Bitter Chocolate (5 page)

Pedro de Alvarado had been left in charge, and his innate ruthlessness had quickly provoked an insurrection. After mistaking a religious ceremony for rebellion, Alvarado ordered the slaughter of several thousand Indians. As a result, Cortés found himself in the middle of a full-fledged uprising, which he tried to get Montezuma to quell. When the emperor attempted to address the mob they jeered and stoned him.

Cortés and his men were compelled to flee Tenochtitlán and plan their return attack. The bloody battle that ensued is known in history as
la noche triste
(the sad night) for its bloodshed. Cortés then razed the city. Montezuma was killed—whether at the hands of the conquistadors or his own people is unclear. The once-dazzling Aztec empire was no more. Only a few items of value survived the sacking of Tenochtitlán, among them cocoa beans. But not because Cortés had any foresight that the intoxicating substance made from
Theobroma
fruit would have a future in Europe or would one day be the continent's favourite confection. Cocoa production survived because it was—literally—money growing on trees.

C
APTAIN-GENERAL
H
ERNáN
C
ORTéS WAS QUICK TO PUT
his conquered colony to work, using Indian labourers to mine gold and Indian farmers to supply food. They reconfigured Tenochtitlán as a European city, erecting a cathedral in honour of St. Francis on the site of an Aztec temple that Cortés's soldiers had destroyed. They laid the foundations for a new colony that would appeal to Spaniards living in the Caribbean and abroad, inducing them to settle and build grand estates. Over time colonists did just that, and the old Aztec stronghold became a modern urban capital: Mexico City.

The transformation from conquistador to colonist didn't lighten the heavy hand of the Spanish. The native people were obliged to be baptized before being able even to grind corn for their masters. But living together did require the Spaniards in the New World to accept some of the ways of the Indians, who were now their servants, slaves and, in many cases, brides and concubines. Gradually the two worlds fused—cultures, languages and cuisine.
Chocolate became a sensual bridge between the world of Montezuma and the triumphal Spaniard settlers, a perpetual reminder of an ancient, mysterious and lost civilization.

To suit cocoa to their own palates, the colonists modified the taste of native
cacahuatl
by adding large amounts of Caribbean sugar to the cocoa liquid. Some historians suggest it was Cortés himself who first added sweeteners, but it's more likely that the innovation came from Spanish priests and monks. Aztecs and Maya were known to have occasionally made chocolate more delectable with honey, and this probably inspired the clergy to experiment further.

Tinkering with ancient cocoa recipes was just a start. Familiarity with native customs bred, in some of the Spanish clergy, a certain admiration for the aboriginals, their culture and their history, in addition to their food. Saving the pagans from damnation required a certain social intimacy. And studying these savages up close gradually revealed unexpected depths of wisdom and sophistication. While they were preaching salvation, the Spanish priests were learning old secrets for surviving and thriving in the mysterious and dangerous New World.

The Franciscan monk Fray Bernardino de Sahagún was probably the most dedicated scholar in Meso-America, learning native languages and recording much of the lore that he acquired in a twelve-volume text:
General History of the Things of New Spain
. In his dissertation on food, Sahagún describes how an Indian chief would settle down contentedly after a long meal: “Then, by himself in his house, his chocolate was served: green cacao-pods, honeyed chocolate, flowered chocolate flavoured with green vanilla, bright red chocolate,
huitzecolli-
fl
ower
chocolate, flower-coloured chocolate, black chocolate, white chocolate.”

Sahagún was also fascinated by Aztec and Mayan religion and went so far as to raise the scandalous idea that the Indians might not have been fallen beings after all. What if they were merely different manifestations of the Holy Spirit? It was the time of the
Inquisition, a period of systemic terror. People in Spain were facing rack and bonfire for such radical ideas. But the reality of experience in the New World had watered down many of the European certainties about the natural supremacy of Christianity. The missionaries were impressed by the civility and, indeed, morality they found among the natives.

Dominican missionaries were among the first to learn the detailed secrets of the Indian diet and to understand the central role of cocoa in native life. They learned to modify the native food to suit Spanish taste buds and developed a unique recipe for hot chocolate, a kind of trans-colonial brew. Meso-American cocoa was spiced with cinnamon and black pepper from Asia, sweetened with sugar from Cuba, coloured with achiote (a red-coloured dye) from the West Indies and spiked with almonds and hazelnuts from Spain. The concoction was served heated—one of the earliest forms of hot chocolate.

Cocoa underwent an etymological transformation as well. The word
cacahuatl—
cocoa water—became
chocolatl
, the root of the term used universally today. The anthropologist and chocolate historian Michael Coe speculates that the change could have been contrived to distance the product from the root of the word
kaka
. Europeans simply couldn't bear the association of excrement with the thick brown liquid to which they were becoming addicted. But the word
chocolatl
may have been simply another term, roughly translating as “bubbly water,” that the Aztecs used for cocoa. In any event,
chocolatl
became the name of choice for the drink. The beans remained cacao or, after entering English usage and cuisine, cocoa.

