In Miguel de Cervantes’ “La gitanilla” (“The Little Gypsy Girl”) published within his Exemplary Novels in 1613 and likely written in Madrid – the Spanish Empire’s new capital since 1561 – an elder member of the Roma community quips, “no lo estimamos en un cacao” (“we don’t value it even as much as a cacao bean.”) It’s a throwaway line meant to downplay pain, lashes, and galley labor – but the reference is striking. Cacao was already circulating through Spain’s markets, kitchens, and imaginations. The bean, once sacred and scarce in the Americas, had become so ubiquitous in the imperial center that it could be invoked as a symbol of triviality.
Yet if Cervantes’ “gitano” character intended to belittle cacao, the rich legacy it carried was anything but insignificant. As Caroline Dodds Pennock observes in Savage Shores, cacao was considered “the stuff of life” – a substance woven into the very fabric of Mesoamerican civilization. It was far more than a mere commodity: cacao sealed marriages, cemented political alliances, and upheld cosmological harmony through ritual use. Its sacred and economic value intersected at every level of society. Archaeological evidence has even traced cacao residues as far north as present-day Utah, a striking testament to the expansive pre-Columbian trade networks that extended well beyond known Maya and Aztec territories. This wide-reaching influence underscores cacao’s status not only as a cherished substance, but as a medium of cultural and spiritual exchange long before European contact.
In the Madrid Codex, one of the few surviving pre-Columbian Maya manuscripts, chocolate is portrayed as a divine gift symbolizing the union of cosmic forces. The codex illustrates the rain god Chaak in sacred conjunction with the earth goddess Ixik Kaab, a moment that culminates in the bestowal of cacao – “they were given their cacao,” the text records. This moment encapsulates a worldview in which cacao binds the generative forces of nature: rain and earth, male and female, the celestial and the terrestrial.
The symbolic power of cacao extended far beyond myth into everyday life and social ritual. Among the Maya, to serve chocolate – tac haa – became a customary shorthand for sealing a marriage, a ceremonial gesture that mirrored the sacred union of the gods. This resonance continues today. In Guatemala, the Awatek Maya still refer to their traditional marriage ceremony using the word quicyui, meaning cacao beans, even though the beans themselves are no longer exchanged. The metaphor persists, a linguistic relic of cacao’s enduring significance.
In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, the word for cacao – yollotl eztli – means “heart-blood.” This poetic phrase reveals the profound reverence for cacao as a vital life force: not simply nourishment, but a sacred medium for offerings, rituals, and social bonds. Whether exchanged in mythic union or marital vows, cacao bridged the human and the divine, the earthly and the eternal.
Cacao was also currency. In pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, cacao beans functioned as a form of currency, circulating widely in marketplaces and tribute systems alike. In the bustling markets of Tlaxcala, one of central Mexico’s most dynamic trade hubs, cacao made the invisible threads of commerce tangible. A single bean could buy five chilies; three beans, a turkey egg; thirty beans might fetch a small rabbit. These were not casual transactions; this was a sophisticated economy in which cacao operated as a high-value unit of exchange.
Its role as coinage gave cacao a dual identity: it was both sacred offering and practical tender. The beans’ portability, relative durability, and symbolic resonance made them ideal for trade across vast distances. So prized was this botanical currency that it inevitably inspired imitation. Counterfeit cacao became a known issue – dishonest vendors crafted fake beans from wax, clay, dough, or even avocado pits, carefully molded and colored to deceive. Market authorities in major city-states, including the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, had to regulate cacao’s authenticity as carefully as any modern mint oversees coinage.
Cacao was not merely sustenance – it was status, symbol, and wealth. Its preparation and consumption reflected deep social hierarchies within Mesoamerican societies. While the poor might dilute their cacao with maize or water to stretch its volume, the elite transformed it into a liquid art form. For them, chocolate was a canvas of luxury, layered with rare and costly ingredients that marked both wealth and refinement.
