Betting on Cacao to Keep Peru’s Yanesha Communal Reserve Thriving

This wild-growing variety of cacao exists only in the Yanesha people’s communal forests, in Peru’s Amazonian foothills. For years, villagers did not even identify it as cacao.

Eventually, a member of the community identified the fruit as cacao. This discovery led to the variety winning the National Quality Cacao Competition in Lima in 2019 — the first time an Indigenous organization had won the competition.

The Yanesha have named this native cacao Eshpe, after the monkey that helps propagate it. Monkeys pluck the fruit pods off the trees breaking them open for the sweet pulp inside.