Latest / New Worlder / Episode #126: Abril Macías

Transcript

Episode #126: Abril Macías · New Worlder

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Nicholas Gill, and this is the New Worlder podcast.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Co-host Juliana Duque will be joining shortly.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Today, we are speaking with Abril Macias,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: the founder of the magazine Revista Chío,
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: a print and digital platform based in Ecuador.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most fascinating gastronomic destinations in the world,
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Ecuadorian food remains relatively unknown or misinterpreted.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Abril often writes about understanding its place in the world and The country lacks
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: an easily identifiable national dish like ceviche or tacos.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: However, we discussed during this conversation how its most important factor might be just that.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: That diversity itself is the most relevant symbol of Ecuadorian food.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Not the most widely spread industrial foods like Cavendish bananas
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: or farm-raised tilapia or even cacao,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: which was first domesticated in this corner of South America more
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: than 5,000 years ago.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Ecuadorian gastronomy movement looks a lot different today than it did
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: when I first started traveling there a few decades ago.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's a much greater appreciation of regional cooking and ingredients
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: than there ever has been.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Fine cacao isn't just being shipped off and processed in Europe,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: but being processed in Ecuador by artisan chocolatiers.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are companies like Canopy Bridge,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Helping create value chains for niche Amazonian products.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's a hospital for stingless bees called Hasa.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ecuadorian restaurants like Nuema are appearing on global lists
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: for cooking Ecuadorian food rather than international food.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Indigenous cooks like my Shuar friend Shushui Jim Biki are teaching others
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: about cultural foods in Ecuador.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: With all these exciting new ideas,
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: food media is extremely important and until recently,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Ecuador never really had much of it.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Publications like Chiyu are helping shift the discourse around
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: the country's foodways and are providing thoughtful,
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: critical explorations of what is going on,
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: thinking beyond just international recognition.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Chiyu has printed two editions so far,
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  SPEAKER_00: one about Ecuadorian drinks,
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  SPEAKER_00: where I contributed a story about chicha,
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And another about pasajes comestibles, or edible landscapes.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I highly recommend finding a copy,
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: which can be ordered online if you aren't visiting Ecuador anytime soon.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: The next issue will be out in a few months,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: and Abril tells us all about the challenges of publishing in Latin America,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: but also how necessary the effort is.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I have one small announcement that the book I've spent years working on,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: titled Eating the Amazon, Is now available for pre-order.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come out until April.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: However,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate those that go ahead and pre-order the book early
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: because it helps determine the size of the print run,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: which also helps get the book into the hands of more readers.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Just search for Eating the Amazon on Amazon.com.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can see the irony there.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you will see it.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: It should come up.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Though what you see won't be the exact cover that is being changed.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Lastly, please subscribe to this newsletter, the New Worlder newsletter.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: If there's anything that comes out of this conversation with Abriel that you need
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: to know is that independent media is extremely challenging yet incredibly important.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So those that become paid subscribers or hell, even free subscribers really make a difference.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just go to newworlder.com or search for New Worlder on Substack.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And please like us and share us.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: It really does make a difference.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: As you can see, I have on my honey jacket.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: I can see that.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I figured this would be a nice way to start off.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: I harvested honey last night for the first time since I got bees like three years ago.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm super excited about it and everything's like here in my office slash barn.
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  SPEAKER_00: So like I'm looking over and it's just like a mess of like honey extractor
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: and like frames dripping with honey and a smoker and
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: What a special day.
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  SPEAKER_02: You have been waiting for this moment for years.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: For the past three years, like something has always happened.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was my first year,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: so I didn't know what I was doing,
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: but I still don't know what I'm doing, to be fair.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I think they had like mites, mites, varroa mites.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like they infect honey beehives in the US.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So all the bees died pretty quickly.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Not that quickly.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like there was a little bit of honey, but I didn't like try to get it.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was just trying to keep them alive, but you know, they died.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Second year.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: A bear ate all my hives.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, no.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: In August, like I even I have a fence around my hives and like I see other people in my area.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: They have their hives just like I drive by.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're just out in the open.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I have a fence around mine, but a bear climbed the fence, tore it apart, ate all the larva.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And how did you find out?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because I went the next day.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Into my garden where the hives are,
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: and it was just torn apart, the two boxes of hives, and the frames were destroyed.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: You could see where it was licked.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: They just licked the larva and ate the larva off the frames.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: and also you could see the places in the fence where the bear just climbed over
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: and just destroyed shit.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was a bear.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's not that many other things that can destroy hives like that,
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: but it was definitely a bear.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a very cartoonish thing.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Winnie the Pooh or something.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that happened.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: And also food ecosystems in action, you know, the whole thing happening there.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right, like trying to live with wildlife and that kind of thing, which is hard.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Something you have to deal with.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And in last year...
