In the year of the Amazon Synod, we wish to recover the memory and testimonial of Florentino Zabalza, Augustinian Recollect and Bishop of the Prelature of Lábrea (Amazon, Brazil) from 1971 to 1994, who left his memoirs that are now offered to all audiences, for the first time, through AgustinosRecoletos.org.
I don’t remember for sure, but certainly, when I was in Colombia, I said something in my letters about cassava. Since I’ve been in Brazil, I’ve mentioned and said something about yuca on several occasions. Both words correspond to the same plant that, here, more than in Colombia, constitutes daily bread, mainly for the poor. This chronicle or letter is therefore dedicated to cassava, its cultivation and its usefulness.
The Portuguese dictionary that I have on hand, when talking about cassava, brings up some words that are even difficult to write and more difficult to read: euphorbiaceae, dicotyledons and others like that, with which indicates the class of plant to which it belongs.
I did not want to dwell on that detail; I have not even wanted to spend time finding out the place of its origin, although, judging by the legend that I am going to transcribe, it is of American origin.
I read the legend to which I refer a long time ago in a book that is no longer in my possession. I cannot repeat it verbatim (so it is not a transcript) and I am going to limit myself to telling it as I remember it.
Many years ago there lived in a savage tribe an Indian remarkable for her beauty and kindness. She was the prettiest and best of the tribe. When she was about to get married, they looked for the most handsome among the Indians for her husband, the most skilled in hunting and fishing, the bravest in war. But to everyone’s admiration, the young Indian woman declared that her wishes were not to marry and to remain a virgin.
Thinking that the one chosen by the chieftains to be her husband would not fulfill the desires of her heart, they left her free to marry whoever she wanted. But the Indian woman continued to refuse and, tired of insisting, they left her alone.
After a few months, the young woman appeared pregnant, which caused a great scandal in the tribe. Forced by the chiefs to explain herself, the Indian declared that she had conceived differently from other women of something that, after some time, would be the salvation of her homeland and her race.
The necessary time passed and the young Indian woman gave birth to a boy, who grew up adorned with the best physical and moral qualities.
Years passed and great calamities, wars, defeats and epidemics fell on that tribe. The chiefs and elders advised the death of that young man who had come into the world in such rare circumstances, to whom they attributed the evils that devastated them.
They all agreed and sent the virgin’s son to appear to tell him about his death sentence, which he received without flinching. Once dead in the most terrible pain, his body was handed over to his mother for burial.
After a few months, they saw a plant growing on the young man’s grave until then unknown to them and that caught the attention of the chiefs who, calling the mother, asked her:
— What seed have you buried in your son’s grave?
— None, she replied. The tomb does not contain anything different from the remains of my son, but wait and you will find the answer to your question and the explanation to your surprise.
When the plant had reached its full development, they opened the grave and instead of the corpse they found tubers white as snow: it was cassava.
The virgin mother, addressing the men of her tribe, said to them:
— If in the future you suffer from hunger, you will be the culprits, since this plant can multiply without much effort and it will give you a healthy and substantial food that will give you strength to fight against your enemies.
So, more or less, is the legend. I still remember that the author of that book found similarities between this legend of the yucca and our religion. Is there really? A virgin mother (Mary), a wonderful son (Jesus) who dies without complaining in terrible pain and who becomes food, Eucharist, to fight and defeat enemies.
The plant can reach up to two and a half meters in height. Its trunk, which at a certain height divides into several branches, can be three, four and even five centimeters in diameter. Broken into pieces, if they are buried, it gives rise to a new plant.
The fruit, the edible part, is the root, the tubers, the size of a medium beetroot, more elongated and always thicker next to the trunk. Each plant gives a number of four, six or more roots or tubers. Six months, for the most common species and a year or more for other species, is the time it takes from planting to harvest.
It is cultivated on the river banks and also in the highlands, in those that are not flooded in winter: it is planted on the river banks in September and harvested in January or February. In high ground it can be planted in any summer month, which lasts six months here.
To do this, a small hole less than a span deep is made, a span of cassava trunk is placed in it and it is already planted. After a few months, it will be necessary to uproot the grass that has grown around it; and until it is time to collect the tubers, nothing more needs to be done.
The one cultivated on the river beaches is left on land for as long as the river’s rise allows. As the water rises and reaches the plantation, it is uprooted. There are years in which the river rises so fast that I have seen people uprooting cassava with knee-deep water; and I know of many who have lost part of the crop because they did not have time to pull it up.
