The Future of Chiltepíns On the drive back to Cumpas, Antonio
spoke of his dreams–and the problems inherent in achieving them.
He wanted to create a chiltepín plantation, where all the bushes
were centrally located and irrigated, thus eliminating wasted
time and money with pickers wandering for miles through rough
country. I reminded him of the problems with previously
cultivated chiltepín crops that we had learned about at the
symposium. In those experiments, growers had planted the
chiltepíns in rows under artificial shade and had irrigated them
as if they were growing Jalapeños. The cultivated chiltepíns had
the tendency to produce pods fifty percent larger than the wild
variety, which did not seem authentic and thus were rejected by
consumers. Several reasons for the occurrence of the larger pods
had been advanced. There was the natural tendency of growers to
select larger pods for their seed stock for the following year,
which is how chiles developed from BB sized to the large pods we
have today. Also, i