Between sea and mountains

A whole world in 25,000 km²

Totonacapan is a region of eastern Mexico in Veracruz and northern Puebla. It covers just over 25,000 km², approximately the size of the State of Israel [1]. In an area that may look modest on a map, it contains one of the greatest concentrations of natural and human diversity on the planet.

The territory is a world unto itself. There is no comparable geography in so little space:

• Bright, open beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, with black coral reefs and lagoons and mangroves teeming with life
• Great rivers and dense, humid tracts of low, middle and tall tropical forest
• Mountain cloud forest where the mist becomes a home, and conifers that seem to belong to another continent
• Volcanoes and perpetual snow approaching 6,000 metres, with immense waterfalls born in a mountain range with seemingly impassable crossings
• Intense green on one side, semi-desert areas of agave and cactus on the other [1]

This geographical variety is no accident. It is the condition that explains everything else: biodiversity, human diversity and the territory’s ability to serve both as a necessary passage between civilisations and as a refuge in which entire peoples found continuity and sustained their identity [1].

Agriculture, botany and food

Totonacapan is more than geography or history: it is one of the Americas’ great sources of sensory, botanical and cultural traditions. Many things that the modern world now takes for granted first circulated from this territory [1]:

Vanilla — it was born in this land. Papantla is known as “the city that perfumes the world” [6]. For centuries all the vanilla consumed on the planet came from this region [1]. Papantla vanilla now has an internationally recognised designation of origin [5].

Chocolate — Totonacapan developed the way of preparing cacao from which chocolate as the world later knew it emerged. A Mesoamerican ceremonial drink and cultural practice went on to transform food, trade and habits in Europe and around the world.

Allspice, chilli and many spices and essences — flavours that transformed entire cuisines and forever changed the world’s relationship with taste, aroma and fire.

Natural dyes, pigments and colourants — alongside other products of the Gulf and Mesoamerica, they shaped European fashion, textiles and visual imagination for centuries.

Copal, traditional medicine, botany and knowledge of the land — generations of learning about plants, forests, mountains, climate, fermentation, cultivation and ecological balance.

High-altitude coffee — it did not originate here, but in Totonacapan’s mountain cloud forests it found one of its most complex and recognised expressions [1].

Totonacapan’s cultural and culinary contributions also form part of the historical setting that led to UNESCO’s recognition of Mexican cuisine as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity: vanilla, cacao, chilli, maize, ritual techniques and traditional systems of cultivation, cooking and passing on knowledge.

Translated from the Spanish edition. Read the Spanish edition

Documentary references

• Traditional Mexican cuisine (UNESCO)