Chocolate in New Mexico: A Brief History
By Nicolasa Chávez
When thinking of New Mexican cuisine, one often recalls delectable images of chile, tortillas, tamales, and enchiladas, but one often does not reference chocolate… even though historically it had been a staple in the New Mexican diet during the Spanish colonial and Mexican periods. The name itself, chocolate, is directly descended from the Spanish spelling and pronunciation of earlier pre-Colombian terminologies, most notably the Aztec “Xocolatl.”. When referencing the chocolate of this time period it is not the contemporary candy bars or truffles we think of today but is instead a thick frothy drink. The Mayan “chacau haa” or “chocol haa” and the Aztec “cacahuatl” referred to the drink made from the cacao bean. The beans, harvested from pods that grow on the trunk of a tree, were dried and ground into a paste and shaped into bars or wedges for long-term storage and travel.[i] During the colonial period, the beverage most resembled a hot melted chocolate mousse, so thick that one might have needed a spoon. A blend of Old and New World spices and additives such as red chile, cinnamon, almonds, honey or sugar, and sometimes rosewater or orange blossom flavored this delicious concoction. New Mexican drinking chocolate thus represented hundreds of years of cultural mixing and hybridization that took place throughout the colonial Americas.
The earliest evidence traces chocolate to the upper Amazon Basin, or the rich tropical zones of Ecuador and Venezuela. Archeologists discovered chocolate-making utensils dating to 3000 BCE in what is present-day Ecuador. Human populations expanded the range of chocolate cultivation into Mesoamerica where the next earliest use comes from the southeastern Pacific coast of Mexico and the Olmec area (today’s Veracruz and Tabasco). By 950-900 CE chocolate consumption occurred in the Guatemalan highlands and appeared as a sacred food in the Popul Vuh (the Mayan creation story). The earliest depiction of chocolate use appears on a cylindrical vessel from the late Classic Period, ca. 750 ACE, showing a servant pouring chocolate into a large vessel before their ruler. By the time of the arrival of Spaniards in Mexico, the Aztecs were consuming chocolate and exacting tribute in the form of cacao beans from the tribes they had conquered.[ii]
Spanish colonizers quickly adopted the local uses, both consumption and exacting tribute, rather quickly. They also avidly recorded and described their observances and findings of this strange new substance. Spanish military also followed the examples of earlier Mayan and Aztec warriors, who took chocolate wafers out on military campaigns since the wafers were easily transportable and did not spoil on long journeys. The first European documentation of chocolate appears on Columbus’s fourth and final voyage in 1502 when he encountered a canoe carrying chocolate as precious cargo. In 1538 Mexico’s conqueror, Hernán Cortés, threw an elaborate banquet for Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and served chocolate.
The habit of consuming chocolate eventually made its way to Europe and throughout the Spanish colonies, including the Philippine Islands (where it is referred to as Tsokolate). The first officially recorded cargo of chocolate arrived in the port of Sevilla in 1585.
Recent scholarship dates the earliest presence of chocolate in New Mexico to the 10th century. Cylindrical vessels dating to c. 900 ACE from Chaco Canyon were tested and showed traces of Theobromine. Whether chocolate use was a daily occurrence or used for ceremonial purposes is[iii] still unknown.[iv] Even so, there is no evidence of extensive chocolate use until Spaniards brought it up in large enough quantities from Mexico to maintain the daily practice of drinking the beverage. By the 1600s chocolate appears to have been a mainstay of Spanish colonizers in New Mexico. The Gordejuela inspection of goods coming up the Camino Real to the household of Juan de Oñate lists “eighty small chocolate boxes” containing the dried ground cacao beans.
