CACAO (Theobroma cacao L.) IN NAYARIT AS A PROPOSAL FOR AGROTOURISM

Abstract

The appreciation for cacao and its cultural symbolism in Mesoamerica have been a matter of deep interest since ancient times; its use is known by iconographic evidences and its halo of mysticism is interpreted in legends, myths and rituals of ancient cultures. However, their study analysis has geographically privileged the areas where the majority of ethnohistorical data on their origin or domestication of the plant are known, in the case of Mexico in the Chiapas and Tabasco region, in most Central American countries and in South America in the Amazonian valleys, while talking about the presence of this fruit in western Mexico - the state of Nayarit, the northern boundary of the cocoa belt of the world - has been a little studied subject. In this ethnohistorical approach to cocoa in western Mexico, the foundations are proposed to create agrotourism products in the tourist municipality of Bahía de Banderas, Nayarit and the appreciation of cocoa and chocolate as a part of the ancestral cuisine of Mexico that could be integrated into the value chain of local gastronomic tourism.