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: One of my neighbors like sprayed for ticks, but they mistook my house for my neighbor's house.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So they sprayed my yard.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I think my bees died off because of that.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I like I was so pissed at the company that did it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: I called them.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: They like they sent me like a check.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I could have like sued them, but I didn't want to get into that.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it was sad.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this year I did absolutely nothing with the bees.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't check them for anything.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't, yeah, like I didn't check for Varroa, like the mites.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't like check for the queen to make sure she was there.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I just got the bees, put, installed them in the hive and I didn't do shit to the hive.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely nothing.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I took a lot more care of the land around it.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I planted pollinator gardens.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: there's lots more like fruiting trees and flowers and I opened it up like a week ago
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: and there was tons of honey.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it worked out.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And last night I harvested the honey and my nine-year-old daughter helped me.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And she watched me like from afar.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had her stand back to like take the frames out.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it was funny because I just have this jacket on here,
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  SPEAKER_00: but it's like only it's like waist high.
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  SPEAKER_00: And like, I didn't have pants.
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  SPEAKER_00: I just wore like long pants and I kept getting stung.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had to like run away like in the middle of it because I was,
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  SPEAKER_00: I had like hundreds of bees attacking me and they were all over my legs and things.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I had to just like run away from the hives and out of the garden
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  SPEAKER_00: and like just run in circles into the yard until I lost them.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like,
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  SPEAKER_00: and like brush them off with the,
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  SPEAKER_00: like there's this brush to wipe the bees off so you don't hurt them.
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  SPEAKER_00: So my daughter got to watch me like be attacked by a swarm
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  SPEAKER_00: of bees just running around like crazy in the yard.
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  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
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  SPEAKER_02: How much did you harvest?
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  SPEAKER_00: Like 30 pounds of honey, I think, I've estimated.
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  SPEAKER_00: Seems like a lot.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's like 13 kilos, 12 kilos, something like that.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm taking this off because it's fucking hot.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to...
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, speaking of bees, a few months ago I went to the...
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  SPEAKER_01: Amazonian bees place in Archidona in Ecuador,
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  SPEAKER_01: the hospital Sinagihong that you went to with the Canopy Bridge.
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  SPEAKER_01: That was amazing.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those guys are amazing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to talk about that place a little bit?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as you said, it's a hospital for bees, but endemic bees from the Amazon.
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  SPEAKER_01: They don't have, yeah, they're stingless bees.
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  SPEAKER_01: And this guy,
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: actually,
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  SPEAKER_01: he and his wife and his family have a hospital in Archivona where they rescue bees
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  SPEAKER_01: that are endangered by different reasons,
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  SPEAKER_01: like either something went wrong with the colmena.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that word in English.
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  SPEAKER_01: The hive.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: The hive.
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  SPEAKER_01: Or there's someone that cut the branch of the tree where they live.
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  SPEAKER_01: So then they pick them up and bring them to the hospital
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  SPEAKER_01: to help them grow back strong and then put them back in nature
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: because they're really important since there are many different kinds
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: of bees actually.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: People think they're just like the commercial honey.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: That we all know of, but there's actually tons of different varieties.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And in these kind of ecosystems,
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: they're really important because they help pollinize,
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: some of them, just one specific plant.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: So if they're not working, then this plant can't grow.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's just a whole change of events that depends on a specific type of bee.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this project, I loved it.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was amazing to get to know these guys.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they pollinate like I think 80% of all the flora in the Amazon are pollinated
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: by stingless bees, not honeybees or anything.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: They do produce honey, but it's like very small amounts, very medicinal and very expensive.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the story of those guys is great because from what they told me,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: there was this giant stingless beehive.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if it was melopona or another species,
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: but inside of his dad's house,
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: in like the house where the hospital is now,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it was just like taking up like a whole wall of the house.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted to keep it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: They like,
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: they were fascinated by it,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: but it was like, you know, basically they made the house and like unable to live in.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they had to like move it and they just started reading about it.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in Ecuador,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: they couldn't,
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: and they started to like,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: find other hives and they because it's Ecuador and they didn't have access
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  SPEAKER_00: to all these like tools and things.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: They just started making their own things and they bought like a 3D printer to
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: to like print all these little like tools and things they needed to like
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: the entrances to some of the hives.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really amazing.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in just the amount of impact these bees have,
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: these stingless bees have is really incredible.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's been overlooked for Far too long.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad people are really taking initiative, people like them.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll have to make a note in the show notes so people can visit this.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Hassan.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hassan?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: OK. Yeah, I think you're right.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're pretty amazing.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: I really love that they're just learning everything themselves.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, like they learn things just from Google and YouTube and that's how they started.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, there's so much information out there now.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like 10 years ago, they couldn't have done what they've done, I think.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just, there's so much information now.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: like even yesterday when I was harvesting honey,
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea how the fuck to harvest honey.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never taken a class.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I watched YouTube videos of old bearded men and Wherever in upstate New York
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: or somewhere, you know, taking the, the frames out and extracting the honey.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I did it.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And like, it took longer than I thought a lot longer.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like,
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: it's still a mess in here, but,
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: but yeah,
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to do something that I think would 10 years ago would have,
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: I would have needed to, you know, enroll in like some class somewhere.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a specific time of the day or something like where you have to do that process?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: From what I understand,
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: it's best to do it in the kind of afternoons or evenings because the mornings,
