Ever since the United Nations cultural organization recognized the Haiti and the Dominican Republic’s indigenous cassava flatbread for its contribution to humanity on Wednesday, Geo Ripley’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing.
The Dominican Republic-based artist and researcher has been fielding calls, he says, from fellow cassava enthusiasts from around Latin America wanting to know how they too can get their version of the popular flatbread made from the bitter cassava or yucca root using techniques passed down from the region’s first inhabitants to its present-day populations, also recognized.
On Wednesday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, recognized cassava and inscribed it on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list as part of a five-country nomination that included Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Venezuela.
Now other countries such as Brazil and Paraguay, to name a few, want to be added on, which the inscription allows —but with some caveats. First, submitting countries must recognize the indigenous communities that continue to hold the casabe tradition and its rudimentary and laborious production dear.
“I have received international calls from different Latin American countries that want to join the nomination of cassava,” said Ripley, who was born in Caracas to Dominican parents and has long been pushing for the flatbread’s global recognition. “They all want to prepare their national inventories to submit to UNESCO so that they can be integrated into this global declaration.”
Ripley said Brazil and Guatemala, among others, were unable to complete their files in time for this year’s recognition but are now excited to do so. The first for Latin America, the multinational nomination was a long-process that involved Haiti providing the technical help with getting files in shape, and the Dominican Republic spearheading the political process. During the months-long process, the countries’ representatives anticipated that if they succeeded in making it on to UNESCO’s coveted list others would want to also join.
Proponents of cassava bread say that unlike regular bread, this one has no sourdough or fat and therefore healthier due to its natural ingredients. It also can be kept for up to a year unlike regular bread that can quickly go stale.
“The cassava is native to the Amazon-Orinoco basin,” said Ripley, who sees the popular staple as “a cultural root” that traverses through Latin America and the Caribbean. “In other words, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, the three Guyanas, Brazil and Paraguay, all have it. You go south, and it exists there, all the way to the Lesser Antilles until you reach the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti.”
In the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, cassava is more than just a popular food staple. It’s a delicacy, he also notes.
“You can go to any supermarket and you will find different names for cassava,” Ripley said. “There are local producers all over the country.”
Ripley, who is a Babalawo, a priest in the West African Yoruba religion and follows the Ifá divination religious system, recalls a question when he was being initiated. He was asked, “What are you going to give” in exchange?
“I’m going to give you the casabe, which we’re going to make into an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity to honor our pre-[Christopher] Columbus ancestors, that is, the Amerindians in the Dominican Republic,” he recalled of his answer. “That’s what I’m going to give you in exchange.”
Now that the goal has been achieved with not just one country but five, including three from the Caribbean, Ripley feels a sense of accomplishment — and duty to ensure that the starchy vegetable, once seen as “poor people food” is viewed in a different light. His vision is a cultural route that tells the story of the tuber.
In the cassava, he sees not just a source of sustenance for millions of people but a source of pride rooted in the identity and a common history of a people whose Amerindian ancestors developed its preparation over a thousand years ago in the Amazon basin before passing it onto African slaves.
“What we are now trying to do, and it is the approach, is to create the great cassava route not only at a national level, but at the level of the entire migratory process that is carried out, from the Amazon-Orinoco area to the Greater Antilles,” Ripley said, barely able to conceal his excitement over the prospect of a tuber telling a story about both the past and present. “At the same time, within these Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles, there are three French overseas provinces Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana.”
The indigenous people of the Americas have disappeared with time, disease and colonization. But the cassava flatbread, Ripley said and what it represents, serves as a reminder of the presence of the Amerindians, and specifically the Taínos of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. They live on, not just in the way in which it’s still being prepared like over a thousand years ago — on an open fire, in a community — but in “the names of rivers, mountains, words that were integrated into Spanish,” said Ripley.
“So this recognition has become, well, a great joy for all the Dominican people because of the symbolism that this nomination carries,” he said. “It’s a cultural element; it’s the spiritual part of the indigenous pre-Columbus heritage.”
This story was originally published December 6, 2024, 10:12 AM.
Miami.com
