We’re honoured to share this coffee from Allan Melgar, a member of the Café Colis Resistencia group in Casillas, Santa Rosa de Lima, Guatemala—marking our first year of partnership through Semilla. Rooted in resistance and resilience, this community of Xinca producers stands for land, dignity, and self-determination—values we’re proud to support through this collaboration.
Meet Allan Melgar
Allan Melgar and his father, Fernando, represent one of the largest and most established coffee‑growing families Semilla works with in Guatemala. Farming north of Casillas for three generations, they manage 28 hectares planted with both classic varieties and newer exotics like Gesha and SL‑28. While they’re known for producing clean, chocolate‑forward washed coffees, Allan began experimenting with natural processing in 2022—an experiment that quickly caught buyers’ attention and has since grown into a larger, more refined lot.
Despite their scale, the Melgars have long been limited to selling through Guatemala’s cooperative system, leaving them disconnected from their final buyers. Over the past four years, Semilla has been working to change that by providing transparency, stable purchasing, and direct market access. As members of the Resistance movement, Allan and Fernando also support smaller growers financially. Philo Coffee is proud to present Allan’s natural process—and the first in Ontario—helping share both the Melgar story and the broader work of the Resistencia.
Guatemala
The producer group around Mataquescuintla - known locally as Cafe Colis Resistencia - face perhaps the most adversity of any of the four groups Semilla works with. We were first made aware of this group by Drew Johnson of Bows Coffee Roasters in Victoria who -- after reading about the trials faced by one of the group’s leaders Alex Reynoso -- pursued all channels possible to get in touch with them and lend support.
Quietly Built, Loudly Opposed
For the Indigenous Xinca, the Escobal silver mine looms in the background, both figuratively and literally. Owned and operated by the Canadian-based Pan-American Silver, it’s estimated to be the second-largest silver mine in the world and was built without the consultation nor the consent of the local people, in direct contravention of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Yet, at this moment, it sits shuttered, its license temporarily suspended thanks to the organized actions of the Xinca people, who claim a long and storied history of resistance to colonization and infringement in their territories that dates back to the Conquest of Latin America. Canadian involvement in extractive projects in this area is well-documented and goes back a minimum of two decades. Escobal specifically was conceived in the late 2000s, and its potential existence was met by a series of local plebiscites and referendums held through 2011 and 2012. Due to its size, the profit a company stands to gain through this project is enormous, yet all the risk remains on the local people who must live with the guaranteed detrimental effects on the well-being of their families and the natural environment that sustains them. It makes sense, then, why all of these multiple plebiscites reported at minimum 93% opposition to the project by the local population. In the municipality where the mine was eventually built, San Rafael Las Flores, the plebiscite, was blocked by municipal authorities, figures who have now been exposed as recipients of benefits from Esobal and its local subsidiary, Minera San Rafael.
