A new mural at the Boise Co-op at The Village at Meridian invites shoppers to consider where their food comes from and the people who work to produce it.
For local artist Bobby Gaytan, who created the large work in partnership with the Co-op and the nonprofit Fairtrade America, selecting the subjects for the piece wound up being easy.
Gaytan said Fairtrade America presented him with information about some of the farmers the group works with as it prioritizes fair pay and workers’ rights in the food production industry. One set of siblings — Francisco Contreras and Carlixta Contreras Martínez, cacao farmers from Yamasá in the Dominican Republic — stood out to the artist, who comes from a large family of farmworkers.
“I felt very connected to them,” Gaytan said. “They were speaking to me.”
Now the brother and sister have a towering presence in Meridian, their likenesses smiling on the side of the Co-op building facing E. River Valley Street. They are holding cacao pods, the fruit containing cocoa beans, which eventually become dried, roasted and ground into chocolate.