‘They were talking at the back of the bar’: The story of Café La Habana, visited by ‘Che’ Guevara and Fidel Castro

Imagine going to a Mexico City café and finding your favorite writer sipping an espresso; being able to sip a lechero alongside a great revolutionary; or having hours of interesting debates while the aroma of coffee and cigars fill your nose.

A utopia that Café La Habana, one of the oldest cafés in Mexico City, achieved, as in its prime it was a meeting point for revolutionaries, writers, journalists, and great poets.

Although Café La Habana is no longer the place where writers gather for hours on end to sip cups of coffee and chat, great ideas and even supposed revolutionary plans have been conceived within its walls and tables.

What is the history of Café La Habana?

Since its inception, Café La Habana has been a meeting point for different ideals and cultures: it was founded in 1952 by a Spaniard in Mexico City, who sought to open a space for Cubans. “It was founded by a Spaniard who was nicknamed ‘the cent’ because he was very short. When he arrived, he didn’t know what Mexico City was. When he arrived, he asked where there was a Cuban area, and here it has always been a Cuban area,” Ricardo Mendoza Mendoza explains about its origins in an interview with Simi Televisión.

For this reason, Café La Habana was established on the corner of Bucareli and Avenida Morelos, very close to two newspaper offices. As a result, the place was soon filled with journalists. From the beginning, it was a place that writers made their own, as writer Guadalupe Pita Ochoa mentions in statements reported by the newspaper El País, where she recalls the atmosphere in Havana.