1

Into the
Interior

Reaching Caimán Nuevo, in Necoclí, Urabá, Colombia, comes without shortcuts. It’s three to six hours of dirt track, depending on the rain, always uphill, with quick breaks so your lungs can catch the humidity. The last stretch is on foot or by mule, skirting murmuring streams. First-timers learn the essential rule: you enter quietly and with respect, because here the path is part of the home.

“You enter
quietly and
with respect,

because here
the path is part
of the home.”

2

The Land That
Holds Us

The Guna Dule indigenous community, also known as Kuna, understands the land as a being with memory. In their songs you hear Nana Dummad, the Great Mother, and Ibeorgun, the sage who threads the visible to the invisible.

Cultivating, then, is not just producing. It is a conversation with what sustains life. Molas are layered cotton panels worked in reverse appliqué, colors revealed as the fabric is cut and turned, finished by hand with fine stitching. Born from ancestral body designs carried to cloth in the late nineteenth century, they form the heart of the traditional blouse, the dulemor. Their patterns trace labyrinths, rivers, and fields alongside birds and leaves, intimate maps that connect people to nature and safeguard memory and identity, stitch by stitch.

3

Caimán Nuevo,
Necoclí, Urabá

The name recalls an old mangrove where caimans and herons lived. “Nuevo,” new, because each generation remakes it, cutting canals, raising thatched houses, planting again after floods. Authority rests in the word of the caciques, community chiefs, and in the memory of grandmothers. Here, the chiefs assign land so each family can plant and sustain the community.

4

María Corina Achán, Small Grower

María Corina camina su hectárea de plátano al amanecer. Lleva más de cuarenta años cultivándola; veintidós de ellos con Uniban. «Siempre me ha gustado trabajar la tierra, alimentarla, abonarla», dice en Dulegaya; su esposo la traduce al español. Sus molas (con pasadizos rojos y verdes) no son adorno: son raíces, bordadas desde la memoria de sus cultivos. Con una mirada distingue qué retoños del platanal (los “hijuelos”, brotes que nacen al pie de la planta de plátano madre) conviene dejar crecer y cuáles trasplantar con luna nueva. Y repite una idea sencilla: “Si uno la alimenta, la tierra responde.”

“If you feed
the land,

the land
answers.”

5

Albeiro Achán

Albeiro Achán smiles beneath the same thatched roof, beside María Corina. His father, a cacique, entrusted him with the land, as is customary here, the community granting soil so families can cultivate and share. His plot grows yam, coconut, cassava, and above all Hartón plantain. He walks the rows with equal parts gratitude and responsibility, and puts it plainly: “We’re given this land to care for.”

“We’re given this 
land to care for.”

6

Where Quality Begins

The conucos, traditional crop plots, breathe in mixtures: plantain beside coconut and lemon trees. A conuco here is a polyculture plot where staple plants and shade species live together. Diversity protects the soil and spreads risk. If one crop fails, another carries the table. The wind brings aromas of fresh coconut, lemon blossom, wet leaf. That closeness steadies the microclimate and lifts the fruit: firm flesh, clean peel, a contained sweetness that travels well. 

The soil, dark and slightly clayey, is tended with mulch, layers of dry leaves, plantain stalks and peels, straw, and crop residues that hold moisture, slow weeds, soften heat, and, as they break down, feed the earth. Infiltration trenches let rainwater enter slowly, prevent erosion, and recharge the subsoil. Most fertilizers are homemade and organic. The rule is not to force things. The plant sets the pace.

7

The Work We Hold in Common

When a bunch hits its perfect point, the day changes shape. Cutters, carriers, and family step in. Turbana boxes are folded in the yard, loaded onto mules or carried on backs, and taken to the roadside. No forklifts here, just shoulders, rope, and patience. From Caimán Nuevo, the path reaches the road at Necoclí, a coastal town in Urabá on the Gulf of Urabá in Colombia’s Caribbean, where loads are grouped and dispatch is scheduled. From there, the route continues to Uniban’s port zone. The boxes go into cold storage, clear inspection, and lift into the container. Each box carries the geography of its journey: mud on boots, salt sweat, a brief rain, and a sun that revives, their God.

“Everything flows at the rhythm of the culture and the land.”

8

Shared Value in Place

Uniban’s plantain team enters this community with respect. They walk the trail, coordinate harvest and packing, tune calibers, and share improvements without imposing them. The principle is clear: accompany and open markets without breaking the life of the place. Each visit sends out first-quality, fresh plantain bound for the United States and Europe, and also leaves small decisions that secure the future, checking a cable, improving a canal, agreeing on a ship-out day that does not collide with the minga, the community workday when everyone gathers to open ditches, mend paths, or bring in the harvest. Everything flows at the rhythm of the culture and the land.

9

Plantain, the Territory’s Backbone

For Uniban, plantain is the cultural and economic backbone of the territory. The company works with 2,500 small growers of Hartón, Burro, and Manzano banana. Behind that number are faces and stories braided with trails and rivers. In Caimán Nuevo, each plot speaks with the forest, the water, and the authority of the cacique. It belongs to a community weave where the conuco, the traditional crop plot, sustains the home, the minga orders the work, and trade opens a path without tearing the territory.

10

The Ethics of the Conuco

Here, ethics are practical: do not mistreat the plant, care for the water, return to the earth what the earth gives. Trenches are opened without gouging, plots are alternated so the soil can rest, and crops are protected with living barriers and windbreak rows, alongside organic mulches that hold moisture. Anyone who has walked a field after a storm knows plantain’s nobility. It bends. It does not break. It opens new leaves.

“It bends. It does not break. It opens new leaves.”

11

Voices

— “These molas I wear are our culture. They remind us how not to get lost,” says María Corina, smoothing the fabric. — “My father, the cacique, told me: care for this land. That is what I do,” says Albeiro, showing the organic compost he makes from crop leftovers. — “The labyrinth in the mola is the set of paths that tie us to nature,” María Corina adds.

12

Out to the World

“The power of the land when it is respected”
By late afternoon, Turbana boxes stand in line. The truck waits below. The last stretch is marked by fading light and a breeze of coconut and lemon drifting down the hill. From above, the rows sketch the same pattern as the molas, paths that meet to say what matters. Here, life is made by sowing, tending, and sharing. From Caimán Nuevo, Urabá, Colombia, to the port, and from the port to the world, travels a fresh, first-rate plantain that tells one story: the power of the land when it is respected.

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WE CHOOSE LIFE

A Farmer’s Story from Urabá