have seen people use to grind corn or chocolate. Sometimes they use a hand mill, or a mortar and pestle instead. Even if it’s not cafe de olla, the coffee is usually sweetened with piloncillo (unrefined sugar), cinnamon, and sometimes ground cacao.

RC: Mi café se ha exportado a Alemania, Holanda, Francia, Suiza, China, Dubai, pues… está en muchos lugares que ya ni en mi mente caben todos los lugares donde se ha ido, y está en casi todo los EEUU, y en muchas partes de Canadá también.

SL: Rosalba’s coffee has reached an international audience now; in 2020 she exported green coffee to a long list of new destinations, including Germany, Denmark, France, Switzerland, China, Dubai and others. It’s also in most of the U.S., and in Canada too. Next, she’s set her sights on a market close to my heart: She’s working on exporting coffee to Chile, where there’s a growing community of specialty coffee roasters and consumers.

RC: Mi meta ahorita en mi lista—de tantas que tengo—es exportar café a Chile.

SL: Siiii, esa! Escucharon eso chiquillos? Ya va llegar el café Mayan Harvest a Chile.

RC: Si! En eso estamos trabajando ahorita. Ya tengo varios contactos, y están bastante interesados en esa área de café de especialidad. Y me dice un chico: “Yo voy a abrir una cafetería, y la quiero abrir con café mexicano, y tiene que ser el tuyo.” Estaba como loca mirando el mensaje diciendo “Si! Si!!” bien emocionada. Y hay veces que, entre tantas emociones, hay veces en que se me salen las lágrimas por que digo yo, wow. Como aquella personita que llegó a este país cuando tenía solo 16 años de edad, perdida, sin saber leer ni escribir, trabajando en un restaurante, otra idioma. Ahora ya me veo toda una importadora y exportadora de café. Me estoy convirtiendo en una exportadora e importadora internacional.

SL: Sometimes she thinks about the young, abused, 16-year-old girl who came to the U.S. without being able to read or write, let alone speak the language. Now she’s a fully fledged importer/exporter with her sights set on international markets. She likes big challenges—after all, if she’s going to spend time on something she may as well make it as impactful as possible.

RC: Me gustan los retos grandes. Por que, pierdo mi tiempo en retos chiquitos lo mismo que en un reto grande, y en un reto grande voy a tener un impacto mucho mejor. Entonces siempre voy arriba, arriba.

SL: And her projects are BIG; often when she tells me about a new endeavor it takes me a beat to understand the scale she’s talking about. Doris and I have started to call it the “Rosalba Scale.” Whatever you think the Rosalba Scale is, I can promise she’s thinking bigger than that.

RC: Siempre les doy ese mensaje a muchas mujeres, que tal vez me ven como la loquita que anda haciendo tantas cosas por allá y tantas cosas por acá. Pero yo quisiera aparte de pensar en esa manera también sea yo una inspiración, y que digan “si ella puede hacerlo, por que yo no.” Hay que aventarnos, si te salieron mal las cosas levántate y aguantate y sigue haciendo mas.

SL: She wants to be a role model; if there’s anyone out there debating whether or not to embark on a project, Rosalba is here to tell you to go for it. If it doesn’t go well, that’s okay! Pick yourself up and try again! Odds are you’re capable of much more than you think.

RC: Yo estoy muy segura de lo que hago. Mi fuerte es que yo tengo muchas amistades que me apoyan demasiado. Eso es una gran ayuda. Mi consulado Mexicano a mi me a servido de mucho apoyo. Cuando yo necesito algo le llamó a un chico o una chica que está ahí en el consulado y le digo “Saben qué, necesito este permiso” y pum me mando en link. Y me meto y ya es todo. Mi consulado es algo que me ha servido bastante, me ayudan bastante. Y si hay cosas que ellos no saben, yo igual sigo preguntando, sigo llamando, sigo buscando soluciones. Mi perseverancia en lo que quiero es mas que nada mi secreto mas grande. Si aquí me dijeron “no se,” y en el otro me dicen “tampoco sé, tampoco sé” yo sigo buscando el “aqui esta.”

SL: Rosalba says that her greatest strengths are her perseverance, and her friendships. When faced with a new challenge, she’ll start asking around: “Do you know how to do this? Do you?” and no matter how many people she has to ask, she keeps searching until she finds the information she’s looking for. She makes phone calls, researching, searching, until she gets what she needs to make things happen. And then, she makes them happen. When we met several years ago to talk about the Chilean specialty coffee scene, I warned her that importation laws are particularly strict in Chile, and to expect having trouble getting the correct paperwork in order. She called me the next day to let me know that she had already gotten the licenses she needed and was ready to start sending coffee.