Chocolate quickly became a mainstay of the hybrid Spanish-American diet as a beverage but also as a flavour to spike savoury gravies and stews. It took many more years, however,
before cocoa crossed the ocean to fuse with Spanish culture on the European continent, though there's no evidence to credit Cortés with the auspicious introduction.

Cortés went to see King Charles shortly after the conquest of Mexico and brought along an extraordinary collection of wild animals, beautiful crafts and even people, including one of Montezuma's sons. But if cocoa beans were among the curiosities presented to the court, there is no mention of it in written records of the occasion. Cortés had certainly mentioned cocoa in his letters to the king—in 1520, he described a “divine drink, which builds up resistance & fights fatigue” and “permits man to walk for a whole day without food.”

For men engaged in exploring and subduing an entire new continent, the value of such a potion hardly needed much elaboration. Yet Cortés's main source of fascination with the bean continued to be cocoa's monetary value in the New World. He was able to report to the king that, “they value [the bean] so highly that it is treated like currency throughout their land and they buy with it everything they need, in the markets and elsewhere.”

The Spanish could use cocoa to pay for goods and services in their colony—even to pay the meagre wages of the miners and porters who dug gold and silver and dragged it to the waiting transport vessels; even for the land they grabbed for the estates of the nobility; even for the purchase of slaves and prostitutes.

While the soldiers and the nobles knew the monetary value of cocoa, it was the clergy who understood its worth as nourishment. For this reason, it is most likely that priests and monks introduced chocolate to Europe.

These were chaotic times in continental Europe. As Holy Roman Emperor, Spain's King Charles spent a lot of time away
from home defending the realm from upstart dynasties in France and the far-flung Hapsburg empire. Imperialism is expensive, and Spaniards were struggling under the growing burden of war-driven taxation. To find himself master of new dominions rich with conventional resources and a local currency that grew on trees seemed to Charles like a gift from the Almighty.

By 1543, Charles, almost overwhelmed by imperial responsibilities, put his young son in charge of Spain. He saw to it that Philip, then just sixteen, was first well married and properly instructed in the affairs of state and then, despite his tender years, handed him the reins.

Philip was actually among the first European monarchs to seriously consider the effect Spain was having on those remote and difficult new territories and he disapproved of what he had heard about the abuse of Indians by the conquistadors. Philip's main source of information was an extraordinary priest—a Dominican named Bartolomé de Las Casas.

Throughout history, in the midst of all the crimes and errors of Christian zealotry committed against aboriginals in the Americas, individuals like Las Casas emerged who seemed genuinely committed to human rights and justice. The priest warned the political and religious hierarchy back home that Spain was embarked on a project that would be its ruin; the abuse of the natives was mortal sin on a massive scale, and it would bring the wrath of God upon his country. Las Casas's message was also pragmatic: the success of the New World project required the cooperation of the natives. Kindness and respect were more effective than coercion in winning the hearts and minds of those they needed as their willing partners. And he was shrewd enough to know that such a radical departure in colonial policy was going to need sympathetic support at the very top of the political system. From everything Las Casas had heard, Philip might be prepared to listen.

In 1544, a delegation of Dominicans, probably appointed by Las Casas, escorted a group of Kekchi Maya Indians to the
Spanish court. They were from Guatemala, a place of fertile valleys tucked among tall cloud-clad mountains, where the forests of Xoconocho yielded some of the finest cocoa in the New World. Though their empire was crushed and their numbers diminished, the Maya could still be as dazzling as they'd been nearly half a century before when first presented to Columbus on the shores of Honduras and also, as Las Casas had learned, just as defiant.

The Maya brought many gifts for Philip, all of them associated with their own ancient deities and monarchs: thousands of rare and valuable feathers from the colourful quetzal bird, traditionally used to adorn the headdress of their leaders; sacred copa, a tree resin used to make incense, lacquered gourds—and jars of prepared liquid chocolate.

Records of the encounter are silent on whether the teenaged monarch actually sampled the mysterious brown broth, full of froth and bubbles. But it was the first known formal introduction in Europe of what was destined to become the continent's most cherished treat. We can easily imagine the dramatic scene: a pale, curious teenaged prince surrounded by hooded monks and scantily clad copper-skinned Indians bedecked in feathers and beads, transfixed by a dark mélange in an ornate pot. It is less easy to imagine that any of them understood the social destiny of this vaguely noxious mixture.

The priests, inspired by the compassion of Las Casas, were thinking about human rights, not commerce, when they arranged the historic meeting between the young regent and his new subjects. Judged in that light, the visit was probably a failure. But it had the unanticipated effect of identifying the Dominicans as the proprietors of cocoa's mysteries, and it wouldn't be long before the friars were introducing their own recipes for cocoa treats to the Iberian court.