Living Earth Festival Symposium: Chocolate Chat 2 - Julio Saqui

As a part of the museum's 8th Living Earth Festival, three Native American chefs, Chefs Freddie Bitsoie (Diné [Navajo]), Neftali Duran (Mixteco), and Julio Saqui (Mopan Maya), explore the rich history of cacao and chocolate. In this segment, Julio Saqui talks about his experiences and knowledge of chocolate.

Julio Saqui (Mopan Maya) is an entrepreneur and owner/director of the Maya Center Maya Museum, Che’il Chocolates, and Cockscomb Tours in the Stann Creek District of Belize. Saqui speaks three languages: English, Mopan Mayan, and Spanish. He has been instrumental in keeping many Maya cultural traditions alive through cultural dance training, corn tortilla making, sewing traditional Mayan attire, and teaching other community members to play the marimba. A master chocolate maker, he has an organic cacao and coffee farm that helps supply the raw product for his line of Mayan chocolate creations. His current focus is on promoting Mayan culture through sustainable tourism, indigenous plant use sustainability, collecting and documenting oral histories, and traditional healing remedies.

The symposium was webcast and recorded in the Rasmuson Theater of the National Museum of the American Indian on July 14, 2017.