Research Sites

The bulk of this study was carried out in three Honduran departments: Colón, Olancho, and Yoro (see Figure 1). Within those departments, 44 ethnographic interviews were conducted in cities, towns, villages, and hamlets within the following municipalities (municipios) that contain wild Dioon mejiae populations: Tocoa (Colón dept.); Esquipulas del Norte, Gualaco, Guata, Jano, and Manto (Olancho dept.); Olanchito (Yoro dept.). Additional ethnographic data on wild populations were collected in the municipalities of Savá (Colón); La Unión and Juticalpa (Olancho); Arenal (Yoro).

Flores Pinot's parallel survey of cultivated D. mejiae was based in Juticalpa and garnered responses from 68 informants native to 14 of the 23 municipalities of Olancho, as well as the cities of Comayagua, Danlí, and Tegucigalpa in other departments.

Additional research sites included the Paul C. Standley Herbarium (EAP) at the Pan-American Agricultural School in El Zamorano, Francisco Morazán; the National Herbarium (TEFH) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras, Tegucigalpa; Lancetilla Botanical Garden, Tela; Danlí, El Paraíso. Searching for unpublished ethnobotanical data, we examined vouchers at Zamorano, Lancetilla, and the UNAH, and interviewed botanists Antonio Molina and Cyril Nelson. In the city of Danlí, we located living isotypes of the species and gathered ethnobotanical data, with the help of Dario Hernández.

At present, we consider the rumored existence of additional, disjunct wild D. mejiae populations (in central and western Honduras, and in northern Nicaragua) highly unlikely. The possibility of wild populations in western Honduras (departments of Copán, Lempira, and Santa Bárbara) was investigated by Cyril Nelson, German Sandoval, Carlos Monroy, and Carlos O'Reilly during a collecting trip in October 2003. They discovered that the toponym “Teocintal” (which signifies a population of D. mejiae in eastern Honduras) indicates Poaceae species (as it does elsewhere in Mesoamerica) (Haynes and Bonta 2003).

Physical Geography

On the Caribbean slope of northeastern Honduras, 22 small, isolated populations, one large population (approximately 168,000 adult plants at Saguay) and two “superpopulations” (clusters of spatially proximate groves that formed large populations until recent habitat destruction) of Dioon mejiae are known, stretching from 14°48′ to 15°32′ N lat., and from 86°0′ to 86°58′ W long. Smaller, isolated populations occupy from two to 400 ha and contain from two to 12,000 adult plants. The two superpopulations of Olanchito and Mame contain an estimated 200,000 and 250,000 adult plants and cover 2,700 and 6,000 ha, respectively. Tiusinte populations flourish in a wide variety of environmental situations between 120 and 1,000 m above sea level (masl). An extinct population in La Unión, Olancho, reached 1,200 masl, while cultivated individuals flourish from sea level to 1,500 masl across Honduras (and elsewhere in Central America, as well as overseas).

Dioon mejiae is naturally an understory or subcanopy inhabitant of broadleaf forests receiving 800–2,000 mm of precipitation per year. These forests range from evergreen “rain forest” at the northeastern edge of the tiusinte's range (a disjunct population in Tocoa), to deciduous mixed forest throughout seasonally dry northwestern Olancho, to arid thorn forest at Saguay and in Olanchito (upper Valle de Aguán). Trees in highly arid locations (less than 1,000 mm average annual precipitation) are often found growing in “gallery forests” near streams. Though much of the tiusinte's home range is characterized by Pinus forests growing on rugged hills, the cycads usually grow within streamside deciduous broadleaf woods rather than among immediately adjacent, upslope pines.

While most small tiusinte populations are restricted to steep and rocky terrain, the large Saguay population and the two superpopulations contain many plants on the first, second, and third Quaternary terraces above watercourses. Tiusintes thrive in sandy or clayey alluvion as well as on soils weathered from the limestones, granites, gneisses, and schists that predominate in the region. Soil samples from eight populations were analyzed at El Zamorano, providing the following results: pH ranged from 6.32 to 8.05; percentage of organic matter ranged from 2.26 to 18.94; in parts per million, potassium ranged from 2.74 to 123.77, phosphorus from 144 to 610, calcium from 1,330 to 14,500, and magnesium from 250 to 450 (Haynes and Bonta 2003).

Dioon mejiae is often encountered in agricultural, pastoral, and forested landscapes that are burned annually or semi-annually by humans. No populations are unaffected by recent human landscape transformations. At present, whole populations are being degraded rapidly by a combination of multiple annual fires and removal of plants (see Figures 2, 3, and 4).

Figure 2

Seven- to nine-meter tiusintes survive in a recently-cleared pasture on the ecotone between gallery forest along the Quebrada de los Hornos (Saguay, Gualaco), and deciduous tropical broadleaf forest upslope. This figure illustrates an early stage in conversion from finca to pasture; Figure 3 shows a later stage. Photo by M. Bonta.

