By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Dec 4 2003 (IPS)

Peasant farmers in Barlovento, a coastal region east of the capital where the Afro-Venezuelan culture is at its strongest, have found a sweet way to pull themselves out of poverty: producing fruit preserves and chocolate.

In 2001, a group of women in Sotillo, located 50 kms east of Caracas in the state of Miranda, set up the Dulzura de Barlovento association (”dulzura” means sweetness in Spanish).

The women began to produce jam and syrup using fruit grown in the hot tropical region. Small farmers responded by growing more fruit on their land, which is mainly dedicated to cultivating manioc or cassava and plantains (greenish starchy cooking bananas), which are staples in the local diet.

”We have two lines of production here. One is based on traditional fruits like papaya, guava, passion fruit and pineapple,” while the other is ”a health-oriented line, marketing cayenne flowers, oregano, lettuce and carrots,” Carolina Pacheco, one of the women involved in the project, told IPS.

The idea first emerged in a course taken by the campesinas (women peasant farmers) on producing fruit preserves. The women then set up their own small business, peeling the fruit by hand, cooking it in their own pots and pans, and canning the preserves in jars carrying crude labels.

But Fundación Polar, the philanthropic branch of the country’s largest beer and food processor, Empresas Polar, began to provide the women with technical assistance to standardise their products.

”This has helped us support our families,” said Pacheco, 36, a mother of six, whose husband works stints as a truckdriver. ”But now we have decided to produce more seriously, to fill orders from our customers.”

The women have acquired a fruit-peeling machine, a large blender, and an enormous kettle to cook down the pulp. They are also preparing new labels for their jars, and are looking into the possibility of including bar codes, as some of their customers have requested.

The local peasant farmers also ”benefit because now they grow more fruit, and they know they can always find a buyer for it here,” said Pacheco.

The Dulzura de Barlovento association has won two international prizes, in the third Latin American competition for successful women-led economic ventures, held in 2002 in Cuenca, Ecuador, and in a contest for non-agricultural rural employment practices sponsored by the World Bank and other entities.

Meanwhile, a group of people in the nearby village of Birongo, 35 kms east of Caracas, have also set out on an endeavour designed to boost their income and living standards.

The forested hills and caves around Birongo served as refuges for ”free communities” of slaves who escaped from the big cacao plantations in the area during the Spanish colonial period and until the abolition of slavery in Venezuela in 1854.

For generations, the descendants of the escaped slaves, who lived in relatively isolated settlements, preserved their traditions and continued to grow cacao.

Up to now, they merely sold the cacao to factories that process the beans, or else they artisanally produce ”balls” of cacao which are melted in cups and served as hot cocoa. But a few years ago, with encouragement and assistance from the Fundación Polar, they began to produce their own chocolate.

”A total of 19 people, mainly women, have been working on drying and grinding cacao beans and cooking and mixing the chocolate,” Mercedes Zamora tells IPS, holding out a small bonbon wrapped in shiny paper. The rough-textured chocolate filled with a mango-flavoured syrup is delicious.

But Alejandro Reyes, the head of the Fundación Polar’s agricultural division, told IPS that the cacao beans are ground up by the local residents using rudimentary machines, and the resulting ground-up cacao does not have the smooth texture needed to produce fine chocolate.

”We have been doing this the way our ancestors taught us, but we realized that if we want to leave poverty behind, we have to move forward and jump into the big leagues,” Guillermo Peña, one of those involved in the venture, said in a conversation with IPS.

From Switzerland, the Fundación Polar purchased second-hand the equipment needed to install in a local warehouse a small chocolate factory that will process between 100 and 300 kgs a day and produce chocolate bars wrapped in aluminium-lined paper printed with a label.

The oldest members of the group chose the brand name for the chocolate: ”La flor de Birongo” (The Flower of Birongo) – a play on words, since ”la flor” also means ”the very best”.

The plan is to have the factory up and running by the end of the first quarter of 2004, on loan to ”La flor de Birongo”, which by then will have expanded the number of local associates involved in the endeavour.

The bigger aim is to hook the project up with an idea the local campesinos have been toying with: a tourism venture based on the production of cacao and chocolate.

”We can show the visitors what a cacao plantation is like, how the beans are harvested and toasted, how the chocolate is mixed, and how we make the final product,” said Luis Peña, another member of the group.

Several towns in the area are known for the tambor drums they produce based on African traditions, which are played in dances and religious celebrations. Other local residents of Birongo would like to work as tour guides, taking visitors to caves and rivers in the area.

According to Reyes, ”one essential element of these projects is to fight poverty by creating sources of non-agricultural jobs in the rural sector, and by giving rise to a production chain that goes from the planting of the cacao to the delivery of the final product to the consumer, generating income for everyone involved along the way.”

The Fundación Polar ”also supports other projects, from fishing in the eastern part of the country to the use of bamboo for crafts in western Venezuela. In all of these undertakings, women have played a key role,” he underlined.

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