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: the bees are more active.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to harvest honey, they're a little more chill.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Even though, you know, I was still obviously swarmed at and attacked.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: They were active enough to chase you.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're not that inactive.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, chill.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that place it's, it's in Archidona, right?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Not in, uh, Yes, it's in Archidona.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and just right in the, like near the center of town.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry guys.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Can you hear this?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Someone like the upstairs has just like started hammering something.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it'll go
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: away.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Are you in Ecuador now?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm in Ecuador now.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've been in Ecuador for like the past year.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Before that,
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was living in Italy and also in Germany and then was coming back and forth
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: for like a few months.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: But now I'm based in Ecuador.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: In Quito?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And how was Canopy Bridge?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Did you go to Canopy Bridge when you visited the bees?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've been there now like three times in the past year.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: So first I just wanted to go there and get to know what they're doing.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: But then we've done a few collaborations with Chiu, with my magazine for a few events.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I've been coming back.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then like the second time around that I was there,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: that's when we went to visit the Beast Place.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last time we did a small lunch party event of the magazine a few months
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: after, just for the people in the area.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we had a very interesting dinner party that was all cooked by Estefania Valdeon,
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: which is one of the collaborators of Ganofi Bridge.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And she's a chef who has been working with them for a long time.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And also wrote a piece for my magazine about the experience,
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: just visiting the chakras,
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: which are the diverse plots that the producers grow there naturally,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: like wild food forests basically.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Forest gardens is like,
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I decided like there's a whole chapter in my book about this and involves all
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: of these people you're talking about.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So this is great.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So she wrote about that.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so now we did like a dinner party around this whole experience.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was really, really fun.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like those,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: those Kichwa forest gardens are like so incredible because they're not that big,
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: really like a few hectares usually.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the amount of food they produce all throughout the year
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: at every different level is like, it's so extraordinary.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, it's, it should be a much wider example, people doing things like that.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we should adapt to that rather than try and adapt to,
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: industrial farming to just create the most amount of one ingredient everywhere.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like,
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: it's so much,
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: there's like most of them,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'd have to check my notes,
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: but it's like most of them have around like 80 different crops growing
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: at any single time,
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: something like that, like 50 to 80 or 50 to 100, somewhere in there.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's just so much things, so many like delicious, healthy, nutritious things growing.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all year round.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: It feeds more than they need.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: They can sell it.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's just really hard to sell because the modern world isn't set up for it.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's why,
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: the work that they've started doing with Canopy Bridge has been really important
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: because like people in the area that have these products,
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: they didn't really know how to get them to the cities,
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: like have people be interested in them.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And like,
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: first of all,
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: like introduce them because they were like many different kinds of foods that people
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: in the city have never tried or even like seen.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so it's being, uh, like,
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: I guess 15 year long process of them reaching out to chefs in Quito and Guayaquil
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: and Cuenca and getting them familiarized with, um,
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: what these things are,
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: how you can cook them,
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: like what's their value also in like, um, uh, the,
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: the food chain production chain and, uh,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's been like very, you know, little by little that they've done what they've done.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like now they're very well known and everyone's working with them.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Restaurants use their products for like tasty menus and stuff like that.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: But like 10 years ago,
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: people didn't even know what Macambo was, which is like their star product.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And like they made that happen for people in the area and It's been
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: a really beautiful process to see.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I was working in restaurants while I was in culinary school
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: and university, I remember then just like starting out.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: So this was like 10-ish years ago, 10, 12 years ago.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I was working in a few of these restaurants.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember Estefania actually coming by like once a week And bringing a box
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: of their stuff, which had, you know, Macambo, Wayusa.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: She also brought, like, Patas Muyo, which is the little worms.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: She brought also Neapia, which is this fermented yucca.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's Tukupi.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a, yeah, type of Tukupi.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Tukupi, but it's spicy.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: all of these things that they were just, like, trying to put out there and people...
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And those were the times I first knew about those things.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: I had never seen those.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And since then, it's been a
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: really interesting process.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And now I think they're finally getting the recognition that they deserve for that.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's also nice to work with them now in these types of events and with the magazine.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's what's been going on.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's very selfless work.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're not running an NGO.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's technically a business.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think I told Jacob this once,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: like it's a very terrible business model
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: because you're like encouraging competition everywhere and you're just trying
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: to present ideas in a way that other people can capitalize on.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're just trying to help people.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: It is very selfless and they are so invested in it and they just love it,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: which is so nice to see.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I love Jacob and Martha.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're just the best people.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Steffi as well.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that rubs off on community because they're very well, like,
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well-known,
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: respected in Archidona,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: but also now in Quito and all the food scene in Ecuador in general.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: So what is going on with the food scene in Ecuador?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've been going there for 20-something years now,
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: and for a long time, nothing was really happening.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not to say there wasn't good food around.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's always traditional places that were amazing, and you could find things.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but no major change.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there wasn't any evolution of things happening
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: or even restaurants really pushing ideas of any sort.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: For a while,
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: it was just,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: let's just do everything Peru does,
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: which was just make Peruvian restaurants, which didn't make that much sense.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And some were good,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: but there was nothing like,
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: let's try to make our own Peru here with the movement, I guess.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the last...