Figure 3

Pasture with tiusintes in Saguay, Gualaco, along the Quebrada de los Hornos. Clearance of the tropical deciduous forest finca has taken place since 1990; tiusintes, respected as common-property resources, were not intentionally removed, and as hardy woody species, managed to survive repeated fires. Over time, however, serious degradation of the remaining tiusintes has occurred. Photo by M. Bonta.

Figure 4

Remnant of the Saguay, Gualaco tiusintal, referred to locally as the finca. Tall tree in left foreground is seven meters in height; lighter-colored leaves are the present year's flush (vestimento). Middleground habitat is dense gallery forest along the Quebrada de los Hornos; slopes in the background are cloaked in pasture and tropical deciduous broadleaf forest and scrub. Altitude 600 m above sea level. Photo by M. Bonta.

Semi-structured Interviews

From 1999 to 2004, Bonta, Flores Pinot, Graham, and Zúniga interviewed 122 persons using open-ended questions in a semi-structured format. Our intent was to document local knowledge of the cultural, economic, and political significance of Dioon mejiae in the greatest detail possible. We focused on food preparation, the harvest, and sacred uses, and also gathered data on environmental perceptions, land use conflicts, autochthonous conservation practices, economic importance, trade, and minor uses (e.g., as toys and medicine). Interviews were conducted only after gaining verbal consent from the subjects and ranged from ten minutes to more than an hour. For those informants identified locally as expert tiusinteros (male cycad harvesters) and tiusinteras (female cycad food preparers), Graham (in 2001 and 2002) and Bonta and Zúniga (in 2003) solicited permission to videotape detailed interviews as well as demonstrations of harvest and food preparation techniques. Graham obtained permission from interviewees to include video clips in a 2003 Spanish-language educational video that he produced (“El otro teocinte”); Bonta and Zúniga's footage was used solely for research analysis.

Researchers used digital photography to supplement written and video documentation.

Student Interviewers and Informants

Flores Pinot personally interviewed owners of cultivated Dioon mejiae plants in dooryard gardens in the city of Juticalpa and coordinated the compilation of data gathered by his agronomy students at the Escuela Normal Mixta de Olancho who interviewed D. mejiae owners across Olancho.

Participant Observation

At different times and sites we were able to observe most of the processes currently used in the harvest and preparation of food items; we participated in the harvest but were onlookers in most of the food preparation processes.

Data incorporated herein were cross-checked for accuracy against accounts of other informants as well as against our own field observations, where possible. The use of leaves was only observed directly in one case (see Figure 10) because we did not conduct research during the days when tiusinte use is most prevalent (e.g., Semana Santa [Easter Week], Día de los Muertos [All Souls' Day], Noche Buena [Christmas Eve], and bishops' visits).

Demography, Ethnicity, and Class Background of Users

Currently, only a few hundred of the approximately 11,000 remaining self-identifying “indios” in the wild tiusinte region think of themselves as members of the “Tribu Nahoa.” However, the municipality of Guata is still at least 80% indigenous, while Jano and Esquipulas del Norte contain significant indigenous population nuclei. Tiny pockets of indios also exist in Chindona, Gualaco. In Yoro, the village of Agalteca identifies itself as indigenous. The Tolupan, a well-defined ethnic group studied extensively by Chapman (1992), have one tribal unit, the Tribu Zapotal, in the tiusinte region. Their traditions and uses for the plant are quite similar, though not identical, to those of their mestizo neighbors. Their name for tiusinte is tiñ-uk, which appears to be a variant of “teoc,” the root of “teocintle,” a Nahuatl word from which “tiusinte” is derived (Bonta in press discusses the complex and confusing etymology of “teocintle” in Mesoamerican Poaceae and Zamiaceae).

Across the wild tiusinte region (2003 estimated population 115,000, based on figures published by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística 2001), “Ladino” (mestizo) Hondurans also consume tiusinte, and in three municipalities—Gualaco, Olanchito, and Tocoa—they comprise the majority of consumers. Overall, indigenous tiusinte consumers constitute only 15% (~5,000) of total users (~33,000). However, 45% of indios in the tiusinte region consume tiusinte, compared to only 27% of Ladinos.

In Guata, indios occupy the most impoverished stratum of society and are seen as more traditional. Hence, they are more likely to depend on tiusinte during times of maize scarcity. Tiusinte use in this municipality is closely associated with social class, and dependence on it as a “famine food” is stigmatized. A similar situation appears to exist in Jano. In the remaining municipalities, the opposite is true. In Esquipulas del Norte, for example, all social classes seek out tiusinte to supplement their diets, whether or not other food supplies are running low; there is pride, rather than a stigma, attached to its use.

We found indigenous tiusinte users in Olancho to be quite reserved about the knowledge they revealed to us. By contrast, Ladino users were extremely open about their knowledge, thus leading to the perhaps paradoxical situation wherein the least valuable data were provided to us by the supposedly most traditional users, while the most valuable, detailed, and nuanced data were obtained from more “modernized” Ladino users (Table 1). However, we spent little time in the most indigenous settings, and three-way cultural barriers among indios, Ladinos, and foreigners could not be breached in scant days of research.

