As the shy farmers begin to loosen up and laugh, the demographics are striking. There are grizzled old campesinos, some without shoes, and there are teenagers, with bright polo shirts, slick haircuts, and skinny jeans, but there aren’t many farmers from the war-torn generation in between. Two of the participating communities, Maximova notes, have chosen some of their youngest men to represent them, a gesture that makes her hopeful for their farming future.
Helmer, one of these young leaders, is 18, lanky and thoughtful. He tells of the farm in nearby Alto San Jorge where he and his family grow three hectares (about 7.5 acres) of cacao along with their other crops. “When we started, we didn’t know how valuable [cacao] was,” he says. Then the war came to their corner of Santa Marta, and Helmer and his family were forced from their land for three years. Now, two years after their return, they are working hard to reclaim it from the pests and diseases that took over in their absence. They hope soon to have 20 hectares planted in cacao. “I am the new generation,” he says, with quiet pride. “I’m here to learn, so that when my moment comes I’ll be ready.”
Down from the mountains
The Arhuaco, too, were chased from their homes. Indigenous to the Sierra Nevada, the Arhuaco are descendants of the ancient Tayrona people, and cling to the life of subsistence farming they have practiced for a thousand years. They regard maize and cacao as the gifts of their ancestors.
When the drug trade exploded in the 1980s, Arhuaco land was coveted, first for growing marijuana, later coca for cocaine. Facing intimidation, forced labor, even assassination, many Arhuaco fled into the highlands, where they maintained small family plots of cacao. These days, with the security afforded by an increased military presence, some Arhuaco are moving back down, and bringing their criollo with them.
At a small settlement near a town called Perico Aguado, Arhuaco from several villages gather for a boot camp workshop. Some 60 men, women, and children form a large semicircle in a packed-dirt clearing, grouped in clusters under a towering mango tree. Their traditional white clothing and pillbox hats contrast sharply with the green of the surrounding forest. Twenty paces away, a plain two-story building, nearly completed, stands as proof of the government’s new commitment to development. Constructed by the U.N. with funding from the Colombian government, it will be a much-needed cacao fermentation and drying facility.
Guiltinan and Maximova were introduced to the Arhuaco about a year ago, on their first trip to the region. They have met with the tribe’s leadership several times since. Arhuaco concerns are as basic as not having enough burros to get their cacao to market before it spoils, Guiltinan says. Yet they’re also eager to learn about plant genetics. “We’ve talked with them about putting together a science team to send into their schools.”
As the mamo, an elder and spiritual leader, bids us welcome, his lengthy speech is translated from the Arhuaco language, Ika, first to Spanish, then English. He invokes the tribe’s worldview, which holds that the Sierra Nevada mountains looming behind us are the center of the Earth. His people, he says, have a sacred duty to maintain the ecological balance that exists here. Then one of the younger leaders, a serene-faced man named Hernan, steps forward to tell of what he saw last week in Santander. Valuable technical knowledge, he calls it in Spanish. “We have the culture of cacao,” he says, “but there are some new things we don’t know.”
Though grounded in tradition, the Arhuaco are in some ways quite worldly. Many carry cell phones stashed in their mochilas, the bright woven pouches that hang from their shoulders. They are rapidly learning the value of marketing: Cacao de Colombia boasts of using only Arhuaco-grown beans in its world-class chocolates, and Hernan himself recently traveled to Japan to help promote the company’s products.