Yuca and cazabi: a poisonous root, an indigenous detoxification press, and the bread that kept a year at sea

Bitter cassava kills whoever eats it raw. The Taíno of Hispaniola had a processing chain that made it the bread of the Caribbean, and Oviedo, a royal official on the island, printed the whole procedure in 1535 — the grater, the woven çibucan press, the hanging stones, the burén griddle, the poisonous juice poured on the ground — with the price of a load in Santo Domingo and the note that cazabi kept a year at sea. Modern genetics places the domesticate on the southern rim of the Amazon.