Today it is hard to find someone who has not heard of the infamous hallucinogenic plant mixture called ayahuasca commonly prepared from the stems of Banisteriopsis caapi and the leaves of Psychotria viridis or chacruna. The brew, well known for its purging and visionary…
Read More
English + Español
I smile as my mother and I dance along to the music, the quick beat resonating with our bodies as we move. “El jolgorio está! Te digo que está bien por la maceta, vamos a gozar, ja ja, wepa, wepa, wepa,” the music booms through the room, the maracas shaking to the beat…
A relatively young commercial city of around 80,000 inhabitants in the Colombian vast oriental plainlands received about 18,000 internally displaced persons of the country’s longstanding
Read More
English + Español
Peru has a longstanding reputation for its quality cacao. In the past decade, it has also attracted attention as a craft chocolate hot-spot with a tantalizingly long list of must-try makers. Indeed, from 2015 through 2019, a boom of more than 50 craft chocolate…
On Tuesday, September 9, 1645, at 12 noon, the cocoa trader Antonio Méndez Chillón was arrested at his home in Veracruz (New Spain) by the Inquisition commissioner and charged with Jewish heresy. This episode, which was far from being isolated, helps shed…
Read More