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Ten years, five years, especially, I think that's that's all changed.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like,
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: as I said,
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: when I was starting up, that was when like things were starting to happen.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of witnessed that as me being like an intern and kitchens doing staging
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: and doing things like that as I was studying.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it felt like, oh, something's happening.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: It hasn't happened before.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And even like me, that obviously I was inexperienced, I could sense that.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: basically I would agree,
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: like the last 10 years is really when this movement has started coming up with,
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: I guess following Peru's example,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: but obviously focusing on Ecuadorian food,
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Ecuadorian traditions and produce using local produce,
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: using all these things that before that they existed.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's a lot of diversity,
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: both in ingredients and traditions, food traditions, traditional recipes.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredibly diverse.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Some say like more than Peru.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even in like the size of Ecuador,
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think by far, like it's probably the most diverse per capita or something.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like per person of probably any country on earth, because it's like, it's such a small country.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can drive from one end to the other in a day.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in that drive,
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: you'll see so many different landscapes,
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: so many different microclimates and just Ingredients growing and just cultures
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: that have grown along with them.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Has that going for it?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that wasn't appreciated that much in the past.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, now it is.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And like we were talking about Archidona, like the jungle.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: From Quito to Archidona, it's what, like two hours, three hours?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's like three and a half, three.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you're going fast, yeah.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's from like the high fucking Andes, like,
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know, cloud cover and snowy mountains and down to the jungle in three hours.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like on a pretty good road.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty windy, but, you know, it's decent.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's you can have a product in the jungle on your restaurant menu in Quito
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: that was harvested in the morning.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: You have it for by lunch.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Peru can't do that, or even Brazil.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: How involved has the government been, Abril, in this promotion or support of local production?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the government has been very late to figuring out, oh, this is where it's at.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was just talking about this yesterday.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: We had...
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Food Futures talk about food sovereignty in the Contemporary Art Museum of Quito,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: where we were discussing this particularly related to the Choco and Dino area,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: which is another ecosystem here in my province, which is Pichincha.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, talking about how now,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: it's become very trendy to enjoy Ecuadorian food,
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: be interested in these kinds of things for the last five-ish years,
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: as we were saying,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: but it's been due to people like Jacob and Marta, really,
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: like chefs,
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: people in the food scene that have made this happen,
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: like government-wise,
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: it's been,
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Only now they're taking it seriously,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: but if there was more support from before,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think we would be much more advanced than we are now,
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: and it would have taken so long.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: As we know,
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Peru had this movement because of government funding and support,
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think so, in a very huge way.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: They invested in like this Peru brand marketing, like Marca Peru, which is how they call it.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that helped things push,
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: be pushed forward and helped them, it helped Peru become world known.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think in Ecuador, that's not really happening.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's only
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: happening at a smaller scale, only inside the country.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're not really pushing it outwards internationally,
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: which is what Peru did also at a huge scale.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's why now we have Peruvian restaurants everywhere.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: And any country has a Peruvian restaurant.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like even like small towns in Germany that I've been to that have nothing,
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: they will have a Peruvian restaurant, things like that.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I mean,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think they've come late and I also think they're starting to do stuff,
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: but maybe not enough.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to see like much more support.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, maybe comparatively, yes,
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: but I'll say in Peru, I mean,
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: pretty much in every country that it's not,
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: in Scandinavian countries or Switzerland,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: everyone complains about the government not being supportive enough.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think in Peru, chefs complain about that too.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe, as you say, comparatively, yes, they help.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: But I think mostly this was coming from the initiative of chefs to start with.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: That international push was not originally coming from the government.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it followed faster,
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: as you say,
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: but I still think this is mostly coming from the industry and the initiative
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: of some chefs.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: Probably the government follows.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: Not as much.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, at least that's what I have heard about some.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Which is funny because when I heard these from chefs in Peru,
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: they were like,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: here is nothing in Colombia because in Colombia the government supports so much.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like everyone thinks that the other government is supporting.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's not true.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, yes and no.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: But... Well, I think Peru did like,
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of tourism,
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: especially,
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: and just like making the brand, the Market Peru brand and Peruvian food, the brand.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've written about this a few times.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think they did invest a ton,
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: a ton of money in that.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And like,
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: definitely,
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: like it was the alternative or complement to Machu Picchu, you know, like, and...
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely think fine dining restaurants and things definitely benefited from that
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: and just overall tourism.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think in terms of infrastructure of gastronomy they invested in much.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: I could be wrong, but from my experience, it's still been limited.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: The farmers in the Andes of the Amazon, they're still having just this sort of a time.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the schools and universities are private initiatives, right?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: San Martin, the forest, and then Gastón, a school for kids with low income.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, it's still...
