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Peru has a longstanding reputation for its quality cacao. In the past decade, it has also attracted attention as a craft chocolate hot-spot with a tantalizingly long list of must-try makers. Indeed, from 2015 through 2019, a boom of more than 50 craft chocolate…
On Tuesday, September 9, 1645, at 12 noon, the cocoa trader Antonio Méndez Chillón was arrested at his home in Veracruz (New Spain) by the Inquisition commissioner and charged with Jewish heresy. This episode, which was far from being isolated, helps shed…
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English + Español
Back in 2006, we became intrigued about a chocolate company in Venezuela. Rohit had done quite a bit of work on companies that were integrating country of origin into their product branding. He called it the Provenance Paradox. As Director of HBS’s Latin America…
In 2005, a company named Taza debuted a new way to do chocolate. The disc-shaped bars produced in their Somerville, Massachusetts factory were minimally processed from from ethically-sourced cacao and contained only ingredients that might…
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Maya women were the artisans who invented a panoply of ancient beverages and sauces containing cacao. This association between cacao and women extended to an association with certain Maya goddesses. While originally introduced from South American, the…
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