While on our volunteer visit we went on a tour of a cashew farm in Choluteca, which is in the southern part of Honduras. The owner seemed to have a hand in many of the happenings in town, and seemed really exciting to entertain a couple of gringos. On our way out to the cashew farm we asked him what he thought about the trouble in Tegucigalpa. He told us that one of his sons was robbed of his laundry on his way home from college. He was sitting in truck and his dirty laundry was in the back. One of his friends ran into a building to get someone or something. Two guys came up shot him and took his dirty laundry. They are in prison now and his son is dead. About this time is when Mario, the cashew farm owner, pulled out a large stainless steel Beretta from under the seat shook it in the air and in Spanish said "that's why I carry this". There are a lot of people with guns here. Anyone with anything to loose or be stolen has an armed guard protecting it. When we arrived in the area of the cashew compound he pointed out that all the trees on the sides of the road were his and part of his production. We entered the compound which was surrounded by a 15 foot high wall with barbed wire, a large solid steel gate, and presumably an armed man who was the manager. The "production area" consisted of an outdoor compound about the size of a football field, with awnings along the outside walls and three small cement storage sheds. Mario explained that the cashews are picked from trees that produce an apple with the cashew nut growing below the apple. The nuts are picked by hand and carried in burlap sacks back to the compound.
Once back at the compound the nuts, which are very hard and very difficult to open, are soaked in water for 4 or so hours. They are then boiled in oil for 3 minutes to make the shell more brittle, clean off any contaminants, and separate the interior seed from the shell(this process is only to assure that when the shells are opened the seeds don't stick to the shell). They are then baked in an oven for a few hours. After this they are sent to a group of women who use small mallets to crack each nut open and remove the seeds(the actual cashews). The women are paid 70 Lempira a day which is about 4.10 an ok wage for this area. They work from 6am to 4 or 5 pm. They are only paid a full wage if, when breaking the nuts, they have at least %55 of the nuts come out as a full perfect cashew. If they do not achieve this they women are talked to, if it happens consistently they are docked pay. After they are removed from the shell they are sent to another set of women who sort the nuts according to quality and remove the thin black peel type shell that sticks to the seeds. This process is done entirely by hand and the black inner shell is later used to produce pigments in paint. The shells and some of the black inner skin are used to make oils. Mario said that NASA uses this type of lubricant for some of their projects because it has a higher temperature rating. The process of removing the inner skin involves scrapping any remaining parts off with a small knife and dividing the nuts into perfect, partial and granular. The perfects are the ones you buy in the can that are whole and perfect, the partials are used in candy bars, mixed nuts and other products, and the granular is used for baking and added to chocolate. This was the only part of the operation that we actually observed. There were 6-8 tables with 10-12 women working at each table sorting nuts and scrapping the skins off of them. It looked like very tedious boring work, and it was 98 degrees out. I guess you just adjust to the heat after a while, but I didn't envy them.
The nuts are then baked again to give them color and clean any germs off. They are then packaged in 5 gallon buckets and later into 100 pound bags for whole sale. He currently sends them to a distributor in El Salvador who resells them to other venders who season and package them. He said he gives the nuts to these guys on credit and isn't paid until they are paid from the distributors. If he had a direct market for his product he would have a higher profit margin and be able to pay his people more, but at it stands his margin is pretty small, but he is still one of the richer men in town. He built this business from scratch after seeing the potential market and finding an area which was perfect for producing this product. His family thought he was crazy, since it had never been done in their part of the country before. He is now the largest producer of cashews in the region. He only hires women to the cracking and cleaning and keeps a very close eye on them as if they get pregnant he looses a worker. He acts a lot like the godfather or dad to many of these people, and was continually giving money to any of the poor or paint snifters that asked for it, granted it wasn't but a lempira or two, but it was more than anyone else would give.
He told the other volunteer that he wanted us to come and work in his community. He called 3 or 4 times before we had to leave wondering when we were going to go out to dinner with him. After visiting two of the three compounds we stopped a little roadside refreshment stand that is famous in the country for making "pozol" which is ice, milk, fine corn, and vanilla. It sounded really nasty, but turned out to be very refreshing and tasty too. There is one woman who makes them and over the years the recipe has spread to a large area of the country. I was told that no one else can make them like she does though, so we got the best of the secret recipe.
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