Dona Josefina might live in Tuxtla Chico, Chiapas, a mountainous Mexican town you may have never heard of, but it seems the international chocolate community knows exactly where it is and who Dona Josefina is. When we met her in late December 2014, she had just returned from Paris and Florence with a bunch of awards she had won in a couple of international chocolate competitions that had included chocolatiers from all over the world. Dona Josefina had won her categories, and when we met her she was still shaking her head and chuckling over the experience. She said it felt really strange to her to have all these Euro types in their fancy duds, tasting her chocolate and analyzing it the way they do wines; "fruity nose"…."essences of tobacco and raspberry"…and such. She said they were especially intrigued by her chocolate beverages; seems the Euro types weren't familiar with the New World's concept of xocolatl. At least no one claimed her products had "hints of chocolate overtones." Schnort.
What was really sweet was that her one souvenir to herself from Paris was a little pair of earrings – the Eiffel Tower. And she was wearing them when we met her. She was immediately my pal.
Dona Josefina is a true artisan who works out of her home with very basic 
equipment. See that pic on the right? That's her backyard roasting station (right side of pic) and grinding station (left side of pic). Dona Josefina begins with harvesting the actual cacao pod from the actual cacao tree. Right there from her actual back yard. She gave us a taste of the raw bean and that filmy white matrix around each bean was nicely sweet in a very clean way, somewhat similar to the taste of a really good jicama. No aftertaste. (The pic of the raw cacao pod partially cut open is that first one appearing in this post, where Dona Josefina is holding that yellow object.)
She and her associate scraped the beans out of the pod, then roasted them. (This pic: —->) Once roasted and cooled these two women winnowed the dry skins from the beans in front of GB and his Gringo Shorts; then ground 
the beans into powder using a mano and metate – a food-processing design that goes back 1 or 2 millennia. GB and I both got to try it and we concluded it takes (1) practice, (2) muscle, and (3) stamina.
Archaeology and ethnology buffs might take note of this specific mano in that middle pic of the three just up above there. That specific mano matches the steeply-angled buttressed metate that one uses to grind away and downhill from oneself. Here's how two pros do side-by-side metate grinding on these 3-legged stone contraptions. <—
(Note to self: never pick a fight with a 50-something artisanal chocolate maker. They have surprising upper body strength – especially in their fists – and they won't break a sweat while opening a can of whoopass on yo' self.)
Extra note to archaeology buffs: in Mayan times, cacao beans equaled money. Small towns were expected to pay annual tribute to their governing city-state, primarily in the form of cloth bags carrying exactly 8000 cacao beans per bag. Communities' tribute was how their governing city-state made each year's budget. If you will, it was a form of income tax. Judging by this one tub o' cacao beans, Dona Josefina has gone a long way to covering Tuxtla Chico's tribute to King Pakal in Palenque.
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