It’s early 12th century AD, in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. A ceremony is underway. The Mixtec ruler “8 Deer” and his consort are marrying in a sacred ceremony in the mountain temple Monte Alban. This royal wedding is sealed not with a gold ring, but with the food of the gods…Chocolate.
This past Valentines’s Day, Evelyn Orantes and myself were invited to participate in a education program at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington D.C. called “The Power of Chocolate”. This was the third year that the Smithsonian NMAI’s Cultural Programs Specialist, Hayes Lavis, coordinated this enlightening project in the Potomac Alcove of this newly built museum’s great lobby. It certainly seemed like one of the best.
Our invitation to participate in this program comes on the heels of Evelyn’s November 2008 participation at NMAI’s Dias de Los Muertos (Days of The Dead) program in which she created a contemporary ofrenda (offering) along with Catalina Delgado-Trunk and presentor and cartoneria maestro Ruben Guzman. invited artists and traditional altarmakers. Evelyn created out of paper-mache a boat and a calaca (skeleton) paddler, inspired by the ancient Mayan paddlers who accompany deceased nobility to the underworld in a celestial canoe, for her ofrenda as well as providing hands-on activites for visitors to the museum to learn about the indigenous roots of Dias de Los Muertos.
So enthusiastic about Evelyn’s educational programs was our host, Hayes Lavis, that she was invited back to participate in an event focusing on the indigenous roots of chocolate, intentionally timed to coincide with Valentine’s Day. The program itself looks to educate the public about the origin of chocolate, or cacao. Diverse guests were invited from Panama, Bolivia, and Peru. These folks represented cacao growers, indigenous and contemporary artists, dancers. Also, representatives from the Mars Corporation showcased the transformation from cacao bean to a pre-Columbian chocolate beverage.
Our contribution to the event focused on Cacao in the Art of Meso-America. I created a series of paintings derived from Classic (100AD-900AD) Mayan vase paintings from Guatemala and the Yucatan, Mexico, as well as several fresco-style hieroglyphs of the Mayan word, cacao.
Evelyn created a series of relief carvings of the Mayan cacao glyph out of a stone-like material that we used as a hands on relief rubbing print activity. Using rubber stamps of the cacao glyph, visitors also could create their own versions of vase “roll-out” pictures on paper with vase outlines.
Our presentations focused on the origination of ancient cacao from South America with people using it primarily as a fruit. Ethno-botanists claim that the two original strains of cacao came from South America, and oral histories support this claim. The plant and the fruit made its way by animal, bird, or man to Central America.
Most likely the Olmecs of southern Mexico were the first monumental culture to use cacao by extracting the seed from the fruit pod, fermenting, roasting, then grinding the seed, and then using the resulting paste as the base for a variety of atoles, a type of porridge or beverage.
The Maya of Guatemala, Yucatan, and the region were the subsequent culture to embrace cacao as a sacred food, deeming it important enough to name the seed, cacao, food of the gods. We selected several vase paintings depicting cacao in court recordings as well as mythological scenes.
Cacao later made its way to the Mixtec and Zapotec tribes of the Oaxacan region of Mexico, who recorded its use in the Codex Nuttal, in the ceremonial wedding of 8 Deer, a prominent 14th Century Mixtec ruler.
The significance and power of cacao both a foodstuff and currency did not escape the eyes of the imperial Aztecs who took tribute from dominated tribes in cacao. They also enjoyed this sacred beverage as recorded in many documents, including the Codex Borbonicus.
The magic of this educational art event was the experience of rediscovering the true origins of cacao, a food that many of us take for granted as emerging from our grocery store. Finding through our own research and art practice the importance of cacao to the indigenous cultures of meso-America, we were reminded that all foods are sacred and give their lives for our survival but some have been recognized for centuries as seeding our enlightenment and joy.
