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Indeed, such is the local excitement that Peru's San Martin department, where Tocache is located, wants to put itself on the map as the chocolate capital of the world. Located in the lush tropics where the Andes mountain range gives way to the northern Amazon rain forest, San Martin has a wilder reputation from its recent past: for years it was a bastion for the rebels of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and the much more violent Maoist fighters of the Shining Path. Hand in hand with subversion came drug trafficking, with the surrounding countryside perfect terrain for coca...
...working to identify Peru with chocolate, the way Colombia is identified with coffee. We have the world's best beans," says Blanca Panizo, who works for the Alternative Development Program, a U.S. Agency for International Development-backed initiative promoting crops to replace coca. San Martin's top cacao producers hosted a tasting fair in Tarapoto, the department's largest city, in mid-January for a U.S. delegation including Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, who was in town for a day. Steinberg walked away with bags of rich, dark chocolate, telling growers that his two daughters loved chocolate...
Peru is the world's second largest coca producer after Colombia, with nearly 139,000 acres (56,250 hectares) covered by the crop, according to the UNODC. While land dedicated to coca has declined noticeably in San Martin, it has increased nationwide throughout the last decade. Eradication brigades eliminated around 25,000 acres (10,117 hectares) last year. A similar amount is targeted...
...cacao," says ITC director Enrique Arevalo. The work will eventually lead to the creation of a Peru-specific chocolate that could be marketed the way countries sell wine. Hiderico Bocangel, general manager of San Martin's Oro Verde cooperative, says Peru is already creating a niche in the chocolate world. "We have the perfect conditions here to produce exceptional chocolate," he says...
Read a TIME postcard on the world's best chocolate...