About Our Collective
Ruk'u'x Ulew was founded in 2016 by Cecilia Mendoza Chiyal (pictured), an indigenous Mayan mother of three, born and raised in San Marcos La Laguna, Lake Atitlán, Guatemala.
Cecilia once ran a small cafe in her village and many local women would come and ask her for work. She was troubled by not being able to help all these women with employment, so she would pray to God and sit with the fire spirit and ask: “What path shall i take? What sort business can I do to give enough work to so many women?”
Cecilia would prepare her own traditional cacao drink for her family every Christmas and Easter using the highest quality cacao beans, sourced from an organic family farm in Alta-Verapaz. She often received compliments on her delicious cacao. This gave Cecilia the courage to ask a few of the busy cafes in her village if they would be interested in selling her blocks of cacao. They agreed and sold out quickly. The customers reaction to her cacao was overwhelmingly positive
“The cacao spirit chose me”, Cecilia says.
She quickly went from ordering 15 pounds of cacao beans, to 30 pounds, to 50 pounds, then big sacks to keep up with the demand as, the orders kept growing. Cecilia was able to put her children and her closest family members to work, but soon she needed more women to help her process all the cacao beans! Her business quickly grew and she had hired 15 women.
“It’s a dream for me”, she says “because God answered my prayers and sent me cacao so i could help employ more women in my village”.
Cecilia also mentions that the cacao spirit was helped her call in the right energy of women to work with her. Working with cacao demands a lot of concentration, presence and attention. She began to notice that the women who had a keen work force loved working with the cacao and that those who weren’t right for the job would not stick around.
Cecilia explains; “I love this work, the cacao is a teacher for me. It is not an obligation, it is a loving project. We don’t rush the process, we work patiently. I explain the importance of this to each of the women. Our customers often report that they can feel the love we put into it.”
“The grandmothers who work with us seem to love it the most. The cacao brings a sense of calm to them, it’s like a meditation. The younger women working here are more open, more creative, they love coming up with different ideas and suggestions”.
Cecilia explains her delight in seeing people share cacao and honouring it ceremoniously across the globe…
“I see how cacao is helping many people around the world and giving them courage. I owe my all to cacao, I am happy I can help bring this heart medicine to the world.”
She continues, “I start roasting the cacao beans at 4am in the morning. A lot of information comes to me at this hour. I see how the spirit of the plant is connecting all the people who are working with it, taking their hands, awakening them and connecting them. It makes me happy to see cacao reaching itself out to different parts of the world, this is inexplicable!
I feel that the spirit of cacao is very happy that we are all working with her.
The light of the cacao is very special, when we drink her medicine, she opens us up to her spirit. When I work with cacao, I never get tired, it energizes me.”
Cecilia was given the name Ruk'u'x Ulew [Roo-Koosh-Ouh-Leh-Ou] by the fire spirits as the name for her cacao business. It is a word from her native language, Kaqchikel , and translates as ‘Heart of The Earth’. She feels this not only honors her Mayan culture and ancestry but also relays her belief that cacao is a divine representation of the ‘Heart of The Earth.’
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