✭ Happy 2023 ✭

A thought for you on this tour around the sun: it's our way to to thank you of your support, for choosing to believe in us and to welcome Cocoa cocoain your life. 

Thank you for drinking our cocoa in your ceremonies and rituals, and thank you for buying our chocolates and letting yourself be enveloped by their vibration and authenticity.

We are really very grateful for your trust, and together with us, the people who cultivate all these precious cocoas with love and immense skill are grateful to you.

☆ When you choose Vaicacao you are contributing to a change of course, where even those who produce cocoa can and must be placed on the same level as those who process and market it. You are choosing delicate, meticulous, personalized artisan processes to create precious products that can warm your soul and make your day a little more special.

☆ In 2015, when we started creating the basis for our project bridge between El Salvador e Italy, or rather, Europe, we really intended to integrate the efforts of cultivators with wisdom, and those who transform and consume. By shortening this distance, we can be the spokesperson for both realities: to offer you as much information as possible about how we do things, to allow you to make even more informed choices.

☆ We have thus also chosen to create ourselves our products from cocoa beans, because we want to make sure that everything is done with the maximum care.

☆ We like to bring some of the mesoamerican culture to your attention, a little knowledge, why we feel that there is so much to tell, and that unfortunately a lot of false or inaccurate information, both historical and technical, can be read around.

☆ We have always thought that there is no sustainability, be it environmental or social, if you are not able to try a little harder and make it happen. This is a rule that we generally apply in our lives and in our everyday choices, especially in this era of strong climatic and social changes.

☆ For us the meaning of “fair or fair price” however it remains limited.

☆ Who determines what is right and fair in cocoa?To date, it has been the multinationals and large companies in the sector that have decided on the notorious "right price" together with the complicity of some international profit-making organizations. In our opinion, it is now used somewhat randomly, with reduced or limited impacts in the countries of origin. What does the word mean "ethical", if then in recent decades the conditions of those who cultivate have not improved, but on the contrary, there has been a progressive impoverishment of living and working conditions in most of the producing countries?

☆ In our opinion, this language we can call "post-colonialist", should also emerge from our common thought, a prejudice that is difficult to unhinge and which automatically triggers a thought of what is right and what is wrong, without any further study or knowledge of the subject. We are often amazed by what we read around and by the simplification of things.

When have we ever heard of fair price in the wine, or in oil, in pistachio, or in the preserves and various food specialties that we create here in Italy? We would like to help "decolonize" this approach to reality, because it makes those who work from morning to night feel inadequate and insignificant to make it possible for us to have cocoa and chocolate in our lives.

 

☆ We like to welcome the proposals of our partners in the countries of origin: they decide the price, because if their work is well paid, they can also live on cocoa if sold well. However, this is also only a starting point for us; there is so much work to do and our commitment is precisely to stay on course.

☆ These realities, which like us have decided to bet in the cultivation of fine cocoa, redeem lost local genetics, Together with history, culture and traditions, they are the key to the future sustainability of cocoa valuable. 

☆ I am key against deforestation and against the impoverishment of rural areas and their communities. This is the real challenge to have cocoa and chocolate in the future. There is still a lot to do, and awareness is very important. Let's say that ours has become almost a kind of activism, to build an equal dialogue between the various realities.

☆ Our cocoa plantations (term to define a cocoa estate, or plantation) that form part of our project, starting with our Finca Cuyancùa, as well as Finca S. Fernando (Atehuàn), Hcda. La Carrera (Lenca), finca Parras Lempa (Tlaloc), regarding El Salvador, Cooperative Nahua, Upala (Costa Rica) e Fedecovera, Alta Verapàz (Guatemala), have been designed in agroforestry systems that allow greater capture of Co2, avoid soil erosion, retain humidity and above all, allow a healthy coexistence between primary trees of the tropical forest and other species, creating an excellent environment for maintaining biodiversity, to grow healthy and luxuriant trees.

We thank you very much again for reading this message of ours, for all the times you have advertised us to your friends and relatives, and for having decided to place your trust in us.

We wish you a 2023 sextraordinary, in health, harmony, peace and a lot of serenity, in the company of ours cocoa.

Cocoa hugs

Elisa & JuanRa