Arturo Gómez-Pompa Professor of Ecology and Botany in the Faculty of Sciences of the National University in the Institute of Biology at UNAM. These distinctive and academic positions have gained Gómez-Pompa a prestigious reputation in the ecological world. He discovered the use of Theobroma cacao, or the tree of chocolate, as ancient crops in rejolladas and cenotes within the Yucatán Peninsula. This confirmed his hypothesis on the anthropogenic origins of the Mayan forests and advanced future research in the domestication of tropical trees. Gómez-Pompa created a database for the Flora of Veracruz project in the 1960s that is still utilized to this
Hacienda Cacao Hacienda Cacao Hacienda Cacao is located off the Carretera Uman-Hopelceh (Uman-Hopelceh highway) within Abalá Municipality, Mexico, and is in the South West Region 8 area of the State of Yucatán. It is one of the properties that arose during the nineteenth century henequen boom, and was owned by José María Ponce. Cacao comes from ka'kaw, which in the Mayan language means "cocoa" (Theobroma cacao). The hacienda was built by José María Ponce who issued his own hacienda tokens of special design in 1889 which are highly prized by coin collectors. Ponce grew henequén on the plantation, was considered a master