Chocolate drinking in colonial Mexico

This post is an excerpt from my ebook: Mexican Chocolate, Stories and recipes of Mexico’s greatest gift to the world.

During the establishment of New Spain’s colonial religious communities, the drinking of chocolate was embraced by all the respectable elites. However, the moral and religious questions of indulging in such a voluptuously rich drink often provoked heated ecumenical debates, of which chocolate itself was often the undisputed winner.

When New Spain, today’s’ Mexico was founded, colonisers learnt to welcome new ingredients into their diets. The Spanish brought a range of gastronomic traditions that often required a complex food chain in which animal farming was as important as agriculture, and which couldn’t initially be supported in the colony as result. This cultural exchange, which happened through a combination of force and necessity, found in the colonial kitchen an unexpected space of negotiation and cooperation, rather than conflict. Combinations that once might have seemed outrageous or exotic became a useful metaphor for the unavoidable cultural integration that was happening in New Spain at the time.

The particular case of drinking chocolate is one such example. Already a well-established cultural institution amongst the ruling classes in Mesoamerica, it rapidly became the drink of choice of the colonial elites. The most radical change was that it was no longer considered as a cold but as a hot beverage, and although it is unknown who, when it happened, or how cow’s milk replaced water, it couldn’t be denied that it added a creamy and rich texture that was further enhanced by the addition of sugar, which replaced honey and agave syrup. Eventually annatto and chilies were left out of the new interpretations of the traditional recipes and cinnamon and vanilla were used instead.

It wasn’t just cocoa, but chocolate, and drinking chocolate specifically, that became one of the first transcontinental food obsessions based on a single product from the Americas. As the obsession developed, the drink found its way on to every table of New Spains’ colonial and social structure, including a large sector of cloistered catholic orders.

Cocoa became such a popular drink that it captured the imagination, and taste palates, of nuns, friars, and monks of every order, inspiring extensive philosophical and medical debates in the process. Authorities and institutions in the new world scrutinised the simplest actions of everyday life through a puritanical religious filter, concluding that apparently even innocent things like drinking chocolate could put the salvation of their souls at peril. It’s no surprise, then, that not everyone was a fervent advocate of chocolate, and religious scholars had to be particularly careful about the potential risks of drinking such a dangerous beverage.

Chocolate drinking presented a fundamental contradiction for religious orders who lived under strict principles of poverty, frugality and sacrifice, and who basically opposed the indulgence of those bodily pleasures like the enjoyment of a decadent chocolate treat. This meant that while very few had a strong position against chocolate, most of the religious class were forced to work very hard to justify its consumption. The debates around chocolate reached such heights that even the Pope Innocent IX received a document in 1591 by the famous physician Juan de Cardenas saying that “drinking chocolate absolutely breaks the rules of fasting as it perfectly substitutes any solid meal hence it should be totally prohibited in such occasions of penitence”.

The city of Puebla had a particularly large population of cloistered nuns, friars and monks and their right to drink chocolate was fiercely defended by many. An example of this is the nunnery of Santa Rosa that took the necessary precautions to obtain signed orders from its founder to ensure that the religious community should always have the economic means, equipment, and even maids to prepare chocolate. Coincidentally, it was at this very nunnery where Mole Poblano, one of the most celebrated dishes of Mexico was served at feasts to honour its donors, and as you will read further in the book, chocolate was a key ingredient to balance all the flavours.

In a final reflection, let’s consider a controversial case that pitted a radicalised religious view with a parishioners’ obsession, and which highlights chocolate’s ability to divide communities. Born in 1597, Thomas Gage was an English friar who made extensive travels in several Spanish colonies in the Americas, spending considerable time in New Spain. On his return to Europe he published several books about his journeys, and in one he recounts an anecdote about the Bishop of Chiapas, Bernardo de Salazar, a man who was particularly fastidious in keeping tight discipline amongst his parishioners. De Salazar expressed considerable anger and exasperation that the rich ladies attending mass often interrupted their prayers to eat preserved fruits and drink large cups of chocolate that their maids brought to church. These women claimed to feel weak and unable to concentrate without the restoring effects of chocolate. Despite Bishop Salazar’s petitions, warnings and even threats that if their challenging behaviour continued it would result in excommunication for those who dared drink chocolate during services or private prayers at church, the result was that from that day onwards no one turned up to his services. Subsequently, he issued another order of excommunication; this time all those who didn’t attend mass would face excommunication, but still the situation didn’t improve. According to Gage, this turn of events caused the bishop to fall ill and he subsequently died as a result, and his successor was forced to suppress the prohibitions and punishments and welcome the parishioners back. On this occasion, the congregation’s obsession for chocolate and the horror of not being able to enjoy it at church was greater than the fear of eternal damnation for defying God’s humble servant.