Table 1

Lexicon for tiusinte (Dioon mejiae).

Oral Historical Accounts of the Harvest

Though we are aware of no written documentation of the pre-20^th century cycad harvest, informants have assured us that the practice has existed from time immemorial. Our oldest informants described practices in northwestern Olancho in the 1920s, more than 50 years before any automobile road reached the region. A main pack trail (camino real), dating from early colonial and presumably pre-Columbian times, bisected the tiusinte's range, passing directly through large cycad populations in Jano, Guata, and Esquipulas del Norte on its way north to Yoro from Olancho. According to various informants, rainy-season travelers heading to the Olanchito banana plantations to find work, and mule trains carrying trade goods, would often be delayed by the Mame River, impassable at flood stage, in northern Guata at the village of Pueblo Viejo. There, the only plant foods available for sale were tortillas and tamales made from tiusinte seeds. (Some of these travelers, including Dr. Isidoro Mejía, carried seeds back to their homes in other parts of the country, helping to spread the species in cultivation). This sales opportunity for tiusinte products dried up when the modern highway between Olancho and Yoro was built in the 1980s.

After at least a decade of growth, male tiusintes begin to produce pollen cones (churutes or churutones) that harbor an endemic Rhopalotria (sp. nov.) pollinator weevil (gorgojo de tiusinte). During the dry season (February to June or later), the gorgojos fly to nearby developing female cones (cabezas) and pollinate them. The cabeza develops over a period of 18 months, dehiscing in September or October of its second year. However, most cabezas are harvested well before then. The cycad harvest (cosecha de tiusinte) commences in February and continues into June. Cone production varies from year to year, increasing and decreasing over a three-year period. Generally, the height of a good cosecha is April and often coincides with Semana Santa. Previously, in Gualaco, tamales de tiusinte were prepared together with maize tamales on Holy Friday.

Wild tiusinte has always been, and remains, a common property resource (patrimonio) that by custom cannot be owned by individuals, even when it occurs within a few meters of a private dwelling. The harvest of female cones (each weighing 7 to 22 kg, and containing 100 to 300 seeds) has always been on a first-come, first-serve basis; tiusinteros cannot customarily reserve them or protect them for their own future use. Some non-traditional private landowners, however, try to keep cones on their land for themselves and refer to trespassing tiusinteros as “thieves.”

Historically, the hungriest sector of society descended on the tiusintales as soon as reasonably mature seeds might be procured. In years of extreme hunger, unripe cones were often harvested but later discarded when discovered to contain immature seeds. The most accessible trees were harvested first—women as well as men participated—and by late in the season only cones on trees growing in inaccessible places were left; these were often considered too risky to procure.

Entire families walked or rode more than a day to get to the main populations. Some villages, however, were fortunate enough to have large tiusintales within a few minutes' walk. It was (and remains) rare for harvesters to leave the confines of their municipalities. In the case of Guata and Jano, the municipal seats (pueblos) of the same name had a few small, highland populations nearby, but these were in no way sufficient to feed the hundreds of families that resided in the sterile pine forest landscape of the interior Olancho highlands. As soon as the need arose—when maize stores ran out in the early months of the year—families would saddle up several pack animals and trek north down the precipitous trails to the Mame River superpopulation which even today still contains 250,000 adult plants in patches along 40 km of the main river and up the side streams. Jano tiusinteros stayed on their side of the Mame (the west), while Guata tiusinteros stayed on theirs (the east). Families harvested from six to 50 cones, procuring from 70 to over 450 kg of seeds.

The mechanics of the harvest have remained unchanged: female trees (tiusintas)—notched with escaleras (“ladders”) that endure “forever”—are scaled; the tiusintero twists off the cone after chopping away the sharp leaves of the crowns (Figure 5). Trunks commonly grow 6–9 m in length and often extend over the edges of precipices. The tiusintero tosses the cone to the ground or places it in a sack, carries it back to where the pack mules are tethered, breaks it apart by striking it repeatedly with a stick, and extracts the seeds (cumbitos), still inside their white sarcotestas (conchas). Mesh bags (matates) are loaded up with seeds and are taken home for further processing. One mule can carry 70 kg of seeds.

Figure 5

Tiusintero in Río de Oro, Gualaco, preparing to harvest a large cone from a tiusinte overhanging a precipice. Photo by M. Bonta.

In contrast to the uncontrolled harvests of other municipalities, Gualaco, up until the 1980s, strictly managed its harvest through the imposition of an embargo—a closed season. All seven Gualaco tiusinte populations fell under this embargo, though the focus was the Saguay tiusintal, which contained at one time in excess of 300,000 adult plants (it has subsequently been reduced by almost half), and produced at least 15,000 harvestable cabezas annually. The other major tiusintal was that of Río de Oro, which contained around 20,000 plants and produced up to 1,000 cabezas. To prevent wastage of cabezas and to give everyone a fair chance, the mayor of Gualaco, based on updates he or she received from the auxiliary mayors in the villages, kept the season closed until early March. The opening date of the season varied from year to year, depending on the hunger felt by the human population, a factor closely related to the quantity of maize harvested in the previous year. As soon as the mayor declared the season open, hundreds of families from across the municipality descended on the tiusintales to fill up their matates in time to prepare for Semana Santa. Informants describe the pre-1980s period as the heyday of the harvest, when the plants still grew in what Gualaqueños call fincas or plantaciones (farms or plantations shaded by forest), and every family harvested as much as it desired. One informant mentions, however, that some mayors only opened the harvest (soltaron el embargo) after they and their aldermen had gathered their fill.

