As the sun beats down to dry cherished Criollo beans in the main square in Chuao, residents of the village in mountainous northern Venezuela simply say: Behold the world’s best cocoa.
Of course, people in other countries, with chocolate on their happy faces, may beg to differ.
“If you are born in Chuao, your life is tied up with cacao,” Alcides Herrera said, referring to the cacao tree which yields the cocoa bean from which chocolate is made.
Photo: AFP
Since 1976, Herrera’s company, Empresa Campesina Chuao, has produced Venezuela’s only cocoa beans with a coveted appellation certifying their origin.
“As a kid, for example, when I was passing through the square, and you could feel a rainstorm closing in, you would stop to help gather up the beans,” Herrera continued.
“Ours are the world’s best cocoa beans. That has been certified and experts from many countries agree,” he said. “We process by hand with techniques that have been passed down for 400 years.”
Photo: AFP
More than 80 percent of the world’s cocoa comes from the Forastero Cacao Tree and less than one-fifth from Chuao’s Criollo.
Many experts believe the Criollo around here has a singular, tastier bean and they are top-of-the-list ingredients for many of the world’s top chocolate-makers.
Beans from Chuao total about 16 tonnes to 18 tonnes a year; it’s a tiny figure compared with the 18,000 tonnes Venezuela produces each year.
Recently, looking to boost output if possible, the government deemed cocoa beans a strategic crop. Now, 35 percent of the annual take goes to a German firm; 35 percent goes to a new state Venezuelan Cocoa Bean Co; and the remaining 30 percent to local producers.
“We have our eyes on the sky to see if any clouds pop up,” explained Maryoli Chavez, 32, one of more than 1,200 workers at the cooperative. “I like to work on the farm. We all do a bit of everything and make the same money. Some weeks I am on drying duty, other times I am out picking pods or breaking out the seeds.”
On this afternoon, three of Maryoli’s kids were playing at her feet.
The cocoa industry has traditionally been women’s work in Venezuela. Men tend to work in construction or the coastal region’s fishing industry.
On cutting duty, the women wield machetes with skill, lopping off the violet or yellow pods in seconds; a few men trailing behind pick up and transport the pods for processing.
The area is just 100km west of Caracas, but feels a world away as one has to travel in by sea as the town is wedged between a mountain and the Caribbean coast.
Edis Liendo, a local star among cocoa bean processors, has been at it most of her life and is now 60.
“I think the cocoa bean is something from the heavens. It was what the gods used to prepare as a special drink,” Liendo says, hawking candies, liquor and desserts at the door of her home.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last