Menos Coca Más Cacao
opening excerpt
Menos Coca, Más Cacao Chocó, Colombia is a land of happiness and hopelessness, of beauty and brutality. And Chocó is my home. I am Ana Marino, only daughter of Jesús Marino, un campesino—a poor farmer—un padre orgulloso—a proud father. He’s a proud farmer and a poor father too. Proud farmer, because after the peace treaty, instead of growing coca, for cocaine, he’s growing cacao, for chocolate bars sold in Bogota. Or, as he says, menos coca, más cacao—less cocaine, more cocoa. Poor father, because he spends all of his time now in the fields, ever since mi madre was murdered. And what do I wish for? Más padre, menas campesino. More father, less farmer. In the meantime, the land is my love. It speaks to me in the evening, warm breezes breathing on my neck, soft wisps of wind winding their way around me in a late-night caress. I’m awake and I’m outside for the same reason as always. I’m having trouble sleeping. And it’s a good thing too, because the motorcycles? Well, I hear them long before I can see them, so I race inside to warn father. Darse prisa!—Hurry up!—I whisper loudly in my father’s ear, and I shake him awake. And I don’t have to explain why. He helps me open the hatch on the floor, and together we gently lower it on top of us. It has the cheapest and ugliest rug we could find glued on top of it, so we’re quite confident no one’s going to want to steal it and discover our secret. In minutes, we hear them tearing up our home, breaking everything that can be broken, knocking pictures off walls, smashing glass. I can hear objects falling to the floor, fracturing above our hiding spot. And I don’t dare breathe.
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