Fungi Stories

March 30, 2006

Fungi Stories in the Caribbean Coast

While I did not get to see cacao in Puerto Viejo (and I was unwilling to wander onto other people’s land uninvited), I did hear stories, and I head two particularly interesting stories about the recent outbreaks of fungi. To learn about the effects and causes of fungi on Cacao read this: http://www.apsnet.org/online/feature/cacao/

One verbal legend I heard was from the descendents of the few indigenous people that survived the mass massacres of the coast’s Spanish and Peruvian inquisitions.

Once there was an angry god living along the Costa Rican coastline of the Caribbean. The god declared to the people that if they did not take care of the land, he would kill off all of the cacao trees. Cacao trees were revered and respected then, and to some extent, they still are today. Now, because people started growing the cacao in monoculture and have let foreigners own and wreck their lands, the prophesized fungus came. Now, this fungus represents the demise of everything and is causing great worry to some of the local people who depend on cacao for tradition, family structure and livelihood.

Another story is from a member of the Jamaican, Algerian and Canadian refugee community that has taken refuge in Puerto Viejo for the last thirty years. This community had created for themselves a very profitable and happy community growing and selling cacao that they grew together by the side of the road. The story is, that the white man, to eliminate the competition of their small cacao plantations with their mono-cultured nearby cacao plantations, obliterate their cultures, spread their modern inventions like electricity, and obliterate the new happiness of the refugee community, deposited this fungus in the jungle that killed their trees, their livelihoods, and their small piece of peace. They believe that the first sign that fungi destruction was coming was electricity, the ultimate sign of modernity.