Promoting the Values of Bolivia’s Llanos de Moxos Biocultural Landscape: Part 3
By Rob Wallace | October 17, 2024
Sabores Silvestres is a partnership between the Wildlife Conservation Society and the award-winning Gustu restaurant to promote the conservation of biodiversity, reward local communities committed to environmentally friendly production, preserve food heritage and promote Bolivian gastronomic culture.
As part of this initiative, since 2017, we have conducted four expeditions to different parts of Bolivia to help value and document different products resources in the country and highlight the contributions that local people make towards the conservation of the natural world through their commitment to sustainable production and support to protected areas and indigenous territories.
Whenever we plan the Sabores Silvestres trips with Bolivian chefs, we always have a few likely highlights in mind. For the natural grasslands of the Llanos de Moxos region in the Beni Department, we were sure that as one of Bolivia’s main cattle producing regions beef would be high up that list.
Beef produced on natural grasslands is a much better option than mechanized agriculture, which is an emerging threat in the Llanos de Moxos through the promotion of large-scale soy and rice production. To help guard against that possibility there is an opportunity to consider this beef as a certified reduced-impact and wildlife-friendly product.
In that light, we visited some ranches and tasted a variety of barbecued beef cuts. But as so often on these Sabores Silvestres trips, the real highlights were found elsewhere.
“As we stopped in urban markets and indigenous villages on our 8-day whirlwind tour of the vast Beni Department, it was the lowly platano, or banana, prepared in at least eight different ways that kept surprising us.”
And so, it was vegetarian and vegan ingredients that dazzled on this trip. For example, as we stopped in urban markets and indigenous villages on our 8-day whirlwind tour of the vast Beni Department, it was the lowly platano, or banana, prepared in at least eight different ways that kept surprising us. Gustu had already caught on to this creativity and they have a reduced banana vinegar reduction on their menu that must be tasted to be believed.
On the trip to the Beni, we tasted liquidized very ripe banana as a breakfast, fried ripe and raw bananas, crushed banana masaco with cheese and/or dried meat, and banana milkshake, amongst others.
Another Amazonian staple — manioc or yucca — is also prepared in perhaps a dozen dishes, from the sonso (a gloriously cheesy fritter) to the fermented and dried chive flour used as an accompaniment or in cooking and as a power cold drink.
Upon seeing our genuine interest in the versatility of this product, a lady asked us if we wanted to taste some yucca yoghurt, which turned out to be a slightly fermented version that did indeed taste like yoghurt but with no dairy content! This is a classic example of the discovery process on these trips. In a changing world, it once again underlines the huge potential of agro-biodiversity to promote global food security.
And then there was the palo yemada — the bitter roots of a wild shrub from the Cerrado of the northern Beni Department. Rebeca Rivera, Director of the Biodiversity and Environment Research Center (CIBIOMA) at the Beni Autonomous University (UAB), had documented these roots at the Coquinal community on our scientific expedition to the Great Tectonic Lakes of Exaltacion. When grated and then whisked with water, they combine to produce a meringue like egg white.
“The highlight came at our last stop in San Ignacio de Moxos, where the world-famous Indigenous orchestra, Ensamble Moxos, awaited us with several delicious dishes that their families had prepared.”
As Dalcimar Daza Velazco, visiting from Coquinal, whisked this up to combine with sugar and vanilla as a dessert or with a native fruit liquor as a truly vegan cocktail sour, the look on the chefs faces told its own story.
But for me, the highlight came at our last stop in San Ignacio de Moxos, where the world-famous Indigenous orchestra, Ensamble Moxos, awaited us with several delicious dishes that their families had prepared.
One of these was pan de arroz, or rice bread. Rice bread has been a favorite ever since I first came across it in a Tacana village 25 years ago. It is incredibly popular in the lowlands of Bolivia. Everyone can tell when a given household is making this snack, because the rhythm of the pounding is unique to each person pounding the rice.
But this rice bread had a wonderful twist — the inclusion of the gusanito — a typical and very tasty chili pepper from the Beni region. To close the trip, the Ensamble Moxos gave an impromptu performance of their latest spellbinding Baroque music to a replete and enchanted audience.
Several of the participating chefs are now committed to exploring and featuring the ingredients we explored during the field trips at their restaurants, and Sabores Silvestres is an important communication vehicle for reaching the urban majority in Bolivia and encouraging that critical audience to think about how they, through their own consumption patterns, can support conservation committed communities who need markets that recognize the overall gastronomic, social, cultural and environmental values of the foodstuffs they produce.
Rob Wallace is Director of the Llanos de Moxos Biocultural Landscape and the Greater Madidi-Tambopata Landscape Conservation Programs of WCS in Bolivia.