Doris and I are lucky enough to call Rosalba a friend, which means we’ve been able to taste her delicious food. Let me tell you, this woman can COOK.

RC: Tengo varios platos que son mis favoritos, pero el que realmente disfruto hacerlo es el mole. Hay infinidades de diferentes chiles: chile ancho, chile puya, guajillo, chile pasa, chile cascabel, chile de árbol, chipotle.

SL: I ask her what her favorite dish is, and she says: Mole. It’s a very traditional saucy Mexican dish that uses a medley of peppers, nuts, seeds, and spices. She starts listing the chiles first: Puya, Guajillo, Ancho, Pasa, Cascabel, Arbol, Chipotle. In with these go the seeds and spices: almonds, pumpkin seeds, pepper, cumin, garlic, onion. She likes to grill the chiles first, before grinding them on the metate. It’s a ton of work, just prepping all these ingredients can take hours, and then it has to simmer on the stove. She says it’s worth it—if it’s done right.

RC: La otra manera es que me pongo a freír los chiles, los pongo a la licuadora, los muelo, lo cuelo, pongo a hervir el pollo y ya está.

DG: Esa es la facil.

RC: Pero el sabor no es lo mismo! El otro lo haces con cada detalle, que quede bien asadito los chiles, que queden las almendras dorados bien, que no se queme… el sabor es totalmente diferente.

SL: I love mole, and I love to cook, but mole is a complicated dish. I ask her if there’s an easy recipe she can give me. Begrudgingly, she says that sometimes she puts the chiles and everything else in the blender to save some time, but then quickly says that it’s really not worth it. The whole point of mole is that it’s a labor of love; if you’re not going to put the time in and do it right, why bother doing it at all?

And this is the perfect metaphor for Rosalba’s work ethic. If she’s going to take something on, no matter how big or complicated the project, no matter how many people tell her it can’t be done, she will do it the right way, and nine times out of 10, she will succeed.

SL: El mole me suena un poco a cómo manejas tu negocio también. No puede ser fácil, tiene todo que ser de escala enorme, y bien hecho.

DG: No le gustan las recetas faciles.

RC: Si, tienes razón. Yo creo que me gustan los retos difíciles porque si yo voy a ser una inspiración para el resto de mis compañeras mujeres quiero ser una inspiración buena. Mi mensaje es que hay que luchar para tener lo que queremos tener, y no tener miedo a que nos digan “tu eres mujer y no puedes hacer lo mismo que hace un hombre,” por que eso no es verdad. Somos capaces de hacer lo que un hombre hace y más todavía.

SL: “If I’m going to be an inspiration, I want to be a good one,” she says. “Not someone who goes half way and calls it good enough. We’ve got to fight to get what we want. We can’t be afraid, we can’t listen when they tell us that we can’t do as much as men can. We can, and we will.”

SL: Ya nos diste un poco de legitimidad oye.

DG: Empezamos grande.

RC: Gracias por elegirme para estar en su show. Yo me siento muy halagada por eso, muchísimas gracias.

SL: No gracias a usted Rosalba. Y hasta la proxima en realidad por que ya te comprometiste a unirte a al menos un episodio más.

RC: A claro, a uno o muchos más.

SL: Fantástico, queda aquí grabado.

RC: Gracias entonces!

SL: Cafetera Intelectual is an independent podcast produced by Doris Garrido and Sandra Loofbourow. Follow us on Instagram @cafeteraintelectual, on Twitter @cafeterapod, or visit our website cafeteraintelectual.com. Join our Patreon and help us keep producing unique content for the coffee community. Hasta la proxima, we’ll see you next time.


That was Cafetera Intelectual!

Over the next few weeks, you’ll hear more stories from guest creators—some will be launching their own podcasts, and some are doing one-off audio projects. Thanks to Chobani, all creators will be paid for their time, but Sandra and Doris elected to have their payment made as a donation to RAICES, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.

If you liked this episode, you can do two things! One, go subscribe to their show—there are way more episodes for you to listen to right now—and two, make a donation to RAICES. Tell the team at Cafetera Intelectual that you love their work by supporting legal and social services for immigrants. 

Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week. 

BOSS BARISTA
BOSS BARISTA
A newsletter and podcast about a thing you drink everyday. Interviews and articles about big ideas in coffee, the service industry, and collective action.