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: I agree it's not at that level,
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: probably not,
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: but as a marketing campaign,
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: like 20 years long or more,
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: but at least 20 years, I mean,
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: they put their money In promoting food as to ask their identity and as like their,
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: yes, you say the second reason.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now I would say for some people, even the first reason, like why you should go there.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: And like people know
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: like about Peruvian food everywhere.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: As I say, as I said, and I think that's a result from that, that funding.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: People know about Peru because it's been everywhere.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Times Square billboards,
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: little restaurants,
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: as you said,
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: in Germany or Ohio or wherever,
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: commercials of Peruvian chefs on a bus in Peru, Kansas or whatever.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if anyone's seen that, but it's an amazing commercial from like 15 years ago.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And just like people like Gaston opening like all these kind of higher end,
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: not fine dining, but just like, you know, quality restaurants.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's still chains,
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: but there's still,
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know, above average quality in all over, like 50 of them around the world.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like in a mall in New Jersey now, Gaston has a restaurant.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's great.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: Dishes that people can identify with the country help a lot, like tacos in Mexico.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: Will you say there is something like that in Ecuador?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because Colombia struggles in terms of finding those little things
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: that can travel easily and that people can connect with faster.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, I mean,
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: the spiciness,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: is a major Factor two,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: the spiciness, it's attractive, like in Thai food, Mexican, Peruvian.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: What about the Equatorian?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is something we talked about actually with Nick,
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: like I interviewed you for a piece I wrote for Taste Magazine.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Where I was also trying to figure that out from an outsider's perspective.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: You've traveled here a few times for over a period of, I think 20 years, you said.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you've been here, but you're still an outsider.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to see what people thought of that.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: In my opinion, it's similar actually to what you said.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's been hard to To pinpoint what's that specific thing that makes us stand out as
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: an individual dish or set of dishes or flavors.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because regional cuisine here, it's so specific to each province and each of the four regions.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of hard to choose,
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: like really there's like so much and here people are more interested,
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: more than like saying this is the Ecuadorian dish,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: they like to have like that whole set of variety of flavors and origins
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: and like people are
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're being, yeah,
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: they're more interested in that rather than saying like,
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: oh, ceviche is our dish or tacos is our dish.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: I guess that just hasn't happened internally.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it's hard to like then say,
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: okay, we're gonna sell this as a marketing tool outside of the country.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess it has to happen first internally for that to like happen.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or it doesn't need
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: to happen.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think just diversity is much more special than having a signature dish
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: that can appear on Taste Atlas as the best whatever,
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know, like people are crazy.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, it's the best soup in the world or I don't know.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, in those cases where there is so much but not clear enough in a specific dish,
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think the message should be diversity in itself, right?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: Which is obviously present in the case of Mexico and Peru too,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: but in the case of countries like Ecuador or Colombia,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: that should be the message itself.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: The importance of food ecosystems and diversity and sustainability.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a harder sell,
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: it's a harder spell,
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: especially outside of the country where,
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: you're trying to,
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: because you can't get,
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: it's hard to export Diversity,
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: you can export a few,
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know, aji paste to all over the world and you can create a Peruvian restaurant.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's complicated.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think like restaurants like Nuema,
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: which is one of the most well-known, have really focused on that.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like all the,
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: I would say,
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: fine dining restaurants in Ecuador that had made it are selling that because
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: in reality, that's what our strength is.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think at that level, at least in the fine dining scene, it makes sense.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: But as a commercial thing where you want a small casual restaurant
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: that can be present in any other country,
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: it's more complicated to sell that to the diner as the thing that you have
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: to identify.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: It is more complicated.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it has also been one of the reasons why it's been hard
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: to put Ecuadorian food out there.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: In the case of the U.S.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: especially,
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: which is what this piece was about,
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: it's very puzzling to me because there are so many Ecuadorians there.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: Ecuadorian immigration to the U.S. is huge, but no one knows about Ecuadorian food.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: They know much more about other food cultures that are way...
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: More like underrepresented,
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: less of them there,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: but they know much more about their food because of this issue, I think.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: it's hard,
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: but I think it's starting to come up also because figures like,
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know, Alejandra Espinosa, which is like now a chef that has her.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: Restaurants in Miami are starting to do that work of explaining to people in
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: a friendly way,
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: presenting food in like a very attractive way and our flavors,
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: explaining like what distinguishes them from other Latin flavors.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's going to be just like little ant work,
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: just little by little,
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: it's not really going to happen like it happened for other countries.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like where we're at.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: What about cacao?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, cacao has been,
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: a different story because
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: cacao in Ecuador has a very long history for being one
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: of our more ancient
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: agricultural products.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was one of the first things that we became World known at in the end of
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: the 1800s, Ecuador was like the number one exporter of cacao in the world.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of what built the wealth of the country at the time.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like the wealth from cacao helped build like the first banks.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: It built tons of infrastructure that connect to the countries.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's been very rooted in our history.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like a hundred-ish years later,
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: we find out that actually Ecuador is one of the most ancient places in the world
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: for growing cacao.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Biological origin of this crop in the south of Ecuador, in the Amazon.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, at least for now, the most ancient place that domesticated cacao.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then this kind of helped Ecuadorian cacao have our revival,
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: not only in our country,
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: but like internationally and like made us have a new wave
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: of Ecuadorian cacao producers,
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: Ecuadorian chocolate producers and start becoming not only like sport exporters,
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: but like the makers and the producers of cacao inside our country.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, just,
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: retaining the wealth that's happening,
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: not just like sending it to Switzerland or the US or whatever,
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: having like very high end,
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: fine aroma cacao and knowing how to turn it into a profitable product.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's really more competing more in the area of like fine chocolate,
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: not really commercial Mass produce chocolates.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's something we have been known for during the last 20 years,
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: but I more like in,
