By Anna Hovet
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Amidst the year of a global pandemic, a presidential election, and one of the biggest civil rights movements in American history, a local chocolatier and a Trinidad cocoa farmer have found a place on both ends of chocolate production for social justice and activism.
Chocolatier Jinji Fraser of Pure Chocolate by Jinji in Belvedere Square and cocoa farmer Moana Siu Chock of Golden Beans Estate came together recently to host a virtual “chocolate and justice” workshop to discuss what it means to be in the chocolate industry and a social activist.
During the Oct. 28 session, Chock and Fraser covered such issues as how to ethically source cacao products and what it means to be a woman in the chocolate industry.
It was the first of what Fraser hopes will be a series of social justice workshops that will touch on tough issues, including child labor and exploitation in the chocolate industry. While the next workshop has not yet been set, the plan is to eventually hold them once a month.
Guy Fraser, Jinji’s father and co-founder of Pure Chocolate, said he and his daughter have always been socially conscious when buying cocoa beans and look for suppliers like Chock who grow beans responsibly. They are now trying to translate that consciousness into a concrete plan to educate people about social activism.
“The primary problem is the fact that the people who nurture, grow, and work very hard to produce the chocolate itself are not those who get the financial benefit from their work,” Guy Fraser said. “In other words, the industry kind of has a pecking order and the grower or the person who’s actually doing the work is at the bottom of that food chain. But because they are powerless and for the most part people of color, there’s a discussion to be had about who’s doing the work and who’s getting paid.”
(Jinji Fraser was unavailable for an interview due to being on maternity leave.)
Georgia Beatty, a local artist who is working with Jinji and Guy Fraser on the social justice workshops, said the events will be a good way to educate people about the exploitation of workers that has been a problem in the chocolate industry for years.
“The workshop is definitely a collective thing,” Beatty said. “I think I brought it to [Jinji and Guy], but it’s topics that they already talk about and work on.”
“We have about four or five special guests planned so far for the upcoming workshops,” Beatty added. “I’m really excited to meet the people that are a part of Jinji’s shop but that I’ve never talked to directly and get to share their stories with other people.”
Beatty said she is hoping to see the audience connect to each other and to the chocolate world and know that she helped to create those connections by co-creating the workshops.
“We’re hoping to get a variety of people, those who are already invested and in the ‘know’ about craft chocolate and the white male domination in a lot of the industry,” Beatty said. “We’re also hoping to get people who really enjoy our chocolate and be more direct and have a place to go through those bigger topics that might not get channeled into one piece of chocolate for one customer.”
Chock, the founder of Golden Beans Estate, a cacao plantation located in Cedros, South West Trinidad, was a strong choice for the first workshop because she shares the same values as the Frasers.
Chock said her father bought the 12-acre estate, which was already growing cacao beans, in 1983 to be a hobby close to his neighborhood in South Cedros. In 2018, Chock said she realized her dad’s hobby of growing and cultivating cacao beans could become his legacy. She got the estate certified to sell beans and has been distributing them since.
Chock said she can relate to Jinji because they are two women in a chocolate industry dominated by men. Chock said she brings a different perspective to the justice project because she is directly involved in the arduous work of the cocoa fields.
“I go into the forest and harvest and it’s all rubber boots, big hats, and sweaty sun and just uncomfortable,” Chock said. “And you don’t see a lot of women at all.”
Chock said that farming isn’t a glorified industry in Trinidad. She said she’s had to keep developing and pushing above par, despite not receiving support from the government.
Most experienced farmers in Cedros are much older than Chock, who’s in her 30’s. Younger chocolate workers are more attracted to being chocolatiers, she said.
The beginning of Pure Chocolate in 2013 coincided with 71-year-old Fraser’s retirement after 34 years of being a government employee. The two Frasers attended an international chocolate show in Paris, Fraser said, adding that he knew then that they would be able to start a chocolate shop.
Fraser said he and his daughter’s awareness of social justice didn’t come about from chocolate.
“As a family, we always had a compass that leaned toward not buying into processes that make life difficult for others,” Fraser said. “If there’s a way to get something done that we can collectively be responsible for, that’s been our way.”
He said that other shops in Baltimore’s Belvedere Square have been responding favorably to Pure Chocolate’s social activism, but he said he doesn’t see it being replicated.
“I think the whole international sensitivity to injustice would make people in an industry so blatantly unbalanced between who’s doing the work, who’s getting the profit from it, and who’s enjoying the product, that it just became a matter of time before we met like-minded people who would be able to articulate how they make for some balance in the industry,” Fraser said.
Pure Chocolate’s activism does not stop at the new social justice workshop idea. The business tries to encourage discussions about social justice movements when customers drop by the shop.
Inside the Pure Chocolate shop, there is a painted mural depicting a Black Lives Matter protest and a black cocoa farmer. The mural was created by Beatty and Alena Lattik, another Baltimore-based artist.
Fraser said that he’s seen younger parents show their children the mural and observe it as though they’re in a museum. He said it has become a centerpiece for the shop.
“Our customers come to us because there’s so little information about the dilemma that people who are unseen are facing,” Fraser said. “So, when we get a chance to discuss the impact of industry or the role of colonialism in chocolate, they eat the information up. We’re not the ultimate answer, but we try to become vehicles to connect people who are interested with what we see happening from our perspective.”
Beatty, 23, said she was more than willing to help the Frasers in their social justice activism.
“We just wanted to donate this skill we have to the chocolate shop and externalize the kinds of political things we talk about inside the shop for customers to see and include the full experience of Black Lives Matter, both sides of the pain and hope,” Beatty said.
“I think one of the biggest things that Jinji and I work on is having culturally responsible goods and realizing that everything comes from a place, and people have been stewards to the land that the cacao is grown on,” Beatty said.
Fraser agrees.
“With a business, you’ve got a set of costs that you must accrue in order to produce a product,” Fraser said. “You have to stimulate interest in your product, but at the same time, that can be done ethically and it can be a win-win. I hope our audience sees that balance, that people understand that the chocolate I produce is according to certain principles and it tastes different”
“There’s no shortcuts; there’s no smoke and mirrors,” Fraser added. “We are who we are and when we get the opportunity to share our story, that’s prime time.”