Bitter Chocolate

Anatomy of an Industry

Carol Off

• Publisher: The New Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781595589842
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Öffentliche Landwirtschaftspolitik

This shocking exposé of the corruption and exploitation at the heart of the multibillion-dollar cocoa industry is "an astounding eye-opener that takes no prisoners" ( Quill & Quire, starred review). Bitter Chocolate is both an absorbing social history and a passionate investigation into an industry that has institutionalized abuse as it indulges our whims. Award-winning journalist Carol Off traces the fascinating evolution of chocolate from the sixteenth century banquet table of Montezuma's Aztec court to the bustling factories of Hershey, Cadbury, and Mars. In what will be a shocking revelation to many, Off exposes how slavery and injustice remain a key aspect of its production even today. In the Ivory Coast, the world's leading producer of cocoa beans, profits from the multibillion-dollar chocolate industry fuel bloody civil war and widespread corruption. Faced with pressure from a crushing "cocoa cartel" demanding more beans for less money, poor farmers have turned to the cheapest labor pool possible: thousands of indentured children who pick the beans but have never themselves known the taste of chocolate. " Bitter Chocolate is less a book about chocolate than it is a study of racism, imperialism and oppression as told through the lens of a single commodity." — The Globe and Mail ( Toronto )

Chapter One

DEATH BY CHOCOLATE

“The main benefit of this cacao is a beverage which they make called chocolate, which is a crazy valued thing in that country. It disgusts those who are not used to it, for it has a foam on top, or a scum-like bubbling . . . It is a valued drink which the Indians offer to the lords who come to pass through their land. And the Spanish men—and even more the Spanish women—are addicted to this black chocolate.”

—JOSÉ DE ACOSTA, National and Moral History of the Indies, 1590

THE STORY BEGINS IN THE PREDAWN OF HUMAN HISTORY, more than three thousand years ago. At least, that’s the beginning we can glean from the scant records of Meso-American people, about whom we know only fragments: the Olmec. And it probably begins with women, harvesting the colourful gourds from the dappled limbs of wild cocoa trees then liberating beans from the pulpy interior; mashing them to a fatty, viscous goo mixed with water and starch and then dispensed among the more elevated classes of their people.

The staple of the Olmec diet was maize, which sat overnight in tall urns filled with water and wood ash, or sometimes lime and the pulverized shells of snails. In the thin light of the early day, the women scooped out the dissolved mixture and washed away the transparent hulls. They’d beat the grain into a doughy mass, then serve it to the masters often fortified by the dark, magical substance they’d extracted from the bean called kakawa, or, as we know it, cocoa.

It was a perfect gastronomical marriage. The starchy maize absorbed much of the heavy, fatty cocoa butter and made it more digestible, while the rich flavours of the bean gave the mixture zest. The Olmec women served it as thick, bitter-tasting drink, stimulating, nourishing and—they believed—healing as well. The wisest among the Olmec would have been hard pressed to explain the origins or the mysterious chemistry of this dark and bitter additive. Why it seemed to restore the weak and add vigour to even the strongest among them; why adversity seemed more manageable and pleasures more enjoyable under its benevolent influence; how it helped them through their daily challenges—fatigue, despair and even, among their warriors, fear. But time and custom had evolved a deep, unshakeable faith in the beneficial properties of cocoa. The purity and potency of an Olmec chocolate cocktail is impossible to come by nowadays—the mass-produced and processed product we know as chocolate is a pale substitute. But one thing is consistent: then and now, chocolate is a luxury consumed by the privileged at the cost of those much less so. For thousands of years, the chocolate cravings of an elite have been satisfied by the hard labour of an underclass.

~

Theobroma grows in a band around the world, hugging the equator, and thriving only where there are perfect temperatures and plentiful moisture. But three thousand years ago, when the Olmec first harvested its riches, cocoa could be found only in the dense tropical rain forests of Central America and southern Mexico. According to American anthropologists Sophie and Michael Coe, the same fecund climate that allows cocoa to thrive also provided the perfect conditions for destroying written records about its cultivation, as well as many of the Olmec’s more fragile artifacts. What did survive were some of the most renowned and recognizable Meso-American relics: giant stone heads with smooth faces as inscrutable as the history that time erased.

According to the Coes, the Olmec were probably the first people in the Americas to form a class-based society in which a select few were able to live comfortably off the toil of those less fortunate. Olmec clans established permanent villages and relied on agriculture for their economic well-being. Making use of a servant class, they developed sophisticated methods for preparing food, not least among them the first known recipes for cocoa.

Archaeologists have never settled the dispute over the relationship between the Olmec and the Maya—whether they were descendants, trading partners or simply neighbours. Olmec civilization mysteriously disappeared around the same time as the Maya rose to dominate the region, in the first or second century AD. But it’s clear that the Maya built upon the centuries of wisdom and know-how of their predecessors, including the fine art of making cocoa concoctions.

