Mango biche
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| Kind of name | Local name |
|---|---|
| Also called | Mango viche Mangobiche Mango Biche |
| Language | Spanish |
| Meaning | Green mango |
| Refers to | A green marijuana of Colombia: an export grade of the 1970s, a native type of Cauca, and seed lines sold under the name |
| Country | Colombia |
|---|---|
| Places | Northern Cauca Corinto (appellation) Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Santander Department |
- CBG-COL-UNK-0120120001 (Colombia Mangobiche 2012)
- HCG-COL-UNK-0120250001 (Colombian Mangobiche 2025)
Mango biche (also mango viche or Mangobiche) is a name used in Colombia for a green marijuana. The historian Lina Britto glosses it "green mango" and lists it among the export grades of the marijuana trade of the 1970s;[1] the anthropologist Anthony Henman, writing of Cauca, uses it for the plain green marijuana of the Cauca basin and the Llanos;[2]: 275–277 and the national police count mango biche among the four native varieties of Cauca.[3]: 86–87 Seed sellers in Spain and the United States sell lines under the name.
Name
A grade, a type or a variety
In Britto's account of the 1970s trade from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the middlemen graded marijuana by colour, smell, cleanliness, humidity and maturity. Below the best, gold, came concha de coco (coco shell), mango biche, rayada (striped), negra (black) and cafuche (residue); all were exported. Britto writes that these varieties resulted from the growing conditions and from cultivation methods that controlled growth and watering as the plants matured, and not from differences of species or from genetic modification.[1]
Henman divides the marijuana sold abroad as "Colombian" into three main types: the mona or gold, mainly from the Caribbean coast; the mango viche or green, a more ordinary marijuana grown above all in the Cauca basin and in the Llanos east of Bogotá; and the punto rojo or red of the Western Cordillera and Cauca. In his finer scheme, plain green or brown marijuana is mango viche, with the English labels "Llanos green" and "Cauca green", and red on green or brown is punto rojo.[2]: 275–276 Henman thought that punto rojo and the milder, cheaper mango viche were more probably the same plant harvested at different stages than different genetic types, mango viche being cut before the red hairs and glands developed. The dealers of Popayán, he wrote, pointed out that mango viche carried whitish, undeveloped seed and punto rojo darker, mature seed. Growers dried mango viche by cutting or uprooting whole plants and hanging them in the shade, which gave a green herb with a fresh smell of chlorophyll. Stored for a time, mango viche often turned darker and browner and was sold on the street as punto rojo.[2]: 277–278
In a police characterisation of the varieties grown in Cauca, published by the anti-narcotics study centre Ciena in 2017 and reproduced by the Dejusticia researchers Luis Felipe Cruz and Isabel Pereira, mango biche is one of four native varieties with cominera, corinto and punto rojo, adapted to the climate of the region and taking seven to eight months to harvest.[3]: 86–87 Olmes Ortiz, president of the Comunidad Cannábica Colombiana, told the journalist Sebastián Serrano in 2016 that the marijuana sold in Medellín as regular was called cafuche, mango biche or punto rojo in other places: "Esos son nombres que se van pegando" (those are names that stick).[6]
Where it is placed
Writers place the name on the Caribbean coast and in Cauca. A poster writing from Colombia in 2017 said that the coastal marijuanas, Mangobiche and gold, used to be greener and yellower, the Cauca marijuana brownish;[7] another, in 2018, sorted Colombian marijuana as gold from Santa Marta, brown from Corinto, green from Mangobiche and black from Caldas and the Llanos.[8] On a seed-hunting trip filmed in 2013 by the seed company Green House Seed Co., a member of the team spoke of "The Mango Biche in the Calca region near Corinto city", in the words of the film's subtitles.[9] A poster on ICMag wrote in 2009 that Colombians had told him Mangobiche was "The best Punto Rojo out there, it comes from Corinth", adding that they were "not experts, just very keen consumers".[5]
A specimen collected in 2024 in a kitchen garden of the vereda of Los Medios, in San Vicente de Chucurí, Santander, is catalogued at the J. J. Triana herbarium under the common names "Canabis (variedad Mango biche) | Marihuana" (see Díaz-Rueda 4085 (2024)).[10]
Seed sold under the name
By December 2012 the Spanish seed company Cannabiogen listed a Colombia Mangobiche among its limited releases, calling it a "line of uncertain origins" and "one of the few old lines which still survive in the country".[4] Alejandro, known as Gato, founder of the seed bank Marimberos, told the magazine Cáñamo that the legends of Punto Rojo, Mangobiche and Colombian Golden were born in the mid-1970s, in the years of the marijuana boom.[11] The US seller Hippie Cannabis Genetics sells a Colombian Mangobiche, which it calls one of the lesser-known landraces of Colombia, exported to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s "just on a smaller scale and by different names".[12] The seller Black Tuna says that it worked from seed lots of mango biche, punto rojo and limón verde kept since they were grown in the mountains of Matitas, in La Guajira.[13] One member of The Landrace Team dates an interest in cannabis to 1999 and a local line called Mango Biche from the south of San Agustín.[14] In the film of the 2013 trip, a member of the Green House team said: "The verde limon that is called Mango Biche here".[9]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Britto, Lina (2020). Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise. Oakland: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-32547-0.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Henman, Anthony (2019) [1978]. Mama coca (in español). Translated by Gabriel Iriarte; preface by Wade Davis (8th ed.). Popayán: Editorial Universidad del Cauca. ISBN 978-958-732-345-0.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Cruz Olivera, Luis Felipe; Pereira Arana, Isabel (November 2021). Laberintos de prohibición y regulación: los grises de la marihuana en Colombia. Colección Dejusticia (in español). Bogotá: Editorial Dejusticia. ISBN 978-958-5597-98-3. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "COLOMBIA MANGOBICHE x10". Cannabiogen. Archived from the original on 10 June 2013. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Colombian Landrace from Cali". International Cannagraphic Magazine. 19 December 2009. Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ Serrano, Sebastián (17 April 2017). "Cada vez es más difícil conseguir marihuana nativa en Colombia". VICE en español (in español). Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ "That strain is mine". Overgrow. 2 December 2017. Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ "Most potent best effect landraces – wtf did I just smoke". Overgrow. 28 January 2018. Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Strain Hunters RAW: Colombia – Behind the scenes with VICE (Video). Green House Seed Co. 8 January 2021. Retrieved 1 November 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence 6572438825: Cannabis sativa L." GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ "Las aventuras de Gato y su misión marimbera". Cáñamo (in español). Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ "Colombian Mangobiche". SeedFinder. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "Punto Rojo (Black Tuna)". SeedFinder. Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ "About Us". The Landrace Team. Archived from the original on 6 October 2024. Retrieved 8 October 2026.