How Ak’ Teilha Cacao Farm is Honoring Indigenous Maya Chocolate Culture in Belize
To the ancient civilizations of northern Central America and southern Mexico, cacao was as precious as gold.
More than just a toothsome treat, chocolate was an integral part of ritual life, medicinal practices and local economies for the Olmec, Mixtec, Maya and Aztec. The beans of the cacao plant were even used as currency, a kind of money that could be exchanged for goods and services.
For some descendants of the ancient Maya, chocolate is still a type of currency today. In southern Belize, farmers grow the fruit for a number of bean-to-bar brands, including the U.K. label, Green & Blacks. But not all of the cacao grown on Indigenous lands is sold. Some families reserve a portion of their harvest for themselves, roasting, winnowing and grinding the beans using methods similar to those perfected by their ancestors.
Ak’ Teilha Cacao Farm
Pablo Maquin in his family's cacao plantation photo credit Shoshi Parks
In the small Q’eqchi Maya village of Indian Creek in Belize’s Toledo District, the Maquin family welcomes visitors to witness the process themselves on their 4 acre cacao farm, Ak’ Teilha. The Maquins planted their first cacao in 2001. Today, they care for 3,250 trees.
Inscriptions and codices have taught archaeologists most of what they know about how cacao was used by the ancient Maya. The civilization emerged in what is today Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras and southern Mexico sometime before 2,000 BCE. Over the following millenia, small farming villages turned to large city-states with monumental architecture, long-distance trade networks, and complex political, social and economic systems.
Popular interpretations of ancient Maya archaeology often focus on the period around 750-900 A.D. when elaborate cities like Tikal, Palenque and Copan rapidly declined, calling it a “collapse” or the “disappearance of the Maya.” In reality, the Maya never went anywhere. They simply moved around the landscape in new rural and urban configurations. Around six million Maya people still live in the region today.
The Roles of Cacao
Through history’s peaks and valleys, cacao remained a steadfast feature of Maya culture. It played a role in marriage celebrations, burial rituals and religious ceremonies including sacrifices. Elites regularly drank hot chocolate, often mixing it with vanilla and flowers, while those with fewer means drank their bitter cacao with more accessible herbs and spices (sugar was unknown to the Maya before the 16th century). Unprocessed beans were used like coins. Ten of them could get you a rabbit or prostitute; 100 bought you a slave.
Historically, not all of the cacao beans ground on a metate were destined for consumption. The Maya and groups like the Olmec, Mixtec and Aztec also used the paste, mixed with other herbs, for medicinal purposes. It was considered a cure for digestive and skin problems, fevers and inflammation and, it turns out, they were on to something. Western science has since confirmed the health benefits of cacao. Consuming it in moderation has been shown to help reduce the risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure and have positive impacts on the digestive system.
Processing Cacao
Drying cacao seeds photo credit Shoshi Parks
For families like the Maquins, cacao is still culturally significant. Every two weeks at Ak’ Teilha they harvest the ripe yellow and green pods from their four varieties of cacao trees (Criollo, Forestero, Nacional and Trinitario) for household use and to sell to visitors who come to tour the farm. They crack open the pods, extract the beans and wash them clean of their sweet, goopy pulp. The beans, around 6,000 of them at a time, are then laid out on a large piece of zinc roofing to dry in the intense Belizean sun for about a week.
Next they toast the beans in batches on a comal, a flat griddle that hovers over an open flame, turning them every five to ten minutes to prevent them from burning. When the roasted beans are cool, they are crushed to separate cacao nib from shell, then tossed in the air over and over until all of the lightweight shells separate and fall to the ground.
The Maquin family winnows their cacao by tossing it in the air over and over photo credit Shoshi Parks
The low-tech winnowing process likely has ancient origins. So too does the grinding stone, called a metate, they use to crush the nibs into a smooth chocolate paste. The Maquin’s metate, which was carried from Guatemala to Belize in the 1970s, has been a precious family heirloom for generations.
Despite its medicinal properties, the Maquin family is most interested in the flavor of their chocolate, which they both drink and eat in bar form. As they hand grind the cacao nibs on the metate, they add splashes of water to form a silky mound containing as little cocoa butter as possible. Next, the paste is heated on the comal. Seven or eight times throughout the cooking process, they add spoonfuls of sugar along with some additional water and pungent allspice from trees grown on the farm. Finally, the chocolate is shaped into small bars and left to cool. In a single day, the family can produce 30 to 40 of them.
Although a lack of electricity and refrigeration prevents the Maquins from making enough chocolate to sell commercially, they hope it's an avenue they’ll be able to pursue in the future. Even if they do, not all of the chocolate they produce will be sold to the public. They’ll keep just enough behind for drinking, just like their ancestors have for thousands of years. You can visit the Ak’ Teilha Cacao Farm on a tour with Captain Jak’s.