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: because it's a fine chocolate and cacao is not really something like everyone knows.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think chefs know about it.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like people, any chocolatier, In the world knows about Ecuadorian cacao for sure.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like Nacional Cacao being like this very aromatic, very floral, fruity kind of cacao.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's expensive.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's very delicious.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think like a random person could tell you, oh, Ecuador, you make really good chocolate.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know if like a regular person could tell you that.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I mean, it is one of our strengths.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we're still lead number one in exporting fine aroma cacao in the world.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: From the
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: whole percentage of exporting of cacao in the world,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: only 5% of that is fine aroma cacao.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: But from that 5% in the world,
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: 65% to 70% is just from Ecuador because we're very Specialized
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: in producing this kind of like very high-end cacao.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: And luckily each year,
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: like the amount of chocolate that is coming from
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: that fine aroma cacao is being produced in our own country.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas for a long time, it wasn't happening.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's been produced in Europe mostly.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's all the money was being Made in Switzerland or wherever.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's hard with all these kind of like niche products right now,
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: like these Amazonian things,
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: like things like Guayusa,
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: like it started off as,
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: just this simple tea where all the money was just,
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know, going to the farmers and things.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: But then it became like additive and all the money was being made,
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: like an energy drinks and things and nothing was going back to the farmers.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then it just kind of Fell out.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: And now there's just tons of guayusa in places like Archidona
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: that it's like nobody knows what to do with.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have these like major industrial products in Ecuador too,
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: like bananas and shrimp and tilapia.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like the country's known for those things.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: You ask somebody about Ecuadorian food,
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: it's probably shrimp and tilapia and bananas are probably the first thing they think
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: of over even cacao.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: What I think it's important to know is that, at least internally, that's starting to shift.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's important that within ourselves,
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: like Ecuadorians inside the country,
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: at least are starting to have a change of perception of that.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're starting to,
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: due to this, yeah,
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: these past 10 years in the work with chefs and the food scene has Shifted
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: the perspective of, okay, there are interesting things happening here.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think we always swagged our foot,
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: but we didn't necessarily feel tied to it as a sense of identity and as a sense
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: of value.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that has definitely shifted during the past five years.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it's a thing.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: People are really moved by it and really interested in it.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: You can see that in the media, people are really invested in these kinds of things.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that wasn't a thing 10 years ago.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: You like going out to this kind of huecas,
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: as we call them, traditional food places or comedores and things like that.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: And people always enjoy the food.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: It isn't a matter of we didn't like our food.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't really have that sense of value within that.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what has changed.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And at least internally.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that will probably within the like next five to 10 years more have
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: an impact starting like marketing around Ecuador internationally will like be
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: affected by it.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's like at least one important first step.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think media,
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: obviously like what you're doing with Gio,
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's really important in that,
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: like having these conversations and like actually having critical thinking
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: about these foods and why they're special or not special and just having kind
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: of real conversations about it and not just,
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: you know, promotion of everything all the time.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think it's incredibly important.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: what you've done with your magazine and even before the magazine,
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: when it was just a website,
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: it was like,
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just having a place to shift the conversation is really important because there are
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of people thinking those things, but they don't see that information.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not what's in their face every day on YouTube algorithms or Twitter
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: or whatever, threads, Instagram.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really important to have...
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thoughtful conversations in writing and media.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is that why you started your magazine?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say so.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's been a few years of this story with Chiu.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: It hasn't been very linear.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we started as this more blog,
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: then it became more I guess more formal and became more of like
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: an online publication.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: At the beginning, it was just like very casual.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: What inspired you to start it?
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think definitely it was because I was sensing a lack of spaces to talk about food
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: in this way.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, there was not like a single food magazine in Ecuador.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's not even like a big commercial women's cooking magazine?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Magazine or anything like that?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: No, nothing like specialized in food.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: There wasn't like a single space dedicated to food.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything you could find or read about food was coming
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: from like lifestyle magazines in like a specific column or section or maybe they put
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: on a recipe or maybe that occasional article in a newspaper.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: But there wasn't really a place for food anywhere.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: There were like a few blogs here and there,
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: but nothing that was really generating some sort of discourse or thought
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: about what's happening around food.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: And this was also back when I was studying gastronomy.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: I've always been like a very like huge reader,
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: but then I was like also studying food, so I kind of Wanted to read about food here.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: And like,
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: there was not like a single place I could like really read something thoughtful
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: about food, my own food.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like I felt like I had so many incredible references internationally
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: with like food magazine in Europe, in the U S for sure.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, why don't, why can't we have something like that here?
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's kind of what igniting that fire too.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe if there's nothing about, well, maybe I can do something.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how it started.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: But of course,
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: because it was like the first kind of publication in this style and like,
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was very inexperienced.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously it wasn't starting from zero.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have any local reference.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have anyone that kind of guide me through this.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Trying things until it made more sense.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that's why it's also been a very long process in changing forms as time went by.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: When at some point I moved to Italy to study at the University
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: of Gastronomic Sciences of Poland.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I took like a break from it.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: Until that point, it had only been digital.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I was starting to get a little bit tired of digital publishing.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was kind of hitting the wall.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Just writing and not getting paid for it.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess so.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: I guess so.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's just, it was really hard.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to do.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like people don't realize that.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like most digital publishing, especially...
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: In the pre-paywall days, it was basically unpaid.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: You could not make money from it in any way.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was just your love and your time without any kind of reimbursements.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's only sustainable for so long, doing things like that.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it felt like a little bit too hard.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: And also it was a time where I felt like I needed to...