The Gualaco embargo was unique. The use of finca and plantación to describe the tiusinte populations of Saguay (fincón) and Río de Oro (finquita), combined with a strict management regime, indicate historical processes quite distinct from the laissez-faire attitude that prevailed in the other municipalities. Nevertheless, we have encountered no oral tradition in Gualaco of the cycads being, in fact, at one time a managed plantation or farm. The embargo was abandoned as ranchers in the 1980s enclosed the state land (tierra nacional) on which the fincas were located and introduced barbed wire, grazing stock, and pastures.

Our estimates and interviews indicate that, as a minimum, the average household of six consumers (children over two and adults) needed six average-sized cabezas (70 kg of seeds) to feed each member for a month on tiusinte, to the exclusion of maize and beans (Figure 6). Twelve or more cabezas can therefore be considered the minimum harvest per family to stretch them through the leanest two months of the year, while families gathering up to 50 cones were either treating tiusinte as a year-round staple, selling it, or both. In villages where an early Phaseolus vulgaris L. bean harvest was obtainable and where other resources could also be procured in the dry season (white-tailed deer as principal protein, and mangos, also common property, as the standard “starvation” fruit), tiusinte could be “stretched,” combined with other foods to tide the family through until the first maize harvest, which in some cases could be as late as September.

Figure 6

Don Manuel Antúnez, tiusintero from Suncuya village, Esquipulas del Norte, with five tiusinte cones. He is holding a very large cone weighing 22 kg and containing over 250 seeds. Photo by M. Bonta.

Informants told us that tiusinte was “magnificent” because it could always be counted on to produce sufficient cones, thus helping avert famine. In this, the tiusinte region differed starkly from nearby mountainous regions of Honduras: in central Olancho, for example, many families subsisted during lean years solely on mangos for weeks at a time. (There is convincing evidence offered by one informant, however, that in the 1800s tiusinte seeds were brought from the north and used in central Olancho during times of scarcity.)

Present-day Tiusinte Harvests

Tiusinte consumers constitute a shrinking percentage of municipal populations that have swollen primarily because of in-migration to forest frontier and (in Olanchito) banana-growing zones. Immigrants from other parts of Honduras have little knowledge of or interest in tiusinte. Nevertheless, harvests remain an important autochthonous tradition among long-time indigenous and mestizo residents. In Gualaco and Esquipulas del Norte, there is little obvious correlation between wider availability of imported foods and purposeful exclusion of tiusinte from diets. However, in Guata and Jano, where a stigma is attached to tiusinte consumption, many families claim to have stopped using it altogether.

Families in the poorest villages still trek at least a day to encamp at some of the tiusinte populations; however, the times are long gone when main towns such as Guata would empty out during the cycad harvest. Meanwhile, most tiusintales (tiusinte populations) are under heavy threat from migratory agriculture and ranching, and fire and removal of plants are widely recognized as dire threats to their continued existence.

Harvesting techniques have changed only slightly. However, older informants stressed the ignorance of the current generation, citing neophytes who chop down a tree to get a cone—a practice frowned upon because of the common knowledge that the tree takes untold centuries to grow. In some places (e.g., Saguay), harvests may take place by pick-up truck, because most populations are now more accessible.

Some of the tiusinteros with whom we interacted had intricate knowledge of the natural history of the plant, including the pollination process, the exact environmental requirements for its growth, the presence of seed dispersers (e.g., the Central American agouti, Dasyprocta punctata), and the various pests that affect it. In the latter case, Eumaeus childrenae (mariposa de tiusinte, “tiusinte butterfly”) caterpillars are the most noxious, though due to the extreme hardiness of the plant, they were not believed to cause mortality in wild plants. One tiusintero identified the papelillo (endotesta) between the seed kernel and the sclerotesta as the seed's defense against a Curculionidae snout weevil that attacks the kernel.

For plants similar to tiusinte in importance, traditional prescriptions that govern the plant gatherer's actions are the rule, not the exception, in Honduras. But one noticeable feature of the cycad harvest—and of tiusinte in general—is the absolute lack of beliefs connecting it to anything “supernatural.” This stands in stark contrast to local beliefs about plants and the Honduran landscape in general, to which “enchanted” characteristics are normally attributed (Aguilar Paz 1989; Bonta 2001). Locally, numerous other plants as well as animals are attributed magical and miraculous qualities. With one exception, not even the oldest informants could recall anything even slightly “inexplicable,” mysterious, or miraculous about the plant. In the town of Esquipulas del Norte and surrounding hamlets, an old saying has it that “one who eats tiusinte will never leave Esquipulas” or, alternately, “one who eats tiusinte will always (or quickly) return to Esquipulas.” The belief is laughed at by some but afforded credence by others.

