Gabriel Sangama is a chocolate producer and lives in Chazuta, a town of 8,000 inhabitants in the Peruvian Amazon. At fifty, and after spending a lifetime researching cocoa production processes, he is pursuing a local initiative that challenges the global agribusiness business model and ensures the development of future generations.
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Sangama is a graduate in agricultural production and a specialist in cocoa seed planting systems. This is the method to which he has dedicated a large part of his life: “First I ferment the cocoa. Then I dry it in the sun for seven days. Then I roast it and make it grain to produce the pasta, make the chocolates and package them. If we incorporate this process locally, we are going to eliminate the intermediary and thus pay a fair price to the farmers, ”explains Gabriel. And he continues, "It only took me two years to improve the fermentation process, I have researched my whole life and now I have to make people aware that this is not a short-term project."
Reformulating the production chain is not an easy task in a region where people are used to living day-to-day and submitting to intermediaries and large industries solving short-term problems for families. But if anyone can change that vision in the community it is Gabriel.
Once he managed to produce his first chocolate bars, he dedicated himself to touring Peru to make it known despite losing money and opposition from his wife. Within a few months, he was already receiving the first orders. Last year, it sold more than 3,000 bars to established clients, especially on the country's coast. It has taken him a lifetime to achieve this way of working that challenges the production model established by the large agro-industrial multinationals and western chocolate companies.
Now you are focused on the last phase of the production chain. “I produce pure cocoa, with ginger, with turmeric or with coca. If I add these ingredients with high medicinal properties, I am already giving a high value to my product. With the Sacha Inchi (known as the jungle peanut) I am already preparing an appetizer with chocolate. I think this is the key, giving added value to the product ”.
A project for the community
Chazuta is a community with a long tradition in the production and elaboration of products with cocoa. The families have made juices, honeys or even marinated with this ingredient as a base in their homes and Sangama is not satisfied with just taking their own project forward. You want to make your region a sustainable place not only economically but also socially. “I have studied all my youth, I have the formula and I want to give the tools to others to work. We must link them all now and that we have common sense with a vision for life and for the new generations. ” The farmer explains what the next step will be: "We plan to organize next month our first fair in which we are trying to get everyone to come to publicize and sell their products."
Once he managed to produce his first chocolate bars, he dedicated himself to touring Peru to make it known despite losing money and the opposition of his wife
From a very young age, Sangama was a person with a vision of the future, a way of seeing life that makes him move to a time even farther than that of his own existence. For this reason, he states: “People from abroad are already coming here to buy land and for me this is a threat that worries me. They leave the farmers without space and large estates are formed, as in the old days. It is like going back to the old life, always living as your workers and not being able to prosper or give our children an education. "
In short, competition between neighbors is not a problem for Gabriel or the community, but the best ally. Getting families to have an independent and sustainable way of life shields the region against an industrial production system that prevents its development.
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