Ecuador Elusive Chocolate

Exploring Ecuador’s elusive chocolate industry

Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, might boast a buoyant economy today, but it’s still a shadow of its former glory. A little over a century ago, many of northern South America’s most prestigious products – bananas, coffee, shrimp – flowed into the port in preparation for shipment across the world.

Yet one of Guayaquil’s most lucrative exports followed a trajectory unique from the others: cacao.

The bean’s beginnings

Spain had known about cacao since the 16th century, when Francisco de Orellana, Guayaquil’s founder, noted cacao cultivation on the coast near Ecuador’s principal southern port. But strangely, even when Spanish conquistadors began appreciating the qualities of the country’s cacao – the bean yielded a highly-prized, fruity and fragrant chocolate – they banned the exportation of the sweet until 1789 – mainly because it enriched Spain’s South American colonies but not the Spanish Crown’s pockets.

The wider world knew nothing about Ecuadorian chocolate until the late 18th century when Guayaquil became the world’s first cacao port. Then, for almost 150 years, Guayaquil enjoyed a near monopoly in the product’s exportation, living up to its nickname, ciudad de cacao, or chocolate city. This prosperity came to an end, however, when a devastating blight and the stock market crash in the 1920’s plunged the industry into near obscurity.

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