Economic Geography

In addition to its significance in the subsistence diets of harvesters, tiusinte has long been a minor item of trade and barter. In Gualaco, tiusinte from Saguay was once bartered for coffee from distant villages. Today, in Gualaco, Guata, Esquipulas del Norte, and Olanchito, some tiusinteros harvest seeds for the local market, a practice that appears to be thriving in the latter two municipalities. In Gualaco and Olanchito, tiusinteros also harvest and sell small tiusinte plants, mostly to local households but also, when the demand arises, to nurseries elsewhere in Honduras for the internal and external ornamental plant market.

Currently, the standard measurement used for the sale of seeds—with or without the sarcotesta—is a plastic container that can hold 7.5 liters. Price varies from year to year depending on the size of the harvest, but at least for a couple months of the year, tiusinteros can earn 30 to 35 lempiras per container, or a few hundred lempiras a week (in 2003 prices) as a supplementary income. (In 2003, the local daily compensation for a full-time agricultural wage laborer was as low as 30 lempiras in some areas.) Seedlings from the wild sold for six to ten lempiras each.

Trade in cumbitos is more significant in Olanchito than in Olancho, primarily because there are still many hundreds of families who consume tiusinte in the city proper as well as in the nearby indigenous village of Agalteca, which retains usufruct rights over nearby tiusintales. Tiusinteros from Agalteca not only sell seeds to other villagers (a process replicated throughout the many tiusinte-consuming villages of Olanchito municipality) but also sell them in Olanchito, either directly to consumers or to market vendors for resale. In addition, tiusinteras in villages such as Agalteca prepare large quantities of tamales for resale in Olanchito (Figure 7). At least formerly, prepared tiusinte meal—harina or almidón—was also sold in the Olanchito market (Monografía de Yoro 1926). Additionally, nurseries currently buy seeds for export to the U.S. at 1,000 seeds for 300 lempiras. No comparable multi-tiered market system exists anywhere in Olancho.

Figure 7

Doña Sonia Posas, tiusintera in Esquipulas del Norte. Photo by D. Graham.

Toxicity

Tiusinte, like all cycads, is poisonous (Brenner et al. 2003), and though this was known to some informants, there was no overt concern. Traditional methods of food preparation were believed to remove the toxins effectively. Indeed, most informants were either unaware or unconcerned about tiusinte's toxicity.

Only the occasional domestic animal or person suffers ill effects from tiusinte consumption. The almidón prepared as a base for atol and rosquetes, for example (see below), leaves a residual, uncooked “cycad water” that is discarded, and cases of poisoning in humans (causing nausea and vomiting) have occurred. This same apaguaste, when fed to piglets, can kill them. In Gualaco, we observed a pig become sick after chewing on leaves that we left in a courtyard.

It is likely that tiusinte's various toxins are effectively destroyed or neutralized by the processes described below, for we neither witnessed nor were told of any cases of neurodegeneration. However, further study is needed to eliminate the possibility of long-term effects such as those Whiting identified among the Chamorro of Guam (Whiting 1963).

Food Preparation

When sacks of cumbitos are unloaded from the mules at the house, they become the provenance of the women and girls of the household. If long-term storage is desired (some families keep reserves of seeds throughout the year), cumbitos may be dried for several days in the sun, inside their sarcotestas, which turn black, or in their sclerotestas alone, or just as kernel pieces. In all cases, families take the risk of the seeds' being attacked by gorgojos (Curculionidae snout weevils, in this case); informants did not identify any storage techniques that would prevent this spoilage.

Seeds for immediate consumption are split open (usually by girls) with rocks. The white, starchy kernels (comida or producto) are broken into small pieces as the second step in the preparation of all tiusinte food products. From that point on, however, techniques of preparation and types of products prepared vary from family to family, village to village, and municipality to municipality.

The tamal de tiusinte (Figure 8) is the most appreciated and most frequently prepared of tiusinte foods. The second most common food is the tortilla de tiusinte (Figure 9); though rarely praised, it is easy to make and is derived from the same prepared nixtamal as the tamale. Third in importance is the drink known variously as atol, pinol, horchata, or simply bebidita de tiusinte. The only other food prepared throughout the tiusinte's wild range is the rosquilla, a doughnut-shaped, unleavened, salty cookie. In Gualaco, two other products are still prepared, though few people retain the knowledge of their preparation: the doughnut-shaped rosquete, and leavened cycad bread (pan de tiusinte). Collectively, rosquillas, rosquetes, and pan are referred to as mascaduras.

Figure 8

Tamales de tiusinte: (a) chopped-up and cooked seeds; (b) shaped masa; (c) wrapped in jucuyul leaves and cooked; (d) eaten with mantequilla. Photos by D. Graham and M. Bonta.

