This is an image from a Mazateco community we spent several years connected to, learning about cacao cultivation in the Sierra Madre mountains of Oaxaca - a continuation of a mountain range that spans our continent & a continuation of the Rocky Mountains, our home here in Colorado.

A community of Mazatecos now living at base of the Sierra Madre mountains in Oaxaca were displaced from their homes to build a damn. They were struggling to farm unfamiliar land when Profesor Nisao Ogata from the University of Veracruz reached out and offered to teach them how to cultivate cacao instead of renting the land to ranchers as they had been. If they were successful they could refresh the rich natural biodiversity and actually earn enough income to support the 20 families of their community. It would take at least three years of dedicated labor before they saw any profit and that’s when we met

During our first visit to the Mazateco community in Oaxaca we had the chance to meet a group of teenagers that were working with Professor Ogata to produce mini documentaries about cultivating plants using traditional methods; 'Milpa' crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary. Plants like cacao, corn, squash, beans, avocados, amaranth, chiles are all endemic to Mexico and grown by communities for centuries, in much the same way across Mexico. Their project would travel and be screened in a variety of different indigenous languages, sharing footage taken by other teenagers from distinct communities with the intention of encouraging pride and solidarity between farming families.

Bringing a new crop of cacao to harvest is a process of several years and requires guidance from a team of experts. Professor Ogata, head of the tropical trees division of the University of Veracruz is an internationally recognized expert on cacao cultivation. Utilizing his professional contacts he acquired healthy cuttings from the prestigious La Joya Estate in Tabasco and with the help of one of their farmers began teaching how to graft the premium, water-loving, aromatic cacao onto a varietal of cacao that was better suited to the soil of in the mountains of the Sierra Madres. The Mazateco community Professor Ogata was working with were brand new cacao farmers and these were their very first cacao flowers blooming after more than two years of dedicated, but profitless, study.

Still growing...the very first harvest a cacao tree produces is not always viable, the tree is still learning how to be a tree. It is building the necessary depth of root structure, the necessary number of broad green leaves, and the necessary connection to a community of flora and fauna to produce our beloved cacao.

During this time farmers must be patient. They must sustain themselves without cacao to sell. So to supplement income for the community a group of women began working with Professor Ogata on a separate project. The professor connected them to the Oaxacan Museum of Textiles and the group began learning how to use plants growing on their new land to dye thread for traditional embroidery.

At this moment in Colorado we were building a chocolate production facility inside a 26' truck to be able to process the future harvest of cacao from the community. Admiring the gorgeous results of the newly formed Mazateca Collective we proposed a paid collaboration with them for our new uniforms. Then elections in Oaxaca began, and the local race was contentious. Next, the U.S denied travel visas for the Mazateca Collective and the women were unable to showcase their embroidery at a potentially profitable indigenous art fair in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The 20 families started to get desperate and they needed income. One of the local politicians approached a small group of the Mazateco men in secret. With their permission he submitted false documents in order to obtain public funds to support his campaign illegally. In return he offered a small portion of the funds to the community.

With the promise of fast money the farmers focus blurred and the work of caring for the cacao trees fell to a handful of community members. Several times over the course of the previous years Professor Ogata had brought, at personal expense, harvest and fermentation experts from Tabasco to conduct workshops on traditional techniques. Now that it was time for their first viable harvest, many of the farmers simply were not there to do the work necessary. Professor Ogata traveled bi-weekly to the community holding meeting after meeting with anyone who would attend... it was heartbreaking and hearing about it at a distance was terrible. Our sadness gave way to a broader understanding of inequality, amplifying the echoes of a colonial past against the harsh colonial present. The tenderness of a bruised loyalty simply did not compare to the deep scars that were revealed.