Over many centuries, the Maya came to occupy parts of the countries now known as Belize, Honduras and Guatemala, as well as the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico. These fertile, humid lands supported the highest-quality cocoa beans ever to be found, in particular the bean known as the Criollo, a variety as coveted by today’s chocolate-makers as Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are by wine snobs. For over two thousand years, Mayan civilization rivalled or surpassed anything found in Classical Greece and Rome, while Mayan pottery, ceramics, painting and textiles dazzled all who saw them. The Maya built pyramids, stone houses, parks and gardens in their stately cities. And the culinary delights they made from cocoa would confound even the most advanced modern-day chocolatier.

We know something of how the Maya prepared their chocolate drinks from surviving manuscripts and also from the detailed scenes of court life depicted on pottery and frescoes. For cacahuatl, literally “cocoa water,” the beans were soaked, aerated, ground and then mixed with a wide range of spices and flavours, including chili pepper, flowers, vanilla and herbs, along with edible dyes. Occasionally, Mayan aristocrats took their chocolate sweet, with honey added to it; but it was always mixed with ground corn, making the beverage a kind of thin gruel. Key to the enjoyment of chocolate was a topping of frothy bubbles. Cocoa liquid was poured from one vessel to another—splashed, really—to beat air into the mixture. The cook would stand holding a pitcher of cacahuatl and transfer the contents into a second jug placed on the floor—the extra height presumably increased the bubble content—as lords, high-ranking warriors and honoured dinner guests looked on raptly. The cocoa would then be served in cups of calabash or clay, depending on the status of the guest. The foam (some Europeans called it scum) was consumed first, as a special treat.

As befits a food of divine provenance, cocoa was also associated with religious rituals and the worship of various deities. In the Dresden Codex, one of the few surviving texts of this age, gods are depicted seated on thrones holding cocoa pods and dishes heaped with cocoa beans. Another image, of the New Year ceremonies, shows the opossum god holding the rain god on his back and providing cocoa for his food. A drawing in the Madrid Codex shows gods piercing their ears and sprinkling their blood over the cocoa harvest, indicating a strong association between blood and cocoa in Meso-American tradition. Humans were often sacrificed to guarantee a good cocoa harvest. First, the prisoner was forced to drink a cup of chocolate—sometimes spiked with blood—as the Maya believed it would convert the victim’s heart into a cocoa pod. Temple priests devised many elaborate means of slaughter: beheading, throat slitting, crushing, hurling from towers or extracting the still-beating heart. After the poor wretch had expired, the presumably transubstantiated organ was offered to the gods.

The Popol Vuh, a manuscript believed to originate with the Izapan (who were closely associated with the Olmec and likely passed on the secrets of chocolate to the Maya), shows cocoa as a divine product, awarded to human beings from the mythical Mountain of Sustenance. In a particularly vivid story, one of the so-called hero twins—the children of the man and woman who created the universe—is decapitated. His head is then posted on a cocoa tree, where it manages to impregnate the ruler’s daughter, who gives birth to other hero twins. These offspring subsequently save humankind from the evil denizens of the underworld.

By the ninth century, Mayan territory was vast and its culture well developed. But as often happens when great cultures turn imperial, Mayan generals became belligerent. As the empire expanded, the Maya were obliged to wage frequent wars to defend their holdings from a host of enemies. The conquered tribes of the Mayan empire rarely added up to a coherent society, though Mayan cities were as densely overpopulated as some of the large urban centres of the world today. The aristocracy grew decadent and wasteful as the Maya denuded their forests and depleted their farmlands.

Anthropologists call it the “Classic Maya Collapse,” the time when Mayan civilization seems to have caved under its own weight. Environmental degradation, chronic warfare, natural disasters and, finally, a revolt by people in the working class against the elites all contributed to the downfall, though it’s not clear why the disintegration was so sudden and so complete. While a modest population of Maya survives to this day, by the end of the tenth century, the grand Mayan empire was gone.

~

Christopher Columbus met Maya, or a part of their diminished numbers, on his last trip to the New World in 1502. Off the coast of what we now call Honduras, the famed explorer and his men spotted boats as awesome to the Europeans as their own caravels must have appeared to the natives. They saw two enormous dugout canoes—each about fifteen metres long, propelled by slaves and navigated by people wearing elaborate garb—more ornate than anything Columbus had found in all of his travels to the Americas.

Columbus was looking for land and wealth, though, not cultural experiences. He didn’t have the time or energy to explore the Honduran coast or to learn more about its people. Nonetheless, the admiral did order the mysterious boats seized, and from this encounter Columbus acquired some fleeting knowledge of the Maya while they still had a glimmer of their former glory. The canoes were filled with consumer goods, mostly food but also cloth and objects of admirable craftsmanship.

