Three Women in Panama’s Hills Turn Wood-Roasted Coffee Into Brands
Culture
Key Facts
—The growers. Deisi Velásquez, María Soto and Julia Soto grow and roast coffee in Santa Rosa de Capira, west of Panama City.
—The product. Their lowland coffee is pan-roasted over a wood fire and grown without pesticides or chemicals.
—The brands. Each woman created her own label: Café Deisivel, Café María and Don Bastides.
—The price. A half-pound bag sells for B/.3.50, roughly $3.50, since Panama’s balboa runs one-to-one with the US dollar.
—The break. They made their first fair appearance at Expo Café MIPYME 2026, a national showcase for small producers.
The story of Capira coffee is a small one, in the best sense: three women, a wood fire, and a product good enough to travel beyond the hills where it is grown.
The place is Santa Rosa de Capira, in the province of Panamá Oeste, an hour or so west of the capital. The growers, recently profiled in local press, are Deisi Velásquez, María Soto and Julia Soto.
Their day starts before dawn among the coffee plants, with rubber boots, a hoe and the smell of wet earth. It is unglamorous, patient work, and it has begun to pay off.
What makes Capira coffee distinctive
Panama is famous abroad for its high-altitude beans, especially the prized Geisha variety from the western highlands. What these women grow is different: café de bajura, a lowland coffee.
The method is what sets it apart. The beans are dried, hand-sorted, then slowly roasted in a pan over a wood fire, a traditional technique that gives the coffee its particular aroma.
It is also chemical-free by design. The growers learned to make their own organic compost from coffee pulp, manure and plant waste, feeding the soil without reaching for synthetic fertilizer.
That description, extra-fine, pan-roasted, pesticide-free, is not marketing gloss. It is the actual process, and it is the pitch that has started to win the women customers.
The composting lesson came through a local branch of the social ministry, which taught them to turn farm waste into fertilizer. It lowered their costs and, they found, improved the flavour of the cup.
How did Capira coffee reach new markets?
Through a government programme and a good deal of nerve. The three belong to a social-development scheme called the Redes Territoriales, which backs more than a thousand small ventures across Panama.
The support is practical: training, mentoring and a little seed capital. Crucially, it also helped each woman do something simple but powerful, which was to give her coffee a name.
Those names carry meaning. Deisi calls hers Café Deisivel, an acronym of her own name, while María sells under her own name and Julia trades as Don Bastides.
A brand, they say, is the first step to thinking big. Giving the coffee an identity turned a sack of beans into a product someone could ask for by name.
The programme also opened doors. It brought the three to Expo Café MIPYME 2026, a national fair for small producers, where they showed their labels for the first time and met potential buyers.
A first taste of a bigger stage
For women who had never exhibited before, the fair was daunting. They arrived nervous, sharing a stage with well-known growers from across the country for the first time.
The nerves faded when strangers tasted the coffee and reached for their wallets. Months of work in the fields, one of them said, finally bore fruit in that moment of a first sale to a stranger.
That validation matters more than the sums involved. Praise from established growers and paying customers told them their lowland coffee could stand beside the country’s better-known names.
For now the reach is modest, half-pound bags sold at around three and a half dollars in their own communities and at fairs. But the ambition has clearly grown.
For Deisi the effort is personal as well as commercial. She has spoken of using the income, alongside a separate family-support grant, to educate her three children and steady her household.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does a small coffee story matter?
Because Capira is quietly becoming a coffee name to watch. The district is a focus of a national push to make Panamanian coffee traceable and deforestation-free, partly to meet strict new European import rules.
For a foreign resident or visitor, it is also a reminder that Panama’s coffee culture runs deeper than the famous highland lots. Some of the most characterful cups come from small hands and wood fires an hour from the city.
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