Conquest for Dinner: Recognizing the Relationships between Conquest in ancient Mesoamerica and Consumerism Today

Ana Benderas

ISAC 102

Professor Lago

19 April 2013

Conquest for Dinner: Recognizing the

Relationships between Conquest in ancient Mesoamerica and Consumerism Today 

When I was growing up, my sibling and I had the habit of eating, or rather gulping down our food and, with a quick sleeve swipe over our mouths, stumbling out of the table and back outside to play.  My mother in her frustrated attempts at raising us well would tell us, “You should show more appreciation.  Your food does not magically appear on the table.”  Over the years I meditate on her advice.  Far from my food appearing magically, she labored to prepare it, she and my father labored to purchase it, and people labored often under incredibly unjust conditions to produce it.  The history of consumerism, in fact, makes the same argument as my mother that food does not magically appear on our tables.  A survey of politics and power structures surrounding food in ancient Mesoamerica reveals that much of what people consume has origins in injustice, colonization, and domination, serving as a motive for responsible consumerism in our society.

Even before the colonialism of ancient Mesoamerica, the elite have used food as a tool to gain dominance and preserve power structures, a tradition currently undying.  Cacao, for example, began as a food reserved for the Maya and Aztec elites (Danien 4) who used it to distinguish their superiority over the masses.  When the Spaniards introduced chocolate to Europe, the drink undertook some changes, such as the addition of sugar and replacement of spices.  These variations served to characterize the indigenous away from

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the Spaniards who considered their preparation methods superior.  In the words of a conquistador: “The Spanish, more industrious than the Savages, procured to correct the bad flavor of this liquor, adding to this cacao paste different fragrances of the East and many spices of this country [Spain]” (Norton 660).  He emphasizes, or rather creates, a class barrier distinguished by the preparation methods of cacao.  With this mindset, European cacao consumption overturned power structures, switching dominance from the elite hands of the indigenous to their now “European superiors.”  Norton claims:

During the early history of chocolate among Europeans, the transmission of taste did not accord with the top-down structure of society.  Instead, it flowed in the opposite direction: from the colonized to the colonizer, from the "barbarian" to the "civilized," from the degenerate "creóle" to the metropolitan Spaniard, from gentry to royalty, (Norton 670)

thus describing the process of taste as emerging from the lower classes upwards.  However, history better supports an understanding of taste as flowing in circles, starting from the elite down to the masses then back up to the elite and vise versa. The variations of enjoying chocolate today, which continue distinguishing between class and status, support this understanding.  Now, the accessibility of chocolate, a product for the elite many times before, makes it a commoner’s food (though of course, dark and pure chocolate carries more social weight amongst the upper classes than the more processed, commercial milk chocolates).  Responsible consumers understand that the wide availability of chocolate has origins of injustice and consumes with this knowledge in mind.   

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A cultural-functionalist model considers that taste in food develops, not only out of a biological attention to the palate, but also from a cultural association to a particular socio-economic class or other status.  During the sixteenth centuries, for example, sugar owed much of its global widespread to the commonly accepted association between this food and the upper classes.  Norton argues:

Sugar use traveled down to other classes in large part because their members accepted the meanings of their social superiors… the simultaneous control of both the foods themselves and the meanings they are made to connote can be a means of a pacific domination. (663)

 According to Norton, controlling the associations society holds about foods in order to control that food supply works as a method for colonization and dominance.  Bourdieu articulates this idea:

…taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed. (Norton 663)  

He mockingly explains that taste develops more out of convenience and opportunity for power than out of pure biological receptiveness.  Perhaps if the native peoples had this understanding that taste forms sometimes from cultural associations, they would have resisted developing a taste for the foods whose production culminated in the demise of their civilizations. Those with an understanding of this relationship protect themselves

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from consumer victimization, such as paying high fees for foods which, lacking intrinsic health or pleasurable value, only cost money because of the elitist associations they carry.

Consumerism history recalls that conquistadors and exploiters used foods in Mesoamerica to take control of the economy, usurping the indigenous’ systems for their own profit.  The indigenous people throughout all Mesoamerica relied on cacao seeds as currency.  Norton describes, “That cacao beans functioned as currency throughout the region underscores their pan-Mesoamerican embrace. From Nicaragua to northwest Mexico, there was a fundamental sameness among the modes of consumption, ritual contexts, and symbolic resonances of chocolate[1]” (Norton 671).  Much of their economy, their way of life, and their culture depended upon this fruit.  Colonizers plundered this system using a “divide and conquer” model to control the economy.  Soleri records, “Prior to the Spanish invasion, the Aztecs in central Mexico were trading cacao and collecting it as tribute from production areas in Chiapas… and other areas of present day Mexico” (Soleri 108), meaning that Spanish invasion interrupted the Aztecs’ functioning economy.  Disturbing the intercultural exchanges of cacao as currency eliminated a uniting force between peoples, which enabled conquistadors to control the system for their own benefit. Once they overtook the system, Europeans sought to produce the cacao fruit as much as possible.  Norton describes, “Colonial policies ensured the continued cultivation,

