Lisa's Blog

  The Tourism Board commercial calls him part farmer, part philosopher, part superman. Eladio Pop has a big, sunny personality that draws tourists to him like pale houseplants that push their leaves upward to reach his life- giving rays. He certainly isn't the only traditional chocolate farmer in Toledo, but he's the most famous. His farm tour involves an energetic climb up a steep hill, upon which, their chests heaving from the unaccustomed exercise, his visitors are allowed to rest and enjoy the panoramic jungle sloping down to the distant sparkle of the Caribbean Sea, far below. Elado scoops a calabash into a bucket of homemade cacao wine, the top of which is thick with slimy white seeds speckled with shiny black whole allspice. He offers this to his visitors, urging them to strain it with their teeth.  Overcoming their revulsion, the more adventurous of the group taste this viscous brew,  finding, to their amazement, that it is delicious. They reel a bit as they scram...

  In my dim and distant childhood, the alleged rise in the earth's temperature was a hotly contested theory. In 2024, we hotly contested fires. It stopped raining in January, and by May, temperatures reached unbearable triple digits.  Parrots dropped dead from the trees. A group of peccaries were found dying, spooking villagers who were tempted to feast on a windfall of wild pig meat, but what had killed them?  Then the fires started.  Much of southern and western Belize’s tropical rainforest burned. Corpses of wildlife littered the blackened hills, including, heartbreakingly, a mother tapir who died with her babies huddled beneath her. Farmers in San Pedro Columbia lost about half of the cultivated land (much of it planted in chocolate trees) to fire. The butterfly farmers, depending as they do on an intact local ecosystem, are struggling, although we are so blessed that our homes did not burn. My family joined in the fight to put out one of the first of the fires t...

  When I came to San Pedro Columbia, bought a piece of abandoned land with no electricity or road access, and built myself a little shelter in the bush, many villagers predicted that a jaguar would eat me. But not Julio Sanchez. He offered to help build me a house. I paid him, of course, but he was also my friend and guide. He could have used yemeri trees cut in the wrong moon, and I wouldn't have known the difference, but he built me a good house, anyways.  While others sought to prank me, advising me that the best way to rid my farm of leafcutter ants was to strip naked, cover my body with grease, and dig for the queen, Mr. Julio took me seriously. He called me Licia, the Spanish version of my name, and gave me wise advice. "It is good to have land, Licia, to farm and also to pass on to your children."  Mr. Julio stopped by often on his way to his pasture down the river, where he maintained cows and the white horse he rode. He mentioned his work with the Catholic C...