DIRECTIVE
Gabriel Cruz López
In 1967, Joaquin Narvayza and Maria Sosa Chinchay, a young coffee grower couple, took care of Gabriel Cruz Lopez, they adopted him when he was two years old, and taught him the values and traditions related to the coffee-growing activities of the family.
Gabriel didn’t make a family with a woman and children, but with his plants, red berries, green landscape of his 4 hectares, with God and his faith in the catholic church.
At 53 years old, he embraces his crops as if they were his children; not only he works hard on taking care of them, he loves what he’s doing.
It is very early in the morning and like every day, Gabriel gets out of the house, breaths the fresh, delicately coffee-scented air deeply, and goes to the Alto Cajamarca Coffee Growers Assembly, because he’s an important member. He was trusted with the presidency due to his huge commitment to its virtues and principles.
While he goes from Caserío Balcones to the meeting place, his little silhouette of an energic fighter gets lost slowly in the ups and downs of Chirinos avenues.
Mirtha Ocaña
Mirtha Ocaña is a strong woman, with firm ideas, that knows how to face the challenges that life has in store for her. Of course, she had to be this way because she is the only female member between 5 male siblings, that’s why, since little, she reclaimed her space and -as her brothers say- she knew what she wanted and always managed to be heard.
Raised in a coffee-growing family, with her parents Florentino Ocaña and Martina Neyra Choquehuanca, she loved farming since she was a kid, and while growing up, she learned everything related to coffee, which made her into a very respected expert in the region, being the General Manager of Alto Cajamarca Coffee Growers.
But, curiously, before Mama Pacha could convince her that her place was with the coffee trees, her ambitious spirit led her first to explore the possibility of becoming part of the Naval Academy until she finally decided it would be best to study, and she graduated in the university as Civil Engineer.
Those times when she went to school, played, and was a little girl that should defend herself from her brother’s pranks, in her natal Chirinos, are very far away. But, as she states, ‘that forged my warrior spirit’ that made her escalate so high as the place where coffee is produced, at almost 2000 meters above sea level.