Figure 9

G. Sandoval sampling tortillas de tiusinte prepared by Doña Elizabet Montoya, La Laguna village, Esquipulas del Norte. Photo by M. Bonta.

Figure 10

Pencas de tiusinte (Dioon mejiae) in a household altar in Juticalpa, Olancho. Photo by D. Graham.

To obtain the nixtamal, kernel chunks are boiled in water with ash, ideally from broadleaf Quercus (roble) or narrow-leafed Quercus (encino) (see Table 2). Masica (Brosimum spp.) is used among the Tolupan of Tribu Zapotal, Olanchito.

Table 2

Plants culturally associated with tiusinte (Dioon mejiae).

The possibility of substituting lime for ash was mentioned widely across the study area, but except among the Tolupan, it was said to produce a poorer quality nixtamal, and few would admit to using it (lime is the key ingredient in maize nixtamal, hence the association). The Tolupan do, however, substitute lime for ash.

In a few homes, clay cooking pots are still used, but otherwise, aluminum suffices. After about half an hour at a rolling boil, with constant stirring, the kernel chunks are strained through a cucurbit-rind or plastic colander, washed off, and cooked again in new ash water. This process may be repeated up to six times. In most cases, at some early point in the process of nixtamalización the tiusinte is left to soak in the water-ash mixture overnight. The following morning, it is ready to grind. In one case in Gualaco, Graham observed a further cooking in water with Quercus leaves and twigs, purportedly to reduce the stickiness of the resulting nixtamal.

The thoroughly-cooked tiusinte, now a grayish hue, is ground one or more times—formerly by hand on a stone mano y metate, now usually in a metal hand grinder—to produce the nixtamal. Dollops of nixtamal are then placed on leaf wraps and shaped into cylinders varying from 15 to 20 cm in length and up to 2 cm thick. They are wrapped, rarely tied, the leaf ends are folded over, and they are stacked in a pot for cooking, between 20 minutes and an hour. Banana leaves are also sometimes used to cover the stacked tamales. In Gualaco, spherical tamales are occasionally prepared.

One of the most important components of tamale preparation is the type of leaf wrap (see Table 2). The only leaf that is universally used—and almost always mentioned as the “ideal” leaf—is from a plant called uva or jucuyul, an unidentified deciduous forest tree of the Myrsinaceae family. Jucuyul leaves are superficially similar to grape leaves and are said to produce the best-tasting tamal de tiusinte. Otherwise, the leaves of various musaceous plants and others are utilized as “second-best.”

Tamales de tiusinte are among the most highly-regarded dietary items in Gualaco and Esquipulas del Norte. Their quality is assessed not in their taste but in their rubberiness—an ideal tamale is so rubbery (huloso) that it can be bent back upon itself without breaking. Poor quality tamales, such as those made with lime, break easily. Tamales are quite filling, and it is said that three make a complete meal. They are eaten with red beans, plantains, and other traditional foods; when available, mantequilla (sour butter) or cuajada (cream cheese) accompany them.

For tortillas, the nixtamal is shaped into 13- to 20-cm-diameter cakes that are cooked briefly on the griddle. The tortillas have a ruddy color, and are said to be comparable in taste to tortillas de yuca (manioc tortillas).

Formerly, both tortillas and tamales were important to long-distance travelers, who used them as durable and long-lasting food for treks by mule train (tiusinte products last three or more days without spoiling, while maize tortillas and tamales may spoil overnight).

The other tiusinte foods are prepared without ash. Two main techniques exist for the preparation of the almidón (“starch,” otherwise known as harina, “flour”). The simpler process is the repeated grinding of raw, sun-dried (or, occasionally, stovetop-dried) seeds, followed by boiling of the resulting fine, white flour in water. From this, atol can be prepared quickly. The boiled slurry is filtered through a sieve, with a slight bit of salt and some cane sugar added, with or without cows' milk. The resulting drink is widely considered to be delicious.

The more complex process of almidón production seems to be the more traditional of the two. Sun-dried seeds are ground, then placed in a cloth that is suspended in a container of water. After up to three days, the apaguaste water—containing the toxins—is discarded, and the paste is left to dry in the sun, where it takes on a spongy consistency. (The process is quite similar to modes of preparation used by Australian aborigines and others, as described in Thieret 1958.) For atol, this harina is boiled, and the strained water drunk. For rosquillas, the harina is mixed with salty cows' milk cheese and shaped into rings, which are baked in adobe-brick, firewood ovens.

The (Gualaco-only) rosquete de tiusinte is a sweet pastry. The spongy almidón—sometimes mixed with maize flour—is beaten with unrefined cane sugar (dulce), lard, and eggs, then cooked. When it begins to bubble, the mixture is left to cool and is then shaped into rings that are baked in the oven. According to one informant, the rosquetes are ready when they “melt on the tip of the tongue.”

Bread—pan de tiusinte—is prepared (only in Gualaco) with one part almidón de tiusinte and one part wheat flour. Baker's yeast is used, in addition to all the ingredients mentioned for rosquetes. The dough rises, is shaped, and is baked in the oven.

