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Gourmet demand revives Central America cocoa farms - The China Post

ALMIRANTE, Panama — Indigenous people grew cocoa here more than 2,000 years ago. Now, their descendants are reviving the crop to meet world demand for high-quality chocolate.

Throughout Central America, farmers like Manuel Abrigo are planting cocoa, taking advantage of high world cocoa prices and the premium their cocoa commands.

“I sowed cocoa because I saw my neighbor had it and I wanted more income, too,” Abrigo, an Ngobe indian, said in broken Spanish. His hillside farm, near the port of Almirante in western Panama, overlooks a glistening bay where Christopher Columbus dropped anchor in 1502.

Grown by the ancient Maya in Mexico and Central America long before the arrival of the Spanish, cocoa also has a long tradition with the Ngobe people, native to the Panama-Costa Rica border region, as well as indigenous communities in Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Spanish explorers recorded that indigenous people used cocoa beans as currency. Ten could buy a night with a prostitute, 100 could buy a slave, according to archeologist Michael Coe, joint author of a book called “The True History of Chocolate.”