La Mamá Se Muerte

Adonirá Mestanza Rodríguez.

She passed this week and already slips through our fingers into memory.

Arms like bird’s wings, and hair like smoke.

I celebrate the moment of how we would arrive at Finca la Encañada, year after year, high on the adrenaline of Dionisio’s mastery of his truck as he parsed the Amazon mud like a poem. We would step out and into her arms. Sob together as we absorbed the hits of the years: COVID, illness, death.

La mamá de Dionisio; la madre de la finca; the heart of all of us.

The ancient woman who somehow now has passed beyond us, into the mystery we all can feel and none of us can see, the mystery she already knew because she passed every day in its shadow there in the mountains of San Martín.

Maybe it’s not businesslike to memorialize her with these poetic words, but this woman has always been more than just the mother of our first producer partner. 

She lived on the farm for so many years, carrying the history of the area. She has borne children and lost grandchildren and her husband and through it all she never lost the love in her eyes.

Beginning in 2015, I have had the privilege of celebrating her and her family, along with my own family. We have grown older together, connected through occasional WhatsApp messages, the fine chain of commerce, and visits clustered through the years. The lines have arisen on our faces and the earth has eroded. I’ve brought buyers to crouch on the dirt kitchen floor and sort beans with her, and she gave them the same generosity of soul. 

I will miss her. Today, and all this week, I have felt the pain of loss of her.

But my pain is nothing compared to those who truly knew her. Her sons. Her grandchildren. The staff who lived with her every day. Angel Noriega and Cati Simon, who for thirty years have built investment with Dionisio in a level of family relationship deeper than blood.

I cannot believe that between when I updated the Finca la Encañada info doc 2 weeks ago and today, she left us. 

With my shallow words and my shallow knowledge of her, I pause all this hustle and bustle and honor a woman who exceeded every archetype and who genuinely held us all in a net of love.

Photos c/o Emily McIntyre, 2022, Finca la Encañada