The only case of tiusinte used to feed animals was one informant's mention in Gualaco that cooked, it could be consumed by chickens. However, she was adamant that tiusinte is a supremely human food, because it is superior in taste and quality to other foods—to maize, for example—which were more apt for animals. The belief that tamales de tiusinte are better than tamales de maíz is widely held across the region.

Uses for the Tiusinte Leaf

The two-meter-long tiusinte leaf is used in Catholic festivities not only throughout its wild range but also sparsely across the rest of Honduras and in Nicaragua as well. However, palm fronds as well as plastic and paper leaves have widely supplanted pencas de tiusinte. Cycad leaves are used worldwide in rites of Catholicism and other religions (Jones 1993), and, at least in Honduras, one of the reasons for their popularity has been their durability—they can last several weeks before turning brown—as well as their aesthetic appeal. In no case do tiusinte leaves have any innate sacred significance in Honduras, and we found no evidence of non-Catholic (e.g., indigenous or syncretic) religious overtones. However, there is a marked geographic differentiation in the nature of the events for which the leaf is used. In the southerly city of Danlí, El Paraíso dept., tiusinte leaves (from cultivated plants) are used solely for the funerals of children. In central Olancho (Juticalpa, for example), leaves are used for household funeral altars (Figure 10) and for wreaths placed at cemetery gravesites on Día de los Muertos. The cemeteries of outlying villages such as Punuare sometimes contain tiusinte trees (though paper wreaths are primarily used now). To the north, in Gualaco, tiusinte leaves are associated with individual death and also with Semana Santa events. In northwestern Olancho (Guata, Jano, and Esquipulas del Norte), leaves are associated partly with death and partly with the Christmas season. Nativity scenes in Esquipulas del Norte contain tiusinte leaves. In Olanchito, the tiusinte leaf is associated primarily with the 24^th of December and minimally with death (e.g., tiusintes once grew next to gravestones in the public cemetery).

Cultivated plants outside of the tiusinte's wild range are often grown for the express purpose of having a leaf supply or simply as decorative plants, while in villages within its wild range there are, perhaps surprisingly, less uses for and appreciation of the leaves than in towns and cities.

As integral parts of household altars—erected not only during the funeral event itself but also at prayer events (rezos) at forty days, six months, a year, and every year thereafter—tiusintes are decorated with glitter and paint and form a prominent part of the shrine; they are sometimes molded into a heart shape.

For Day of the Dead, tiusinte leaves are decorated with silver paint—an arduous process often assigned to children—and shaped into circular coronas (wreaths). These are taken by families to coronar, the act of placing the wreaths on graves of the deceased.

Formerly, in Guata and Gualaco, tiusinte leaves were used as awning on the arcades constructed along the approaches to churches on the event of a wedding or the arrival of a bishop (a rare and important occurrence). In Olanchito, leaves are still used to decorate the façade of the cathedral during the Christmas season.

Tiusinte leaves also have diverse but seldom-seen secular uses: in floral arrangements, Independence Day (September 15) parade floats, and, among the Tolupan, as the roofs of temporary shelters.

In Juticalpa, there are few cases of leaves actually being sold; in general, it appears that these are regarded as gifts. Overall, the use of leaves has lessened considerably throughout Honduras during the last 25 years.

Further Uses for the Female Cone

The most widespread secondary product of the cabeza is the whistle, fashioned by children from the dry cumbito (Figure 11). Two small holes are made—one on the end opposite the chalazal appendix, and the other on the side—and the endosperm is extracted with a sharp object. The resulting instrument, called a chiflador, chiflon, silbador, or cachinflín, is little-used today, but was once employed as a type of informal announcement that the cycad harvest had begun. According to one informant, its ocarina-like tones were heard in every house in Gualaco as soon as the first seeds were brought back. A series of four mournful whistles, the third on a higher key and the other three at a lower register, were said to bring “gladness to the hearts” of local families. Flores Pinot sees this as an analogue to the importance accorded locally to the calls of certain doves, though this connection was not explicitly drawn by our informants.

Figure 11

Tiusinte toys. At left, silbador; at right, enchute (pin is carved from ocote [pine], string is synthetic). Photo by M. Bonta.

Another children's toy was the enchute (pin-and-target), now rarely seen (Figure 11). The empty sclerotestas were perforated with holes and attached via an agave cabuya (string, nowadays made of durable plastic twine) to a small ocote (pine) pin sharpened at one end. The object of the game was to make the cumbito hop onto the pin. When this happened, the player would remark “te puse una panza” (“I put a belly on you”—i.e., I impregnated you). For this reason, the game was normally not played between a girl and a boy.

The sticky brea (mucilage) of the cabeza has several minor uses. In Gualaco, it has been used to seal envelopes. In Guata and particularly in Esquipulas del Norte, it is still used to stanch wounds. In the latter municipality, the practice once existed of using the brea as a fixative in a mixture with the peluza (tomentum) of the cabeza and the lard of the danto (Baird's tapir, Tapirus bairdii); this was affixed to the forehead, and the tapir fat acted as a decongestant. Presumably because the tapir is extremely rare now, the practice has all but disappeared.

