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Chocolate: Food of the Gods
El Chocolate: La Comida de los Dioses
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While the Mayans in Guatemala no longer use cacao as a currency as they did in 600AD, chocolate has remained an important part of their culture. From this chocolate comes an impressive drink. Once viewed as a food fit for the gods, hot chocolate has been drunk in Guatemala for thousands of years. It continues to be served traditionally with a sweet bread called Pan de Llemas at weddings, funerals, birthdays, and other celebrations. The hot chocolate of Guatemala is still made by hand without any special machinery, giving it outstanding quality and flavor.
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Today the hot chocolate of Guatemala is different from what was served by the Mayans a couple thousand years ago. Once, they drank it with most meals, usually mixing the chocolate with some other ingredient, such as water, maize, chili, or honey. Now, it is much sweeter and usually mixed with water or milk. The drink of today is still a popular and rich beverage that earns the notice of chocolate-lovers. The hot chocolate in Quetzaltenango is made from the export-quality cacao grown on the Guatemalan coast and very few other ingredients. It has remained a traditional food in all of Guatemala.
After drinking the best hot chocolate of my life at the often reviewed Café La Luna, I decided to go on the trip with Casa Xelajú to see how chocolate is made. Expecting to visit a big factory, I was shocked when our group arrived in a normal kitchen of a house. There, a Guatemalan woman was using her palms to pound a soft block of chocolate on her countertop. We discovered that the entire tedious and tiring process of making chocolate is still done by hand in various homes in Quetzaltenango.
| Doña Josefina Avila has been making and selling chocolate from her home for more than 40 years. She became interested and liked it enough that she has been doing it ever since. Doña Josefina is proud of her chocolate; she completes the entire process herself, uses only the best grade cacao, and never adds preservatives. By the time we arrived in her house, she had already gone through the harder parts of the process—peeling each bean by hand and toasting them over an open fire. |
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The only part of the chocolate-making process that has become easier over the years is the grinding. Doña Josefina uses an old electric grinder to turn the beans into a grainy mixture before adding sugar. In an interview later, she explained to me how women used to grind the cacao beans using only a rock. However, even with the addition of the grinder, the process of making chocolate by hand is still physically demanding.
Doña Josefina showed us some of the ingredients that go into the chocolate (she sometimes uses cinamon, vanilla, almonds, or peanuts to flavor her chocolate). Then, she sliced the chocolate brick and weighed out ½ kilogram pieces on a handheld balance scale. She invited us to pound the slices of chocolate with the heat of our hands into wooden frames that shaped the chocolate into blocks. These blocks would later be divided into eight pieces and sold to make eight cups of hot chocolate. Although we were only involved in the easiest part of the process, getting the chocolate to be the right shape without letting it stick to the table was difficult enough for us to appreciate all of the hard work Doña Josefina put into her chocolate.
Clearly, Guatemalans also appreciate the hot chocolate, as they serve it in celebrations and ceremonies. And, while Doña Josefina explained that the economic circumstances in the country have made it difficult for the natives to provide hot chocolate at all events, it is still served at many weddings, birthday parties, and funerals. In fact, the Guatemalan Happy Birthday song includes their own revealing last verse: "Ya queremos pastel, chocolate también," asking for a piece of cake and a cup of hot chocolate at the party. When a person dies, it is customary to go to a morning mass and then to the cemetery, where everyone drinks hot chocolate and eats Pan de Llemas. An understanding of life in Guatemala wouldn´t be complete without a memorable hot chocolate.
Josefina Avila makes chocolate in her Quetzaltenango home. She can be reached by telephone at 761-8350. The chocolate can be bought at her house at 18 avenida 10-47 zona 1.
March 2004
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