Salvador Urbina

Salvador Urbina is a village in the municipality of Cacahoatán, in the Soconusco highlands at about 581 metres above sea level. It is named after a Mexican army colonel linked to the 1863 battle of Chiapa de Corzo. It had 2,722 people in 2020; the census counts 702 in 1940 and a jump to 2,849 by 1980, and the figure has hovered around 2,600 to 2,700 since.

Its reputation rests on coffee. In 2002, with first funding from Frontera de Cristo, a Presbyterian border ministry, the village's growers formed the Café Justo cooperative. Shade-grown beans are picked by hand on steep slopes, processed in the village and shipped to Agua Prieta, Sonora, where they are roasted and packed. A loan of about 20,000 dollars bought the first roaster; by 2008 the cooperative supported about 40 families and sold 485 sacks of roasted coffee, and it later grew to over a hundred families across four communities. Profits paid for a processing plant and a water purification system in the village, and the stated aim was that growers would not have to emigrate.

There is no set-up tourist attraction here: we found no opening hours, fees or documented patron-saint fair. A 2011 group visit described a quiet village with a school, clinic and library, host families, and a waterfall at El Águila, a nearby locality. Arrange a contact with the cooperative before going.