Balché

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Balché is a mildly intoxicating beverage common among ancient and indigenous cultures in areas of what is now Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua and Honduras. Among the Yucatec Maya, a drink made from the bark of a leguminous tree (Lonchocarpus violaceus), which is soaked in honey and water and fermented.

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Tamra Andrews, in her book Nectar and Ambrosia, writes: Balche is a kind of mead, an intoxicating beverage consumed by the ancient Maya and by some of their descendants today. These people make the drink in a trough or a canoe, which they fill with water and honey, adding chunks of bark and roots from the balche tree. The mixture begins to ferment immediately. It results in an inebriating drink the people consume during rituals and believe to have magic powers. The peoples of Mesoamerica have long held the balche tree and their mysterious beverage sacred. Because the drink had strong religious significance to the Maya, the Spaniards banned the beverage in an attempt to convert them to Christianity. The ban was observed until a Maya named Chi convinced the Spaniards that balche had important health benefits and that many Maya were dying as a result of the prohibition. The Spaniards then lifted their ban, and balche rituals resumed. The Lacandon. . . believe that the gods gave balche rituals to them, and that because the gods themselves first became inebriated by the beverage, the people from then on had a duty to imitate the inebriation of the gods and to experience that same exhilaration. The Lacandon chant incantations while preparing the balche. . . First, the brewer offers his drink to the gods; then, later, the people partake of it, usually just before dawn. The Lacandon call the balche brewer "Lord of the Balche" and they identify him with Bohr or Bol, the god of inebriation. Nevertheless, balche rituals are no longer widespread. One culture that has kept alive balche brewing and its religious significance is the Lacandon of Chiapas -- a people whose culture is threatened by every aspect of modern life.