In her article “As soon as seen as meals for the poor in Haiti, this staple crop is vying for UNESCO recognition,” Jacqueline Charles (Miami Herald) writes, “This staple crop feeds practically a billion folks world wide, together with in Haiti the place it’s additionally serving to to create jobs. Now Haiti and 4 different international locations—Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Venezuela—have joined forces to ask UNESCO to acknowledge cassava, whose flour makes a preferred flatbread, on its Intangible Cultural Heritage Checklist.” See excerpts beneath. [Many thanks to Sophie Maríñez for bringing this item to our attention.]
In a wood-frame shack with out partitions on the western edges of this historic metropolis, time stands nonetheless. Amid the fixed noise of passing bikes and honking automobile horns, dozens of Haitians are busy at work making ready a conventional staple crop the way in which their forebears and the island’s indigenous folks did ages in the past: with charred wooden, artisan sieves and home made picket knives. Whereas a bunch of ladies scrapes away the outer pores and skin of the edible root often known as manioc or cassava, utilizing nothing greater than the peeled off steel tops of cans, a bunch of males prepares to course of the tuber into flour by washing it, whereas a 3rd group grates it and removes its poisonous juice. The tuber’s dried, sifted flour is then unfold evenly in a round vogue onto a spherical, flat iron plate often known as a platine, sitting on high of a giant concrete slab with burning charcoal beneath.
“Now we have round 11 totally different flavors,” Monarc Petit Benoit, the co-founder of Dope Kasav, says. “There are such a lot of I overlook.”
STAPLE FOOD OF NEARLY 1 BILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE
The staple meals for practically a billion folks world wide, cassava, also referred to as yuca, is having fun with a renaissance right here due to its gluten and nut-free flour that’s used to provide kasav or cassava bread, a preferred flatbread of the area’s authentic Arawak inhabitants that till not too long ago was thought-about poor folks’s meals in Haiti. That rebirth, Benoit says, may be credited to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising value of wheat and different meals. All have made wheat bread an expensive luxurious, and kasav, with its long-shelf life, a beautiful different. “It’s a part of our tradition and the manufacturing of cassava has been right here for a very long time, for the reason that native Indians,” Benoit mentioned.
“Now we have round 11 totally different flavors,” Monarc Petit Benoit, the co-founder of Dope Kasav, says. “There are such a lot of I overlook.” The staple meals for practically a billion folks world wide, cassava, also referred to as yuca, is having fun with a renaissance right here due to its gluten and nut-free flour that’s used to provide kasav or cassava bread, a preferred flatbread of the area’s authentic Arawak inhabitants that till not too long ago was thought-about poor folks’s meals in Haiti. That rebirth, Benoit says, may be credited to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising value of wheat and different meals. All have made wheat bread an expensive luxurious, and kasav, with its long-shelf life, a beautiful different. “It’s a part of our tradition and the manufacturing of cassava has been right here for a very long time, for the reason that native Indians,” Benoit mentioned.
The normal know-how related to the making of cassava bread is the driving pressure behind the nation’s choice to affix forces with 4 different Latin America and Caribbean nations — Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Venezuela — to supply the normal delicacies to UNESCO for recognition on its Consultant Checklist of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Cassava’s candidacy, a collaboration that’s been two years within the making, marks the primary time 5 international locations within the hemisphere have come collectively to pose a multinational entry for the celebrated United Nations honor. Their pitch? Whereas cassava’s style and texture could fluctuate throughout the area, and its identify differs (kasav in Haiti; casabe in Cuba; ereba in Honduras; pan de Venezuela, bammy in Jamaica), the “pan de los Indios” or “bread of the Indians” as it’s also identified in Cuba, has transcended time and nationwide boundaries. “It’s a much-needed reminder that at a time when Haiti can really feel fairly remoted, that we share a number of the frequent lineage, frequent heritage, frequent cultural background with a lot of the area,” Dominique Dupuy, Haiti’s ambassador and everlasting delegate to UNESCO, mentioned.
In Cuba, the custom lives in six rural provinces throughout japanese and central Cuba; in Venezuela, cassava is standard amongst indigenous communities and the nation’s African descendants; within the Dominican Republic, as in Haiti, it’s current all through, whereas in Honduras, it’s a staple meals for the Garífunas, the descendants of African slaves blended with Carib and Arawak Indians who sought refuge in Central America after fleeing slavery and warfare in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Dupuy, who in 2020 efficiently obtained Haiti’s first ever entry on UNESCO’s Intangible Checklist with the nation’s standard independence pumpkin soup, soup joumou, mentioned a cassava inscription offers Haitians with a chance to increase the dialog round their nation, at the moment present process one among its worst humanitarian crises together with unprecedented ranges of gang violence and kidnappings. Kasav — normally eaten with peanut butter, ideally Haiti-made with a pepper punch — is a logo of nationwide identification rooted within the nation’s African and indigenous historical past that started lengthy earlier than the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the Spaniards, earlier than French buccaneers established a settlement on Île de la Tortue, the pirates’ lair off the nation’s northwest coast, in 1625, and lengthy earlier than enslaved Africans rebelled to create the world’s first Black republic in 1804. [. . .]
The Taínos’ conventional know-how of manufacturing cassava bread was handed on to others at a key time when the indigenous inhabitants on Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere within the hemisphere was on the verge of extinction. The data was absorbed by the enslaved Africans and handed on to their descendants by way of generations.
INVESTING IN CASSAVA
This historical past, mentioned Benoit, together with the monetary potential of the product, led him to spend money on one of many oldest cassava companies within the northern metropolis of Cap-Haïtien. Just like the throng of individuals stopping by on a current afternoon to buy the flatbread, Benoit was a consumer. He was additionally motivated by the scarcity of wheat bread through the COVID-19 pandemic and by the concept that if performed proper, he might additionally create jobs whereas serving to out farmers. “Cassava from the north is the desire within the nation,” mentioned Benoit, whose coaching is in computer systems. “So I believed, why not have the cassava from Cap-Haïtien attain different areas and assist the nationwide manufacturing? The extra folks eat cassava, the extra will probably be in demand and the extra jobs may be created.” [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.miamiherald.com/information/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article273361915.html
[Photo above by Jacqueline Charles jcharles@miamiherald.com: Josnel Pierre pepares kasav flatbread in Haiti, on Friday, Jan. 20, 2023. The staple food, which has no fat or sourdough, is still prepared the way it was made centuries ago.]