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commerce, and consumption of cacao, because the Spanish rulers' immediate ability to proftt (sic) from the conquest depended on their usurpation and maintenance of the tribute system organized by the Aztec rulers” (Norton 676).  The production, trade, and consumption of food embody a bloody, money-hungry business.  Those at the top of the power structures control the taste, quality, and quantity that they want people to consume.  This historical example of manipulation of an economy through food only serves as a didactic tool for today’s consumer.  Understanding that what we purchase fits into the plans of a business that, historically has proved, will make money at the expense of human beings, empowers responsible consumers to determine for themselves what they think they need to consume and how, instead of allowing the industry to think for them. 

One of our society’s most essential and commonly enjoyed foods traces its origins to exploitation, conquest, and slavery.  The production, proliferation, and widespread consumption of sugar uncover a grimy past.  After the European occupation and monopolization of the cacao industry in Mesoamerica, and with the growing need for sugar in Europe (especially now that they needed it for the new cacao drink), European colonizers wanted large-scale production.  This project required more labor than they could handle, as well as more space than they had with a climate better than what Spain could provide.  Their solution: the exploitation of humans and the plunder of Mesoamerican territory.  The Spanish, having stolen the natives’ land throughout Mesoamerica, kidnapped Africans and local peoples and, at their expense, made the production of so much sugar possible.     Brandes explains, “The Spaniards introduced sugarcane production… in the sixteenth century and imported African slave labor to work

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the fields… But the slave population that drove the economy… was overworked, underfed, and downtrodden” (290).  Consumers, however, apathetic and ignorant of their consumption’s origins, continued enjoying sugar unaffected for centuries (it was until the late 18th century that groups began organizing serious, anti-sugar protests).  The European mentalities that colonizers brought to Mesoamerica, which value the individual over community and sees the self as disconnected from the others, has not completely left.  In his article, Brandes analyzes the prevalence of food during the major Mexican holiday of the Day of the Dead.  He points out, “With virtually no disposable income among the slave population and with single-minded exploitation of slave labor, sweet bread and sugar candy would hardly have gained a culinary foothold in such societies” (Brandes 290).  In his evaluation, he recognizes clear connections between the foods so commonly used today and the origins of injustice that they carry.  Knowing the history of sugar allows for an important enlightenment to take place: understanding the origins and processes of what we consume has significant implications and comes with important responsibilities.  The injustices that historically have taken place in order to put sugar on the tables of billions of people around the world are not necessarily over.  Further discovery should take place in order to better understand how the historical injustices have morphed and what faces they take on today.

Consumers, especially of color, who have a thorough understanding of history and globalization hold a responsibility to question what we consume and how much.  As a Mexican woman I realize that I eat sugar due to the plunder and monopolization of my predecessors’ land and resources.  I understand that the chocolate I drink has traces of

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kidnap, slavery, and conquest.  A continual culture of careless, blind, and uncontrolled consumerism not only disrespects and undermines the complex and valuable history of our people, it also continues to endanger the many people who suffer injustices in order to provide for our consumption.  And while the solution does not necessarily dictate to boycott everything, it compels us to consume with awareness, with sharing, and with activism on whatever level we are most equipped to help. 

Works Cited

Brandes, Stanley. “Sugar, Colonialism, and Death: On the Origins of Mexico’s Day of the

Dead.” Comparative Studies in Society and History. Vol. 39. No. 2. 1997. (270-299).     Web. 13 April 2013.

Danien, Elin. “Yom Yom Cacao!” Vol. 45. No. 2. (4-6). Web. 13 April 2013.

Norton, Marcy. “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of

Mesoamerican Aesthetics.” American Historical Review. June 2006. (660-691). Web. 12 April 2013.

Soleri, Daniela. Cleveland, David. “Tejate: Theobrama Cacao and T. Bivolor in a Traditional

Beverage from Oaxaca Mexico.” Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. 2007. (107-118). Web. 13 April 2013.

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[1] The use of cacao seeds as currency has survived colonialism in some indigeno

us towns.  Many communities still rely or incorporate this system of economy. Of modern-day Oaxaca, Soleri tells, “It was also a required part of the meal that comprised part of the “payment” to day laborers helping with tasks… and is still expected as payment in some communities” (Soleri 116).

Copyright Benderas 2013