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Continue my education,
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: just took a break,
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: went to Italy,
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: studied there for two years,
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: and then
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: got in touch with a lot of independent food magazines,
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: not only in Italy,
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: but in Europe in general,
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: and did a few internships with a couple of magazines over there and realized, okay,
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: maybe now Next Step is trying to make a Print publications and see,
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: see how that goes.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, like prints obviously feels, it felt strange at the time.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, I wasn't making money before and now I'm going to sell a print magazine.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: As people stop reading prints.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, I'm not shooting myself in the foot here, but.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Money makers.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: But in the end,
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's been crazy because I'm not telling you like I'm making tons of money now,
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: but I guess print and specifically if it's like,
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: a very beautiful publication that has value, that is standing out from other things.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's still something people want to buy.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: People like things, people like objects and it and that's yeah.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then I guess people are not really willing to Pay for that digitally,
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: but if it is in this like very nice package,
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: very nice presentation where you are also maintaining like very,
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: high quality or well researched content with beautiful photos,
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: illustrations, whatever, then it becomes something that people want.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that, I guess it was a good, a good call.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because people have really liked it.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's the first print full magazine in Ecuador.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have digital magazines.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: We also didn't have print magazines.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: And now we do.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been really nice to see,
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: people taking pride in seeing this type of content in this very beautiful package
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: that is the magazine.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a way also to say to people, oh, this information is valuable enough to be here.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: telling something to people that are
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: trying to have a bond with
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: the local traditions and local food here.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just saying, okay, this is valuable.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: This deserves to be here and it deserves to be read and presented in this way.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have to invest in it too.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like everyone has to invest in it.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not,
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: you can only tell people so much before they actually have to put their money
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: where their mouth is and like have some little bit of a compromise,
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know, shelling out 20 bucks for a magazine or whatever it is.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and have you found a way of knowing what people actually read
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: or what is your audience, what are the numbers?
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you don't have to tell the specifics,
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: but to get a sense of what is the audience,
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: what do they read,
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: and if they actually read, or if they just bought the object, because that happens.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah,
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: for sure.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, you know, like more concrete data?
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think there's definitely a mix.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are definitely people that are buying it just
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: because it looks beautiful and they want to have
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: it in like their coffee table
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: or something.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: But then there's also lots of people that are genuinely interested in it.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think our audience is People that are like reading in general,
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: people that enjoy to read that are interested in travel,
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know, culture, art, design, all these kinds of stuff.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess she was like a place where all of that meets around food.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a lot of.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: Readers that come from all those different backgrounds and
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: that that's like those people are on one side and then there's all the food people.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: So all the chefs,
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: restaurant owners,
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: all the people that are working in the food industry that are also excited to have
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: a publication that is talking about these things.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how I identify the different kinds of readers that we have.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's mostly like 25 to
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: And of course it's people that can afford it.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a cheap magazine.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's not cheap to produce because it's also done in like a fine art print kind of quality.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it is very expensive to produce it.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not a cheap magazine,
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: but I found that If people see it not as like a magazine per set,
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: but as an object and also as a book, people are willing to pay for it.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you go to any bookstore here in Ecuador, books cost the same or more.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: Ecuador is not cheap.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: Quito specifically is not cheap.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: Books are not cheap.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I find like it's not really that much more expensive than the average book.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: Juliana, are books cheap in Colombia or are they more expensive than the US?
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, especially now.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think everything has been
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: globalized price-wise and because of tourism
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: and it's upscale tourism, prices are in dollars for boats, food.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is a weird tangent,
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: but I meant like going to India 20 years ago and just like going to bookstores
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: and all the books were in English and just being amazed at how cheap books were.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I bought a suitcase full of books in India that I still have.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder if it's still the case.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're probably cheaper than Ecuador.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's just because of printing costs there and a lot
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: of printing is done there or whatever.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I thought how many more books I would buy in India if I lived there.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: Producing books in Ecuador is way more expensive than in Colombia.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: The paper that we're getting in Ecuador is coming from Colombia.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: We don't produce it, so it is much more expensive.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: And now we have talked to some printers in China.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's so cheap.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's insane.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can send to print your book in China
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's so much more cheap.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: Most fine art cookbooks are printed in China.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: I feel a little bit guilty to say, okay,
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: we're going to print this in China,
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: but the difference in cost is so dramatic that Maybe you're kind of forced to,
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's something we've been talking about with my publisher
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: because they've seen like it is way more cheap.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you've done two issues so far, right?
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: When is issue three coming out?
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're working on it now.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably going to come out like the Next year around March.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we're doing one a year.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something we're doing like very, not,
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: we were thinking maybe two a year,
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: but being realistic,
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: it is with our team and our resources for now, it's what makes sense.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: We also don't want to push it and then not being to sell
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: because also we don't have like a huge audience.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe Even if we did, it maybe wouldn't sell within that timeframe.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we're now working towards the third issue
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: that will be coming out probably around March, 2027.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: This second issue came out this year, also in March.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been going really well.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: People are really liking it.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: Our first issue is completely sold out since a few months.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe we'll reprint a few copies of that one because people keep asking for it.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but that's where we're at.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: Each has a theme, right?