The most curious discovery was of some strange brown almond-shaped beans. Columbus’s son, Ferdinand, recorded what he saw in this way: “They seemed to hold these almonds at a great price; for when they were brought on board [Columbus’s ship] together with their goods, I observed that when any of these almonds fell, they all stooped to pick it up, as though an eye had fallen.” This was the outside world’s first encounter with cocoa, a substance later destined to be transformed into the international capstone of confections and laid as the foundation of a multibillion-dollar industry. But beyond Ferdinand’s amused recollections, Columbus had nothing more to do with the beans or the Maya. He went on his way and eventually returned to Spain, disappointed and frustrated that he was unable to find a passage to Asia.

The Maya did tell Columbus something of great interest to him, news he passed on to others: Deeper into the continent and well into the mountain plateaus of the interior, there was an even grander and more commanding civilization than anything the Europeans had yet encountered in the New World. This was the land of the Aztecs, fierce warriors who had not only conquered the former Mayan territory but also built upon the knowledge and craftsmanship of all the other Meso-American people.

If the Europeans thought the Maya appeared stunning, they would be unprepared for the opulence and grandeur of the Aztecs. Their monarch was a man feared and loathed by all tribes throughout the New World, a man whose cruelty and rapaciousness was exceeded only by his depravity and decadence. Among his excesses was one that would later earn him the moniker of The Chocolate King.

Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, ninth emperor of the Aztecs, known in popular history as Montezuma II, was undoubtedly one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world when he took the Aztec throne in 1502, the same year Columbus made his final voyage, though at the time Montezuma knew nothing of the universe beyond his own vast domain. And the outside world knew of him only as a rumour.

Montezuma’s great capital, Tenochtitlán, undoubtedly the biggest city anywhere in the world at that time, was built on an island in the salt lake of Texcoco—where Mexico City is today—while the territory under his control stretched to both the Pacific Coast and the Gulf of Mexico and extended south for about two hundred kilometres to present-day Nicaragua. The population of Montezuma’s empire is estimated to have been between six and seven million people of different tribes, including the Maya.

Historians describe Montezuma as a ruthless and despotic leader who was obsessed with conquering territory and who murdered thousands of his subjects in ritual sacrifices. The fact remains, however, that under Montezuma, the Aztecs also developed a sophisticated and advanced society. Splendid houses for generals and noblemen lined the wide avenues stretching through Tenochtitlán. State-financed canal systems and aqueducts fashioned from bricks and mortar provided both a source of fresh water and transportation for the capital. Engineering, architecture, mathematics and music flourished. The Aztecs loved books—specifically those about themselves—and they created an extensive record of their existence. Traders with goods from across the empire and even beyond its borders came to the bustling markets of Tenochtitlán, and as many as sixty thousand people could swell the central squares on any given day. This was a civilization to rival anything in Europe at the time, an Emerald City in an uncharted continent.

Great banquets and feasts were routine in Montezuma’s court, where several hundred different dishes might grace his tables, even though the emperor was said to be a spare eater. He shared these feasts with his noblemen, his warriors and the long-distance traders whose job it was to bring the vast stores of wealth back to Tenochtitlán from all of the Aztec-controlled provinces.

No matter what else was on the menu, the highlight was one of the most coveted foodstuffs in all the Meso-American culture: cacahuatl. Vessels of liquid cocoa concluded meals, though Montezuma refreshed himself with cups between courses. In fact, he consumed vast quantities of cocoa daily, taking his frothy beverage in mugs of painted calabash and never drinking twice from the same cup.

As it was for the Maya, the preparation and consumption of cacahuatl was an entirely elitist pursuit, far out of the reach of the common folk and a luxury even for those who harvested the beans. Cocoa was such a valued commodity that it was beans, not bullion, that served as the coins of the realm in Montezuma’s treasury and the empire’s official currency. At the height of his power, the emperor had a stash of nearly a billion cocoa beans, all extracted begrudgingly from the hard labour of his empire.

Montezuma’s warriors were treated as nobles, and as such they consumed cocoa as well, but they also took cacahuatl on their conquests. The Aztecs had developed the first solid chocolate bars or tablets, portable nourishment that was later dissolved in water to make a drink. A chunk of rehydrated cocoa could sustain a man over a long day of trekking and provide sustenance to soldiers while they put down insurrections and sacked villages. Montezuma’s uncompromising warriors helped make Tenochtitlán the superpower of Central America. No army could stand up to them.

As with so many other luxury goods in the Aztec capital, cocoa didn’t come from the lands around Tenochtitlán, where the soil and climate was inhospitable to such tropical plants, but from the farthest reaches of the empire, particularly the highly fertile cocoa-producing region of Xoconocho, where the prized Criollo beans flourished. This coveted and prolific parcel of land on the Pacific Coast is now the Chiapas region of Mexico, but Xoconocho also included a part of what is now Guatemala. A twice-yearly supply of two hundred loads of the precious beans...