The value of this precious cargo was not lost on future generations of New Mexicans. Approximately one hundred years after Oñate requested his valuable cacao beans, we see the prized commodity and the accoutrements for making this frothy drink in the estate inventory of Governor don Diego de Vargas. The original 1704 document lists 39 calderetas de cobre chocolate (copper chocolate pots) and 8 dozen molinillos (whisks for stirring and frothing chocolate).[v] It appears that perhaps our past governor had a side business in the selling and/or trade of chocolate making items. Vargas’s last will and testament further illustrates the prized value of chocolate itself. Vargas requested four arrobas of chocolate from his personal stores left for his sons in Mexico and the remainder of his stores, another 9 arrobas in two large baskets, to pay the priest who presided over his funeral services.[vi]
The drinking of and enjoyment of chocolate took hold and was not only the drink of the elite or governing classes. Another hundred years or so later, Mexico gained Independence from Spain and direct trade between two young nations–Mexico and United States–began with the official opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821. Newcomers arriving in Mexican territory often made note of the common practice of drinking and serving chocolate. Merchant Josiah Gregg wrote of it in his personal account of travels along the Santa Fe Trail, Commerce on the Prairies. When discussing New Mexican foodstuffs and customs he noted, “No one can hesitate to do homage to their incomparable chocolate, in the preparation of which the Mexicans surely excel every other people”.[vii] Roughly twenty-five years later, the first woman from the United States to cross the Santa Fe Trail and enter into what was then Mexican Territory, Susan Shelby Magoffin, wrote of the daily life, customs, and culinary habits of local New Mexicans. Upon settling in her new home, she wrote, “If we remain here during the winter, I must learn a good many of the New Mexican ways of living, manufacturing serapes, rabozos [rebozos], to make tortillas, chilly peppers, and cholote [chocolate] which by the way I do know a little something about – I made myself a passable cup this afternoon.” [viii]
Magoffin learned to make chocolate and partake in the daily practice of the merienda with local New Mexican women during what would be the final days of the Mexican period. The Mexican-American War resulted in the transference of New Mexican lands to the United States, officially making New Mexico a territory of the US. Eventually many of the local customs that had existed during the Spanish colonial and Mexican periods began to die out. The “American” custom of drinking coffee and tea replaced the daily drinking of chocolate. The knowledge of the thick, frothy, and sometimes spicy, chocolate reminiscent of earlier pre-Columbian and colonial era concoctions was almost forgotten and replaced by mass-produced, highly processed hot chocolate and cocoa powders of 20th century grocery stores. Only recently, in the past twenty or so years, have our prized Indo-Hispano recipes gained a renewed measure of popularity. This is largely due to the dedicated research of culinary historians and gourmet chefs dedicated to the preservation of heirloom products and the integration of historic recipes into our contemporary culinary delights. Today historic chocolate recipes, branded as drinking “elixirs,” provide not only nourishment and pleasure but also a history lesson. Many who travel to New Mexico can once again experience the joy, fortification, relaxation, and culinary mixing between the Old World and New of centuries past. ¡Que viva el chocolate!
[i] The word “cocoa” is a misnomer. Mistakenly derived from the Spanish word for the coconut “coco,” it is still in use in the United States today to refer to processed powder used in recipes and to make hot chocolate. The word “cacao” refers to the actual chocolate seed, or bean, itself. Coming from the Nahuatl term for seeds, cacao is the bean from which all the world’s chocolate is made.
[ii] For an in-depth discussion of the Pre-Colombian origins and use of chocolate see Michael D. Coe and Sophie D. Coe, True History of Chocolate. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007).
[iii] Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, archaeologist Patricia L. Crown, of the University of New Mexico, teamed up with W. Jeffrey Hurst, nutritional chemist at the Hershey Technical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, to analyze fragments of sherds from Chaco Canyon. For a more in-depth look at the pre-historic migration and consumption of chocolate in pre-historic New Mexico see Patricia L. Crown “Chocolate Consumption and Cuisine from Chaco to Colonial New Mexico” in El Palacio: Art, History, and Culture of the Southwest 117, no. 4 (Winter 2012).
[iv] George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, Don Juan de Oñate: Colonizer of New Mexico 1595 – 1628 (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1953), 522–30.
[v] Estate Inventory of Don Diego de Vargas, State Archives of New Mexico, SANM I, Twitchell #100, frame 900. The translation of the estate inventory in John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks and Meredith D. Dodge, editors, A Settling of Accounts: The Journals of don Diego de Vargas, New Mexico 1700-1704 (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), 236-42.
[vi] Last Will and Testament of Don Diego de Vargas, State Archives of New Mexico, SANM I, reel 5 frame 1150. The translation of the will appears in John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks and Meredith D. Dodge, editors, A Settling of Accounts: The Journals of don Diego de Vargas, New Mexico 1700-1704 (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), 230-31.
[vii] Josiah Gregg, Commerce on the Prairies (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 110.
[viii] Susan Shelby Magoffin, Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico: The Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin 1846-1848 (Bison Books by arrangement with Yale University Press, 1982), 164-165. Diary entry from Tuesday Nov. 17, 1846.