Masato has a fermented funk to it, though it can also be quite pleasant. Fruits are often added for more flavor. It’s usually low in alcohol, which is why copious amounts are often drank at festivals. Yet masato isn’t necessarily created for the buzz. It’s used for sustenance. Masato often supplements the daily diet. It provides carbohydrates and is often safer to drink than water.

There’s also memepa, a juice obtained from the palm fruit pijuayo (Bactris gasipaes), also called pupunha or chontadura elsewhere in the region. There’s copuazu, another type of theobroma, whose pods are fermented and toasted to create a strange beverage. Of course we cannot forget cacao, the world famous fruit whose seeds are left to ferment and then processed to make cacao.

We have only begun to understand how significant fermentation is to indigenous life in the Amazon. In 2011, a group of scientists traveled to a remote part of Venezuela and found a group of Yanomami hunter gatherers harboring a microbiome with the highest diversity of bacteria and genetic functions ever reported in any human group. While many Westerners have had the diversity of bacteria in their gut depleted by antibiotics, leaving them with a desert inside, the gut microbes inside the Yanomami are as diverse as the flora and fauna around them. The amounts of gut microbes do not give an ideal picture of total health by any means – for instance, even these Yanomomi have life spans much shorter than Westerners because of a variety of other ailments. Yet maybe these gut microbes, many of them certainly originating from the many fermented foods eaten in the region, be the key to living in this wild terrain? If these recipes disappear we will never know.

“(Ají negro) is a fundamental technique of food preservation, but also an inexhaustible source for the development of flavors and maintenance of the health of the community by creating a population of beneficial microorganisms within the individuals,” says Colombian chef and agronomist Eduardo Martínez. “As Amazonian grandmothers say ‘women heal with food’ and fermentation is one of the tools of health care.”

At his restaurants Mini-Mal and El Panoptíco in Bogotá, Martínez has used ají negro both directly or in the preparation of sauces, broths, and other dishes, both salty and sweet. He says  it does a tremendous job both complementing and accentuating the flavors of smoked dishes, though it also goes well with bitter chocolate.

“My reaction was an absolute surprise when I saw it and tried it for the first time,” says Martínez. “A surprise that has not diminished even today. Ají negro is the ingredient that, in terms of taste complexity and simplicity, has surprised me the most in my life. My appreciation for this ingredient and everything that surrounds it culturally and gastronomically only grows as I know learn more of the details of its history, its preparation, and its territory.”

Ají negro is finding an audience elsewhere in the region too. In Quito, Zorim Wong of La Locanda uses it as a glaze with tuna. Other chefs in Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia are also experimenting with it. There’s enormous potential for artisanal producers in each country as more chefs, and eventually home cooks, discover ají negro.

A few years ago the people of Pucaurquillo thought tourism could become improve their economy. They made handicrafts and prepared a dance in their maloka, a traditional longhouse. But tourists never came. The boats that plied the Amazon didn’t make the turn up the Ampiyacu and the village was too far from any jungle lodges to attract day trippers.

Before chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino arrived, ají negro didn’t have any commercial value. It was an ancestral product that they made themselves but never left the village. In Iquitos, the largest city in Peru’s northern Amazon, ají negro doesn’t exist. You won’t find it at restaurants or being used in family homes. In Pucaurquillo, ají negro is eaten regularly with cassava bread, or it’s used as a sauce or marinade with fish and proteins. They never though it could be anything more than that.

“It caught my attention that it (yuca brava) is poisonous and can take your life, yet it’s the livelihood of these communities and a principle food,” Schiaffino said. “In theory, yuca does not have much nutritional value. Yet in practice communities that eat yuca are almost always well nourished. More research needs to be done.”

Schiaffino began applying the sauce to high cuisine at his restaurants, Amaz and Malabar, as well as his catering company and the MV Aria, a luxury Amazon river cruise ship he runs the kitchen of. He uses it like a table spice or a hot sauce, as well as in sauces, stews with fish or meat, to marinate proteins, and in saltados (stir-frys).

“As for flavor I found it unique and very interesting,” said Schiaffino. I automatically associated it with some ingredient I already knew. Miso, vegemite, or A1 sauce. It has a lot of umami. It’s a great flavor enhancer.”

Schiaffino has created a partnership with 14 families in the village and now buys 10,000 soles (about $3,000) of ají negro a year. The entire economy of Pucaurquillo has been altered and by an obscure ancestral recipe that was believed to have no commercial value. The very idea of ají negro – turning something poisonous and transforming it into something that sustains life – is ingrained into the mythology of many Amazonian cultures, adhering to a notion of balance within the environment. It’s fitting that this fermentation is what will be the thing that preserves their culture.