The first real crisis came in the form of Don Reyes, the largest landowner in the valley. He caught Elara and her “gang of little thieves” collecting fallen cacao pods from the edge of his finca. He was a thick man with thick glasses and a thicker sense of ownership. “This is my dirt,” he boomed. “These are my trees. You are stealing from me.”

Elara wiped her hands on her apron. She looked at the mango tree, now towering and prolific, under which she’d had her first revelation. She looked at Don Reyes, who was no longer a landlord but the head of logistics, sitting on a crate, happily sorting guavas, his blood sugar under control for the first time in a decade.

That question became the seed of Meva Salud —a name she crafted that night in a tattered notebook: “Meva,” a play on “fruta” and the word for a living thing, and “Salud,” for health and a toast to life.