They do not water it, nor do they have much chance of doing so. If the summer goes on for many days without a drop of water falling, the cassava does not get fat and that could be a year of need and even hunger.
Once uprooted, they place it in the water in half-flooded canoes or in other containers made for that purpose for two or three days, so that it ferments and softens; then, easily, with the hand, its thick shell is opened and with a small squeeze they make the internal mass come out; This dough is pressed to remove as much water and humidity as possible and then, in a large iron container over the fire, it is toasted until it is to everyone’s liking.
Once toasted, the cassava mass remains as it would, for example, a handful of maize crushed with a stone or a hammer: some pieces larger than others and part also in fine dust. In this state it receives the name of farinha (flour), although it does not at all resemble our wheat flour in whiteness or softness.
The tasks of the cassava flour making, although different from those of our mowing and threshing, remind me a lot of these from my childhood days.
Imagine the group of people uprooting cassava on a beach, under a hot sun: something similar to those gangs of harvesters by hand, of our ripe wheat. Missing here are the songs, the dances, which I want to imagine as hymns of thanksgiving to God for the wheat-bread that he gave us, as well as thanksgiving through the Our Father that you, father, ordered to be prayed and intoned, when by luck we would find among the dry wheat field that Cross made with the palms of Palm Sunday which you had placed in the green fields of growing wheat. They don’t sing here; I don’t know if they pray.
The canoes that go empty and return full from the beach remind me of our old Monato, for those who don’t know, the donkey we had at home, and so many other Monatos carrying four wads of precious harvest.
And before the fermented, burst, pressed, toasted and stored cassava in cans, how can I not remember the extended, turned, threshed, collected, winnowed harvest (‘Saint Quirico, send us a bit from the heap’) stored in the barn in the sacks full of golden grains.
After this parenthesis of longing, let’s return to our topic, cassava. Once roasted, it is ready to be consumed. They keep it in drums, in cans, in tightly closed drawers, so that humidity and bugs do not damage it. There will be very few families in Brazil in general and in this region in particular whose tables are missing the cassava flour at mealtimes.
Those who have it serve it in a special vessel, and those who do not, in a can of some product they have already consumed, placed in the center of the table. Each one serves it with the spoon, even if it has already been used, without any concern for hygiene. It is eaten mixed with other foods, making a fine or thick dough with it to the taste of each consumer.
When they go to work, they carry the flour in a cloth or paper bag or in a can along with whatever fish or meat they may have; and at mealtime, they simply mix it by hand.
I have already seen fishermen or canoe travelers on the rivers who only take flour for all food. From time to time, they take a handful in their hand, insert their fist slightly loosely into the water to soak it, and thus eat it.
Cassava is also eaten fried or cooked; I like it a lot in these two forms and very little in the form of plain flour; only when there is nothing else, will eat it like this. With it they also make tasty cakes, fritters, empanadas, fried foods, etc.
In Colombia where they call it yuca, I have never eaten it or seen it eaten in the form of flour, like here.
In the same way that in our land there is white, black, homemade, bakery bread, and everyone has their preferences for one or the other, so here too there is white, water, dry flour and other forms that, according to their taste, each one makes for consumption or sale. Since the differences between one kind of bread or another are not obvious, the same happens with the different kinds of flour.
The way to process the cassava and to make the flour that was described above is the manual, popular way of the poor; there are, of course, modern ways, electrical machinery that makes the process faster and in greater quantities. Here, in Lábrea, last year they set up one of those factories that I even dare to say did not give the expected results, due to the lack of organization of the company, and for other reasons.
I have already told you somewhere about the conditions our road gets in the winter. Encouraged by the propaganda that the factory owners made, many farmers planted large amounts of cassava, but when it came to plucking it, there was no way to transport it to the factory. Many suffered enormous losses because they were not able to process so much cassava by hand.
Cassava is very rich in alcohol. The national government, in this gasoline crisis that we are in, made large loans through the banks to encourage the cultivation of cassava to obtain alcohol. A lot was planted, a lot was uprooted and at the moment of truth no one responded to their purchase, with the consequent damage to the farmers. Here, in this other world that is the Amazon, things happen that way very often.
Dear Parents. This letter is coming to an end. Can you imagine what a meal without bread would be like at home? Something similar is here a meal without cassava flour. There may be a lot of other things, but if the bread is missing, if the cassava flour is missing…
Someone who wanted to reflect a situation of misery or poverty would say there, in Spain: there is not even bread to eat. Here in the region I would reflect that same situation, saying: they don’t even have cassava flour to eat. Intercede so that we never lack our daily bread.
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