The Florentine Codex a monumental sixteenth century ethnographic work compiled by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and his indigenous collaborators, offers a vivid glimpse into this world of elite indulgence. It describes an Aztec-Mixtec ruler who savored chocolate made from the most delicate cacao, “tender cacao,” enriched with honey, flower blossoms, and vanilla pods, all ingredients prized for their aromatic complexity and sacred associations. His palate extended even further into decadence, with chocolate prepared in a dazzling spectrum: red, orange, pink, black, and white. These colors were not merely aesthetic choices, but evoked specific flowers, spices, and cosmological meanings.
This was not just drinking chocolate – it was ceremonial consumption and political theater. In a world where cacao could signal divine favor, military prowess, or ancestral prestige, each cup became a declaration of power and cultivated taste. To drink such chocolate was to inhabit a world where food was philosophy, and every ingredient carried the weight of meaning.
Moreover, when a Maya delegation arrived in Spain in 1545, they stood before Emperor Charles V and his son, the future Philip II, not only as emissaries but as cultural ambassadors bearing gifts of immense symbolic weight. Among the ceremonial offerings they presented were containers of whisked chocolate, a luxurious preparation made from cacao, served foamy and often spiced. To the Maya, cacao was a sacred substance, used in rituals, religious ceremonies, and political negotiations. Offering chocolate to the emperor was a deliberate act of diplomacy. It signified reverence, alliance, and a shared understanding of cacao as a symbol of divine favor and elite power. Its presence in the Spanish court thus marked the entry of an indigenous worldview into the heart of European imperial power.
In his book Historia del chocolate, Nikita Harwich follows cacao’s path from Maya temples to modern factories, revealing how it became a mass-market indulgence shaped by colonialism and commerce. Today, however, chocolate also tells a story of global consumerism under strain. As cacao prices rise and sustainable farming practices become more urgent, chocolate risks becoming a super-luxury item once again. Modern cultivation has largely moved to plantation systems far from cacao’s native soils, where concerns around labor exploitation, environmental impact, and climate vulnerability raise pressing questions about the long-term future of this beloved commodity.
Traces of cacao’s origins remain – sometimes in the quiet details of European art. Around 1640, Spanish painter Juan de Zurbarán – son of the celebrated Francisco de Zurbarán – created Still Life With Chocolate a composition that reflects the convergence of cultures through everyday objects. At the center of the painting, a delicate bowl of chocolate rests almost ceremonially atop a silver pedestal, elevating the drink to an object of reverence. Surrounding it are the tools of its preparation: a copper chocolatera (chocolate pot), the same wooden molinillo (whisk) used by the Incas, and porcelain pocillos (cups). Tucked discreetly among them is a red búcaro (earthenware cup) from the Mexican state of Jalisco, traditionally used for drinking water. These vessels were prized for their fragrant clay and cooling qualities and became fashionable among the Spanish elite – most famously depicted in Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas, where the Infanta Margarita holds a similar cup. These were not mere props; they signaled a new global ecology. In Early Modern Spain, such objects allowed elites to perform cosmopolitan taste through indigenous materials and rituals. Chocolate had crossed oceans, carrying with it the aesthetics, technologies, and sacred resonances of the Americas – now quietly embedded in the visual language of empire.
So, when Cervantes’ “gitano” claims a cacao bean is worth nothing, we are invited to read against the grain. The line is spoken by a Roma character living outside the city walls of Madrid – someone whose life unfolds on the edges of society, lending the moment an added resonance. Cervantes, deeply attuned to the voices and tensions of his time, may have deliberately placed this observation in such a figure’s mouth, inviting reflection on the complexities of value and belonging. Both the Roma community and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were newly incorporated members of the expanding Spanish imperial order. The gitano’s dismissal of cacao – a product tied to colonial economies and Indigenous cultures – and his downplaying of the harsh consequences for defying official decrees, such as lashes, imprisonment, or forced labor in the galleys, becomes a subtle commentary on who holds the power to assign value within an empire, and who remains unheard at its margins.
Cacao, of course, was far from worthless. It was – and remains – a symbol of transformation: its worth shaped by geography, power, and memory. Originating in sacred contexts, cacao was carried across the Atlantic and absorbed into European life through processes of exchange, adaptation, and extraction. To taste chocolate is to engage with a substance layered in centuries of ceremony, commerce, and cultural negotiation. That Cervantes touches on this, however briefly, suggests an awareness of how everyday objects – like a cacao bean – can carry the weight of history.
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