Handbook of Vanilla Science and Technology

4 Vanilla Production in the Context of Culture, Economics, and Ecology of Belize

Nelle Gretzinger and Dawn Dean

4.1 INTRODUCTION

Vanilla flourished wild in the damp shade of Central America’s lowland forests long before humans discovered its tantalizing aroma and undertook its cultivation. Today, Belize boasts an astounding density of natural vanilla populations in which several species of vanilla are represented. In some cases these may be wild, or may be relic cultigens of the now extinct Manche Chol Maya agriculture.

Certainly the present-day Maya word for vanilla, che si’bik (Dawn Dean, personal communication), derives from a bygone era. Franciscan friar Bartolome Fuensalida visited the Yucatec Maya town of Lucu in 1618 (Thompson 1988) and remarked upon the vanilla he found there, referring to it as cizbiques (McNeil 2006). This is almost certainly a Spanish translation of a Yucatec word. Fuensalida was fluent in Yucatec and it was also the language spoken by the Itza, who controlled trade of vanilla across a large swath of Mexico and Central America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Cholti, the language of the Manche Chol, who cultivated vanilla for compulsory trade with the Itza and the Spanish, the word is chisbic (Caso Barrera and Fernandez 2006).

In areas contiguous to the historical vanilla growing regions of Belize, the preparation of cacao-based beverages that include vanilla has been recently documented. These beverages include the chilate of eastern Guatemala and the tiste from Copan, Honduras (McNeil 2006). In southern Belize, the Kek’chi Maya still flavor their cacau with wild vanilla (Wilk 1997) when it is available.

Cultivation of the vanilla orchid in Belize, however, is no longer a skill passed from parent to child; the beans are merely considered a serendipitous find. Perhaps a hunter stumbles on them in the bush; perhaps a woman washing in the river searches for them, enticed by a delightful scent wafting on the breeze. A group of farmers in the Toledo District of Belize has begun cultivating vanilla and hopes to revive interest in this precious commodity that once helped fuel the region’s economy.

4.1.1 Toledo agriculture and socio-demographics today

The southernmost district in Belize, Toledo is often called the “forgotten district” because it is the least-developed district with the highest poverty rate. Of the 27,000 people who live in the Toledo District, 78% are considered poor.

While impoverished, the Toledo District possesses a wealth of vibrant cultures: the Kek’chi Maya and Mopan Maya are the Mayan people present in Toledo District today. They are not descendants of the Manche Chol Maya, but rather immigrants (of several generations) to the area from Guatemala. While the demographics of Belize have been changing in recent years, so that Mestizo people are the majority of the population nationwide, in the Toledo District they are still a relatively small ethnic group. People of East Indian descent also reside in the Toledo District, and they tend to be middle-men, the merchants and truckers and value-adders rather than primary producers. A culture born in the New World, the Garifuna people are descendants of Africans and Arawak Indians. While they have traditionally been farmers and fishermen, their culture is undergoing transformation. Many of today’s Garinagu (the plural of Garifuna) are poor, but as a cultural group they are perhaps more highly educated than any other group in Belize. Finally there is the Creole culture, generally deemed to be the dominant culture of the country:

Many people, especially Kek’chi and Mopan people in the western portion of the district, are subsistence farmers who grow most of their own food in addition to salable crops. Kek’chi people come from the cool highlands of Guatemala, and as such their agricultural approach leans more heavily on field crops, than does that of the Mopan Maya who hail from a climate similar to Toledo’s, and whose agriculture is more attuned to the lush diversity of the humid tropics. The majority of people living in the Toledo District grow at least a small portion of their own food, but the trend is increasingly towards purchase rather than production of foods and household goods. In the Toledo District, as around the world, agriculture is being transformed into an energy and input intensive commodity driven industry.

Numerous projects, both governmental and non-governmental, have been promoted and run with an eye toward improving the economic, environmental, and social situations present in the Toledo District.

4.1.2 Maya mountain research farm