Trade adds spice to Central America

From turmeric in Nicaragua to cardamom in Guatemala, nonnative ingredients are redefining trade routes and making unexpected connections across lands.

Americans have suddenly and belatedly awakened to turmeric’s health benefits. And

small-scale farmers in Guatemala, mostly poor and of indigenous descent, now grow more than half the world’s cardamom, a crop that belonged for millenniums to India, the New York Times reports.