Cooking cassava…
Documents and knowledge on the margins (01)
The Wenàiwika or Piapoco are about 3,000 individuals who live in the eastern plains of Colombia, between the Vichada and Guaviare rivers, along the Meta river, and in the middle of the dense network of streams or “caños” that crisscross the entire region.
In ancient times, the Wenàiwika were organized into subgroups or partialities that assumed the name of an animal, e.g. cumanáica, “deer”. One of these partialities was called cháse, “toucan”. In the tasty local Spanish, the nickname of this bird, not very vocal by nature, is “pía poco” (“the bird that chirps little”). And “piapoco” was the name given to the entire ethnic group in popular speech… and in the academic world. For their part, to call themselves they use the word that in their language simply means “people”.
The Wenàiwika have preserved their traditional culture throughout the centuries. However, from 1920 onwards, certain acculturation began, especially through contact with mestizo Colombian settlers. Jealous of their culture, the Wenàiwika kept this acculturation under control, reducing it to the purchase or exchange of a few items (clothing, radios and batteries, machetes, matches, petroleum, aluminum pots and pans, medicines) and sometimes to functional literacy, which only took place among males.
Today, these people still maintain many of their original ways of life, customs, and traditions. Some of them are common to the rest of the original communities of the Orinoco and Amazon basin, and have even been adopted by the Creole communities living in the area.
One of these traditions is the yucca-based cuisine.
The Wenàiwika live in rectangular houses; several thick poles of cuyubí wood joined together by plank walls lined with adobe on the outside, and with a gabled roof of palm leaves. These dwellings have between one and three rooms, most of which serve as bedrooms: in them are hung the “chinchorros” or hammocks that serve as beds throughout tropical South America. The main room is the social area par excellence; there, on one of its walls, there is usually a wide shelf where drinking water and food are stored, out of the reach of children and domestic animals. And in one of its corners, there is a fire pit where food is prepared.
The basis of the Wenàiwika’s diet is the cáini, the so-called “yuca brava” or “bitter cassava”. The “yuca brava” is the bitter variety of cassava (Manihot esculenta). Grown in small family gardens, it is harvested and, since it decomposes very quickly when raw, it is processed. It is grated, and the whitish pulp obtained is shredded and left to ferment slightly overnight.
The next day a vital process takes place: the juicy pulp is compressed in the “sebucán” or irìca, a huge press-filter that allows extracting all the juice from the cassava. This juice is loaded with hydrocyanic acid (hydrogen cyanide, prussic acid), which is extremely poisonous but is deactivated by heat. While the fermentation process has removed some of the poison, careful pressing is required to extract the rest.
The toxic juice is cooked to prepare a drink known as “mingao” or càaméri, a Wenàiwika term meaning “bitter”. The pulp is removed from the “sabucán” and passed through a sieve to obtain a kind of fine-textured, slightly moist flour. This flour is spread on the “budare” or púali, the king of the Wenàiwika domestic artifacts.
The “budare” is the central element of the house, not only for the Wenàiwika communities but for many others. It is a kind of circular clay plate that is heated from below and on which the classic “tortillas” are prepared. It is made with a special clay, gray in color, which is mixed with the ashes of the cawìa tree. This pottery process can only be done by a woman.
The cassava flour is then placed on this hot plate until the layer is one centimeter thick. This is how the “torta de casabe” or macàdu is prepared, which can sometimes measure up to one meter in diameter, depending on the dimensions of the “budare”. The cake is cooked on both sides, turning it with a wooden spatula (in the best crêpe style), and when it is removed, it is placed on a cosìduma mat (circular, woven with a single “moriche” palm leaf) or in a flat ába basket.
Thus, hot and moist, the macàdu can be consumed immediately. Those that are not eaten are thrown on the palm roof of the house, to dry in the sun, or left on the shelf. The hardened and dried cake is called dàalèeri, and lasts for several days if not moistened.
The Wenàiwika obtain another product from the cassava: the “fariña” or machúca. This is obtained if, instead of preparing a tortilla with the flour that is poured into the “budare”, it is toasted by stirring continuously. The final product is a very hard and dry cereal, which can be stored for months in plastic bags or in mapíiri baskets (made of cane woven in hexagonal patterns) lined with leaves. Or it can be used to make a hot drink called chucúsi.
Is this the Wenàiwika diet? Not at all. Good hunters and fishermen, they enjoy soups and roasts of fish or meat. In addition, they are subsistence farmers and gatherers, so they also eat green mangoes, palm nuts, sweet potatoes, sweet cassava, and other tubers. Finally, they raise pigs and chickens: with the fat of the former, they fry the eggs of the latter, alongside some bananas from their gardens. And, to settle these dishes, they make fermented beverages based on corn or sugarcane honey.
Despite such variety, their “bread” (to give a European equivalent) is the yucca cake, which has also become the staple food of many populations of the Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Brazilian and Bolivian Amazon, the Venezuelan Orinoquia and the Paraguayan Chaco. And although the uses given to the appreciated tuber are many (it is fermented to brew beer, it is boiled to accompany meat as if it were potatoes, it is roasted…), its use on top of a hot “budare” is already a classic South American image.
An aroma, a sound, a color, an image, and, in short, a memory and knowledge that have become the (in)tangible heritage of an entire continent.
