Yanomami-Ye’kwana Indigenous Land - Roraima - Amazon - Brazil
Cocoa from the Yanomami and Ye'kwana indigenous communities represents more than the rich biodiversity and history of our country's lands. Above all, it shows the importance of this cultivation as a counterpoint to the illegal gold mining’s devastation, which is destroying the forest, contaminating the rivers and consequently the surrounding families.
“Cocoa is our forest’s fruit and a cry of resistance against the invasions that Indigenous Lands suffer daily in Brazil”, says Dário Yanomami, vice-president of the Hutukara Associação Yanomami.
Unfortunately, communities are increasingly suffering from the impacts of the invasion of illegal gold mining. Faced with this enormous challenge, Yanomami-Ye'kwana cocoa’s cultivation is an initiative to fight for the forests’ conservation in the Yanomami Indigenous Land, with 9.6 million hectares, focusing on the Uraricoera region, which was heavily affected by the mining invasion and its devastation.
Image Credits: Socioambiental Institute (ISA)
The initiative was carried out by Chocolates De Mendes in partnership with the Socioambiental Institute (ISA) and the BKK Institute. The project values the ancestral knowledge of these two indigenous peoples, and generates income for around 10 communities, who live on the Uraricoera and Toototobi rivers’ banks, directly threatened by illegal gold mining.
