More synonymous with cigars than chocolate, Cuba rivaled Barinas, Venezuela for the best tobacco in the world during the 17^th Century (Virginia & Brazil were deemed to be of inferior quality). But Europeans who came to the New World in the wake of Columbus initially showed indifference to American botanicals because they were more interested in finding the spices of the East, in Asia, which they knew had a ready market waiting for them back home. Apathy turned to avarice, however, as tobacco eventually generated more wealth for the Spanish Royal Treasury than gold & silver bullion combined. It became their crown jewel while cacáo lagged behind.

That unequal relationship between Nicotiana rustica (tobacco) & Theobroma cacáo (chocolate) held here too on the isle of Cuba when Fidel closed just about everything in 1959, including Hershey’s sugar mill at Santa Cruz del Norte.

Cuba’s humble cacáo industry centers around Baracoa in the northeast. Its first seeds came from the Atlantic coast of Mesoamerica. Because the island failed to keep pace with modernization after the revolution, it possesses by now some rather over-achieving ‘heirloom hybrids’ (such as they are), so cacáo here may be living in a time-capsule; as vintage as the cars from the 1940s & 50s being driven around Havana well past their warranties.

The state of cacáo in 21^st century Cuba provokes a rather counterintuitive notion — Communism: good for chocolate?