Alternative Cocoa: the first chocolate bar in Yanomami

How chocolate production in the Yanomami Indigenous Land could be the answer to illegal gold mining.

An old indigenous legend locates the birthplace of humanity in the region of the Uraricoera river. Makunaima, the mythical hero that inspired Mario de Andrade’s celebrated novel, was born by the sounds of its rapids, that descend from the high mountains separating Roraima (in Brazil) and Venezuela. Today the Uraricoera and the other rivers flowing through the lands inhabited by the Yanomami and Ye’kwana Indians are polluted by mercury. Indigenous communities have to resort to artesian wells to obtain drinking water and can catch ever fewer fish.

Until recently, intense movements of boats and aircraft revealed the outbreak of the new explosion of mining, returning to the indigenous territory after having killed about 15 percent of the indigenous population of the region in the late 1980s. The global financial crisis has raised the price of gold, while internal misadministration has depressed the value of the Brazilian currency. All this has fed the appetites of illegal gold prospectors, with the veiled support of the political establishment.

Área próxima às comunidades, na beira do rio Uraricoera, destruídas pelo garimpo ilegal © Rogério Assis/ISA

The indigenous community of Waikás is a few miles from a large gold mine, known as “tatuzão” — the big armadillo — due to the size of the crater opened in the forest by a village of about a thousand people dedicated to separating alluvial gold from the soil in which it is impregnated. The devastation results in deforestation (in this case, about 300,000 m2), in the creation of lakes by pumping water, and of mud that dirties the rivers, all the while using mercury to separate the gold from the soil.

Área próxima às comunidades, na beira do rio Uraricoera, destruídas pelo garimpo ilegal © Rogério Assis/ISA

In July 2018, the official estimate was of around two thousand prospectors illegally installed in the Indigenous Land. Indigenous organizations argue there are five thousand. In August, a joint operation by several federal agencies called Curare IX, under the leadership of army General Gustavo Henrique Dutra de Menezes, established permanent monitoring bases along the main rivers of the Yanomami Indigenous Land to combat the illegal mining. The ostensive presence of soldiers at strategic points disrupts river and even airborne supply lines, stifling mining activity.

Área próxima às comunidades, na beira do rio Uraricoera, destruídas pelo garimpo ilegal © Rogério Assis/ISA

According to data from the military command in Boa Vista, by 1 November 2018, 1,830 prospectors had left the region, drastically reducing activity, without, however, managing to end it. In overflights during October, I could still observe mining camps. Some tried to stay underneath the tree canopy so as not to be seen from the air.

One of the dramatic aspects of the prospecting invasion is that it attracts indigenous youths in search of cash to acquire the consumer goods that have become current necessities, from clothes to cell phones, and including pots, pans and food. As well as distancing themselves from their traditional culture, by joining in the prospecting these youths end up legitimizing the activities of the invaders.

“Before, we used to barter; when our grandparents needed something, they exchanged. They did not use money. They bartered canoes, arrows, bows, and so on. The elders used to say, don’t touch money otherwise you’re going to go crazy. Later, when we wanted tools, machetes, rasps, tools for making canoes, we could get these by bartering. But now, the young people want other, more expensive things: no one lives without a cell phone, tennis shoes or other white people’s things that need to be bought with money”, says Felipe Gimenes, a Waikás leader.

When thinking about non-destructive alternatives capable of generating additional income for the communities, some Ye’kwana leaders realized that the forest offers another kind of “gold”: the native cocoa pod could constitute an alternative source of income that could prevent young people from being attracted to becoming cheap labour for the prospectors. The cacao fruit is endemic in the area, even being mentioned in Yanomami origin myths.

Dos cacaueiros, alternativa de renda: o cacau, conhecido como “fruto de ouro”, pode evitar que jovens sejam atraídos pelo garimpo ilegal. © Rogério Assis/ISA

Dos cacaueiros, alternativa de renda: o cacau, conhecido como “fruto de ouro”, pode evitar que jovens sejam atraídos pelo garimpo ilegal. © Rogério Assis/ISA

Also known as the “golden fruit”, cocoa is seen as a possible antidote to the invasion by illegal miners of the Indigenous Land in the extreme north of Brazil. Local community leaders, both Ye’kwana and Yanomami, plan to produce chocolate for the international market as an income alternative, so that indigenous youths have no need to collaborate with illegal miners.

Dos cacaueiros, alternativa de renda: o cacau, conhecido como “fruto de ouro”, pode evitar que jovens sejam atraídos pelo garimpo ilegal. © Rogério Assis/ISA

In July, a workshop organised by the Wanasseduume Ye’kwana Association, with the support of the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), was held in the village of Waikás to teach members of different indigenous communities the techniques of harvesting and processing cocoa fruit to produce the raw material for fine chocolate.

On this occasion a historic event ocurred: the first chocolate bar in the history of the Yanomami Indigenous Land was produced.

Dos cacaueiros, alternativa de renda: o cacau, conhecido como “fruto de ouro”, pode evitar que jovens sejam atraídos pelo garimpo ilegal. © Rogério Assis/ISA

From cocoa tree to chocolate bar

Traditionally, indigenous people of Roraima use the cocoa fruit in more or less the same way that non-Indians eat a papaya: eating the sweet flesh and discarding the seeds. Local leaders thought about the value of fine chocolate in international markets and decided to include the cocoa fruit native to their forests among the indigenous products sold in large Brazilian urban markets.

The result of this experiment was better than expected: when analysing photos of cocoa fruits sent by Ye’kwana leaders, Roberto Smeraldi, director of the ATA Institute, noted that their shape was unlike any other known variety. An expert in Theobroma cacao (the plant’s scientific name), he sensed that this could be a pure variety, with great potential as a niche product in the market for fine chocolate.

Smeraldi suggested an expedition to Waikás by the chocolatier César de Mendes, a chemist who had studied cocoa and who in 2010 had abandoned his academic career to become a small Amazonian chocolate entrepreneur. His grandfather was a Moroccan Jew who migrated to the Amazon and married. “I am 50% Jewish, 25% Indian and 25% ribeirinho (member of a non-indigenous riverbank community)”, he jokes. As a child he watched his mother preparing cocoa to be consumed in the traditional ribeirinho way, similar to that the first Spaniards encountered when they arrived in Central America in the early 16th century. She would produce a hard bar that was then shaved and mixed with hot water and milk to make an invigorating infusion.

César de Mendes faz a torra das amêndoas de cacau. Para ele, as variedades encontradas do fruto são diferentes das que ele conhece.

Having launched his brand, Mendes travels round the region in search of rare varieties to make single origin chocolates. In 2014, a community on the banks of the Jari river showed him the fruits of their trees and he realized they had unique characteristics. Following laboratory analysis, they were identified as a new variety, which the chocolatier has already exhibited at meetings in various parts of the world.

During the trip to the Yanomami Indigenous Land, coordinated by the ISA anthropologist Moreno Saraiva Martins, César de Mendes noted the occurrence around Waikás of two distinct varieties, one with characteristics that he says are different from anything he had seen before.