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like the first one was liquados, the second one, pasajes comestibles.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: First one was liquida,
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: about food drinks culture,
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: but more On a traditional sense,
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: like we were working on things like a history of drinks in the region.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: We did do a few things on cocktails and bars, but it's quite diverse.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: Then we did have paisajes comestibles.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: The second one is more like exploration of different ecosystems and Lands in our country.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, talking about especially like diversity, right?
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then now the third one will be about desserts,
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: like sweets, everything sweets, pastry, all of that.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: Also, your digital content is slightly different, right?
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: You are working on the digital content in the meantime while you are preparing
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: the Yeah, always.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's not very consistent, I would say.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: We do it when we're always active on social media and
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: then we're also publishing maybe two or three things on our website each month.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not something super consistent.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're more focused on the print because, of course, that's where the money is coming from.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: But we do have our digital content and it is quite, I would say, quite different from the print.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's much more like light content, more casual, not so long pieces like the print.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and yeah,
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: basically everything that we're like really interested in,
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: but it doesn't really make sense to put it on print.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: Then a website is also a good place.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we do have some,
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: like a good,
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: like reader base on our website,
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: but it's a different, it's a different audience for sure.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's not some of them, like,
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: I guess we are consuming both digital and print,
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: but in general, I feel like they are two different audiences.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, in terms of the printed magazine,
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_02: I guess it has been obviously a journey, a challenge.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_02: Finally, you made this happen and you are positively surprised of the response and the success.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_02: What do you find challenging now,
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: apart from prices and the hardship of making The whole process happened,
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_02: which is an editing and all that.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard work.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: But is there something specific you haven't solved?
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: You keep questioning what is the way of doing this?
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I would say expanding outside of Ecuador is our next step.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very important step.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still trying to figure out how that can happen because distribution costs,
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: I guess it is a costing issue,
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: but it's a different kind of dynamic because like when I was working
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: with these magazines in Europe,
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was working in this magazine that was being produced in between Germany
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: and Austria and having their print issues And like every single European country was
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: so easy and so cheap.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: So basically,
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: if you were there,
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: you could have it sold in like France, Italy,
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: whatever, like a very low cost of traveling and sending all of these magazines.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously you had a much wider audience automatically automatically
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: because You could search for like these magazines or bookshops or magazine shops
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_01: that are specialized in these kinds of publications.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: There are tons of them and you can easily send them and have it sold.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: But in South America and Latin America in general,
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: shipping costs are so expensive,
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: like it's not even an option at this point because I would like
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_01: to lose everything just paying for shipping or like my.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_02: So.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_01: I guess for now,
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a big one because that's because it's important,
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_01: like I feel like we also We're continuously trying to find new readers in Ecuador
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: and I think it will also be a process because it's also a very niche product and
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_02: of course.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but all those Spanish readers outside.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a whole continent where we could be selling them, I think.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's the niche.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's an issue with books in Latin America too, right?
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have to have a distributor for every single country.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you can just send them to one distributor in Lima and they'll,
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know, push it throughout the continent.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you have to,
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: if you write a book in Argentina,
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_00: you have to find someone willing to distribute it in every single country.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's That's like insane.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like what, what person creating a book has that kind of means or just time.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's, it's super difficult.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's so hard.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it limits the ability of a writer to get paid for their work,
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: a writer or a creator of a book or magazine.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, it's super hard.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's so hard.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: And when we're working like independently, like we do like with an independent publisher.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, they don't have the means to do this kind of distribution work.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess that's something that we have to keep working on.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: I have started working with this platform that is called Busca Libre and it is available
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: Not in every country, but like in the main countries in Latin America.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_01: So Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Mexico.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it's only for books?
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry?
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's only for books?
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's for books.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a book only platform that has offices in all of these countries and also Ecuador.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: Also the US and Spain.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_01: So if you work with them,
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: you can sell through their online platform and someone from say Colombia or Mexico,
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_01: the US can order it and have the sent for,
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: I guess, a lower cost than if we would send it directly.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that's something we have started doing recently and it's, let's see how it goes.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's very recent.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: Don't have data yet, but it's like the first step towards that solution.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, the problem with that is that you're only selling through their digital platform.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have bookstores.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_01: And what I would like is to be able to sell our magazine,
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: like this kind of specialty bookstores in different countries.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_01: That is usually where we sell the best.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: At least in Ecuador,
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_01: that's where we sell,
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: and we're finding new readers,
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_01: and I would like to do that in other countries, but for now, let's see what happens.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're just having friends, oh,
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: if you're going someplace,
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: take two or three of these and leave them at this bookstore that I like,
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: or things like that, very informally, casually distribution.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you everyone for listening.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely check out Revista Chiu.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just go to www.revistachiu.com.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's C-H-I-U, Chiu.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed that interview with Abriel Macias.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: As another reminder, my book is finally up for pre-order.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_00: Search for Eating the Amazon at amazon.com.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_00: Pre-orders are a huge help.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: And also, please subscribe to the newsletter, to the podcast.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like us, share us.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: It all helps.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, a big thank you to my friend Pat Buzzard for providing the music to the show.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's it, everyone.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Later.