Punta Gorda Chocolate Festival Still On

The annual Chocolate Festival in Punta Gorda is back on as planned. Earlier this week, the BTIA Toledo Chapter, which organizes the event, announced they were canceling this year’s festival. They were upset about a Christopher Martin concert organized by the Punta Gorda Town Council for the same weekend, claiming the council was using the festival’s name and popularity to promote an unrelated event. However, after a meeting between Mayor Carlos Galvez, association president Robert Pennel, and Area Representative Doctor Osmond Martinez, an agreement was reached to move forward with the festival. We caught up with Pennel today to get the latest scoop.

 

On the Phone: Robert Pennel, President, BTIA Toledo

“The main reason for the meeting was to see if we can find a way to move forward so that the Chocolate Festival of Belize. We had sent out a release saying that we would cancel it for certain reasons. We basically, Dr. Osmond Martinez our area rep reached out to me and the mayor and wanted to meet with us to see if we can find common grounds. The meeting was very productive, we spoke about some of the difficulties we think we would have had which led us to the decision to cancel. We trashed out the issues and decided we will have the festival. It will go through and the meeting was very cordial and we decided the festival was far bigger than anything else. It is a huge event for Toledo district and it highlight the culture of the cocoa farmers and chocolate producers and it is just a big draw for tourism in the south.”