Word: cacao
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When a fungal disease began ravaging Levy Bryant's four-hectare cacao farm a decade ago, the landowner could have done what other besieged farmers have | done. He might easily have picked up an ax and begun cutting down more tropical rain forest around his land on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. He could have sold the timber from the tall laurel trees that shade the cacao bushes, then burned the dense virgin forest on the hill behind his farm. Then Bryant, like so many financially strapped small farmers in Latin America, could have sown pasture and sold the land...
...from an environmental group called Anai (which means "friend" in the language of the local Bribri Indians). "We probably wouldn't still be farming if it wasn't for these guys," admits Bryant. Anai provided him with new kinds of crops, including vanilla plants and a different variety of cacao tree, which is less likely to die from fungus. Over the past five years, Anai has brought dozens of new varieties of cash crops to more than 20 communities in the Talamanca region, set up plant nurseries serving 1,500 people, and helped establish a 10,000-hectare wildlife refuge...
...list of their favorite drinks reads like a dessert menu from the 1950s. At 104 TGI Friday's around the country, for instance, it is the pineapple fling (lime Calistoga water and fruit juices); at the Hyatt hotel in San Francisco it is "Remember the Oreo" (creme de cacao, ice cream and Oreo cookies). For guys, it is no longer considered wimpy to order a light beer. Says a Friday's vice president, Gregory Dollarhyde: "There's reverse psychology at work. You're going to be fat and unattractive if you don't (order it). Looking good is very...
More and more Caribbean nations are tearing up irreplaceable rain forests to plant such export crops as bananas, sugar cane, tobacco, coffee and cacao. On the sea, tankers, carrying oil from Venezuela and more distant shores, crisscross the Caribbean; as much as half of the U.S.'s imported oil comes through these crowded sea arteries, many of them leading through dangerous, narrow straits...
...capital, Mexico-Tenoch-titlán, site of present-day Mexico City, their soldiers waged war with the efficiency of Roman legions. Decked in feathery plumage to simulate serpents and other fearsome creatures, they terrorized their neighbors, bringing back captives and exacting tribute of food, blankets, precious metals and cacao beans (for use as money). In a bloody annual ritual known as the Raising of Banners, they appeased their chief deity Huitzilopochtli, the war god, by killing their prisoners as well as slaves especially purchased for sacrifice by Aztec merchants. In one recorded debauch, some 20,000 victims were allegedly...