“Imagine a forest where giant mosquitoes abound,” Briche González, now 53, recalls of her childhood on her family’s ancestral farm. View image in fullscreen A village in Ecuador where, along with Brazil, Colombia and Suriname, there are formally recognised Afro-descendant lands. Afro-descendant communities in Latin America have long cultivated “edible landscapes”, which grow in the midst of natural forests and mimic the surrounding flora. View image in fullscreen View image in fullscreen ‘Edible landscapes’ grow among the forests and mimic the surrounding flora. “Biological diversity is also a human creation.”Once slavery ended, many Afro-descendant communities turned to agriculture and some became powerful cacao producers.