Tiusintes and the Rural Landscape

Across its native range, tiusinte's overall dietary importance is third or fourth among plant foods, following Zea mays L. and Phaseolus vulgaris, and sometimes Musa spp. (In Guata, maulote [Renealmia exaltata L., Zingiberaceae] starch approaches tiusinte in importance.) Musa, Zea, and Phaseolus are either grown separately or intercropped in a variety of environmental situations. Generally, maize and beans are planted with dibble sticks in recently burned fields. Local soil types and moisture regimes, along with socioeconomic factors, determine how many crops can be obtained by a given family in a given year. In most cases where tiusintes are found in maize fields, bean fields, and mixed maize-bean fields, they are not intentionally destroyed, and are indeed considered part of the cropping system. Tiusinte leaf crowns are often thinned by machete because they shade out crops, while the cumulative damage from ground fires appears to retard growth and eventually kill mature tiusintes, as well as discourage regeneration of tiusintes from the few seeds that escape the tiusinteros.

In the village of Suncuya (Esquipulas del Norte), maize-bean subsistence farmers are also tiusinteros for profit (supplying the nearby town). According to Manuel Antunez (Figure 6), they discussed the problems of tiusinte loss (well prior to our 2003 expedition) and have begun to practice more careful management. They continue to utilize fire to “clean” the fields, but no longer remove the tiusinte leaf crowns. They believe that while fire aids the flushing of new leaves, the wanton destruction of adult leaves hurts the plant. Their aim is to achieve sustainable harvests of tiusinte within flourishing grain fields.

In Gualaco, tiusinte is seen as a forest product, and any removal of surrounding vegetation for swidden agriculture or pastoral use is criticized. In all municipalities, as mentioned above, tiusinte is always common property, regardless of the tenure of the land on which it grows. It is part of what municipalities consider to be patrimonio—the natural and cultural heritage of a particular region, its “commonwealth” (see Bonta 2001).

In pine forest regions, tiusintes are subject to intensive burning regimes, particularly where both pine and cycad grow in active pastures. Pine woods, even where cattle are absent, are also burned to create palatable growth for white-tailed deer, the primary prey of hunters in the region. In addition, many of the roads through and near tiusintales are a result of the pine logging industry, one of the mainstays of the regional economy (Olancho is one of the most productive pine forest regions in Central America, though the economic benefits accrue mostly to large, outside logging companies rather than to local economies). In Saguay, Gualaco, for example, a road that cuts directly through the finca has affected hundreds of tiusintes and allowed easier access for speculators who have financed rapid conversion of tiusintales to pasture.

Pastoral land-use regimes are extremely damaging to tiusintales, and though in most cases tiusintes are the only trees not chopped down during the initial conversion from woods to pasture, they die off after at least three consecutive years of fires (pastures are burned annually, sometimes on multiple occasions, for a variety of reasons).

The result of the last 25 years of rapid land transformation across the tiusinte region was the destruction of around one-half of the total population of Dioon mejiae, including the fragmentation of the two superpopulations. Though the species remains the most common cycad in the Americas (Haynes and Bonta in press) and continues to be an important dietary item for around 5,000 families, many of its individual populations are in dire threat of extinction.

Uses for Cultivated Tiusintes

Tiusintes grow in villages across Olancho outside the tiusinte's native range (they are infrequently cultivated within the tiusinte region). There are rarely more than ten per village. In each of the larger towns and in the cities of Juticalpa and Catacamas, several dozen are still found, always in private indoor patios and dooryard gardens. Conversely, in Olanchito, Yoro, tiusintes traditionally grew in the public cemetery and are also found in the modern, landscaped central park. In Tegucigalpa, tiusintes grow prominently in a few public parks and in interior courtyards of older government ministry buildings.

In Juticalpa (population approximately 30,000 in 2003), at least 50 mature tiusintes exist, and though others were destroyed in recent years, some of those that remain are still cherished for their leaves or ornamental qualities. The tiusintes of Juticalpa originate chiefly from travelers who passed through the tiusinte's native range; the rest come from seeds and offshoots of cultivated plants elsewhere. Two-meter-tall tiusintes often date from the 1800s (trunks appear to grow about a meter per century, at most, yielding an age of close to a millennium for the tallest wild tiusintes).

Many of the Danlí plants are derived from suckers and offshoots of the tiusintes Isidoro Mejía brought from his ranch at El Boquerón near Juticalpa. Suckers, offshoots, and seeds from the Danlí plants were planted around 1950 at the Pan-American Agricultural School at El Zamorano near Danlí; those produced abundant suckers and offshoots of their own, though never fertile cones. The small plants were sold over the years to visitors to the school from around the country. This illustrates a case of the mechanism whereby tiusintes were dispersed as cultivated plants across Honduras (and to nearby Nicaragua).