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14 The Itza Maya Control over Cacao Politics, Commerce, and War in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Laura Caso Barrera and Mario Aliphat F. The Itza, the last independent Maya kingdom, carried out a dynamic and active political and economic resistance to Spanish encroachment into their territory. For more than a hundred and fifty years, after Cortés’s first entrada into the Peten region in 1525, the Itza reconstructed an ancient central Peten exchange system, occupying the vacuum left by the collapse of the maritime trade network of the Chontal (Acalan). Cacao (Theobroma cacao L.), achiote (Bixa orellana L.), and vanilla (Vanilla planifolia G. Jackson), a triad integrated as the chocolate cultural complex; as well as salt, feathers, cotton, textiles, slaves, sacrificial victims, and Spanish iron tools, were subject to brisk and intensive inter-regional exchange.1 The sociopolitical response of the Itza, in the face of the Spanish menace, was to concentrate on incorporating and diminishing the internal conflict and division created by the different competing Itza parcialidades .2 Thus, cacao, achiote, and vanilla, as integrated elements of ritual and elite conspicuous consumption, became strategic commodities for the Itza. Cacao grows as an intensive crop in cacaotales (see below), known in Maya as pakal or pakal che, in only a few places of the Maya area.3 The Itza were able to integrate and control the production of some of these regions and even to compete directly with the Spanish commercial network. In this chapter we attempt to establish the most important parameters of the political and social economy of cacao in the period between the first Spanish contact and the final conquest of the Itza. The Nature of Theobroma cacao as a Traditional Crop The cultivation of Theobroma cacao demands a high degree of care and labor as well as agricultural knowledge and skills. A small broad-leafed understory tree, Laura Caso Barrera and Mario Aliphat F. 290 it needs shade and minimal fluctuations in climate (see McNeil, Chapter 1, this volume). Cacao’s sensitivity to environmental conditions limited its production and ensured its place as a precious commodity in Maya culture. Cacaotales or pakaloob Orchard-gardens (solares or the Maya pak che col) are small-scale agrosylvicultural systems with highly diverse floral and faunal composition (Barrera Marín 1980; Torquebiau 1992). In them, we find numerous trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants with multiple uses, which are integrated in close interaction with other plants and animals. The orchard-gardens are located near or around the homes of traditional Maya farmers (Barrera Marín 1980). Among the more interesting characteristics of this agroecosystem are its resilience and basic structure : the productivity of the solar can be intensified or reduced without changing the basic structural composition provided by the tree species, ensuring agricultural flexibility and lowering risks for the traditional Maya farmer. In the Manche Ch’ol region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were tree orchards known in Choltí as pakab and in Yukatek as pakal.4 These were extensive orchards where the Manche Ch’ol tended cacaotales, annatto trees, and vanilla orchids. The basic differences between the actual pak che col and the historic pakab were the extent of the groves, and the specialization of their production, transforming them into true plantations. In the Chontalpa region of Tabasco, Mexico, traditional farmers (Chontal Maya and mestizo) have planted and tended cacaotales since pre-Hispanic times. The traditional pakaloob or cacaotales were originally established on high grounds, beginning with the felling of the forest. The cacaotal is, in the Chontalpa , a multicropping agroecological system (Gliessman 1998) which produces many staples and natural resources; nevertheless, cacaotales are intensified treegardens , with a high density of individual trees (625 cacao trees per hectare). The cacao harvest begins three or four years after the cacaotal is established, and it lasts for about thirty to forty years. The average production of cacao in the Chontalpa today is 410 kg/ha. (Córdoba-Avalos et al. 2001). The variation in productivity is high, both at the level of the cacaotales and at the level of individual trees. Today the Itza recognize and manage complex agroforestry systems, including the pakal. In their southern settlements, the Itza plant various types of cacao (cacau), which are described by fruit color: Ix kan ‘yellow,’ ix sac ‘white,’ ix chak ‘red,’ ix box ‘black,’ and ix morado ‘purple’ (Atran 1993:670). Its natural fragility and the need for deep fertile soils make the cacao tree a difficult and demanding...

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