 "Photo: Celsio Gonzalez")
A day before departing for a remote region of the Amazon rainforest, Juanita Choo was struggling to fit everything she would need for the next six months into her luggage. Cut off from the outside world, she had to be able to carry all of her gear - which included a portable solar power station - on her back.
She will be living with the Hoti (pronounced HO-deh) people of Venezuela, who still practice a traditional nomadic lifestyle and agriculture. However, instead of growing crops or raising livestock, the Hoti cultivate a different type of food: palm weevil grubs.
A UT biology graduate student, Choo's research spans both anthropology and ecology. She investigates the connections between the people, the weevil larvae they cultivate and the palm trees that the weevils consume. Choo believes that by cultivating weevils, the Hoti may indirectly impact the palm trees, which on indigenous groups also depend for their fruits. Nevertheless, the practice of weevil cultivation has existed for hundreds of years, so Choo's research will investigate whether some sort of balance has been reached.
Choo, who is originally from Singapore, speaks Spanish, but that will not help her much on this next trip.
Before she left, The Daily Texan sat down with Choo to discuss her experiences living with indigenous groups, her research on the interactions between humans, insects, plants and the unforgettable taste of weevil larvae.
Daily Texan: Why are you working with indigenous groups in the Amazon?
Juanita Choo: I want to work with indigenous groups because they are the people that are going extinct very quickly. So this is the time to capture what they know of the forest, their impact on the forest, whether it is positive or negative, and to catalogue and quantify it.
DT: Have you worked with some of these groups in the past?
JC: Yes, I've been there the last two years, and I've worked with different groups, like the Hiwi and the Curripaco. These are two groups that are more acculturated than the group that I really wanted to focus on, the Hoti. I wanted to work with them because they are the last indigenous groups discovered in Venezuela.
DT: How do you communicate with them?
JC: Last year, I went to a Hoti group in the state of Bolívar [Venezuela]. Some of them spoke Spanish, because there's a mission set up there, where there's about five nuns - local Venezuelan nuns - that basically live there for years and years. The mission was set up more than 30 years ago. The mission gives them language classes, and they learn Spanish, but only a few are very fluent in it, so I was able to request help from these people and use them as translators.
DT: You're going to a different site from where you've visited before?
JC: Yeah. This site is going to be a lot tougher because [at] the previous sites I've been to, there's been a mission base, so I would fly in there, and there was still logistical support. ... So if there was any emergency, I knew I could always ask for help. But this time around, I'm going to a site where there are no missionaries - nobody - and it will just be me. So logistically it's really crazy, because I have to bring all my food, all my supplies. I have to rig up my own solar power system to run the equipment to do the experiments. The other logistical problem is that they don't speak Spanish at all. There are no Spanish speakers, so I'll be in a language immersion situation, where I have to learn the language.
DT: What will the living conditions be like?
JC: I will be living in the rainforest in the Amazon, and I've brought my own gear to set up my own temporary shelter. Hopefully, when I get there, and if I have a good relationship with [the Hoti], perhaps they may help me build some kind of a permanent shelter.
DT: Based on your previous experiences with indigenous groups in the Amazon, do you feel that you are able to integrate into their culture?
JC: It's hard to be accepted, unless you work there with them for years and years, and they have trust in you, particularly with the Hoti. It's interesting because a lot of names of indigenous groups mean "The People" or "The Men" or "The Humans" and with Hoti it's the same thing, the same meaning. And as long as they don't consider you a Hoti, you are not considered a person.
DT: How long do you plan to live with the Hoti?
JC: Ideally for six months, but it really depends on whether physically, I can take it or not. ... If I get hurt, if I fall ill, then I will definitely have to cut it short.
DT: How do they cultivate weevils?
JC: The weevils feed on palm tissue ... so in nature when there are no humans around, when there is an opportunistically fallen palm tree, the weevil adults will come to the fallen palm tree, lay their eggs. Then the larvae will develop within the tissue of the trunk and feed on the tissue. In order to generate larger populations than would naturally occur, [the indigenous people] intentionally cut down trees to provide resources to breed these larvae.
DT: How are the weevil larvae prepared?
JC: They either eat them raw on the spot as they're harvesting them, or they take them back and they cook them in a big cauldron for soup. And there are different preparations depending on different ethnicities of the indigenous groups.
Choo believes the thumb-sized larvae may make up a large portion of the indigenous diet, depending on the time of the year. She said that the larvae may be an important source of protein, especially during the rainy season, when meat is scarce.
JC: It's really high in fat, so it's very high in calories.
Choo went on to explain how people, by providing what may be the ideal source of food for palm weevils, might be cause their population to increase. Even though indigenous groups such as the Hoti consume large numbers of weevil larvae, they also make a conscious effort not to eat all of them. Instead, they release some larvae for the sake of repopulation. That may be a reason the system seems so far to be sustainable.
DT: Lastly, I have to ask: Have you eaten the larvae? How do they taste?
JC: Well, you know, it tastes like rancid palm tissue. So, it's not my favorite food. But it's a delicacy for them. They love it.
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