MEXICO CITY – As a self-proclaimed chocolate lover, I was expecting my first taste of a cacao bean to be blissful.
At the Museo del Chocolate in Mexico City, Youth Journalism International students were all warmly greeted with an offering of a roasted cacao bean to begin our journey through the museum.
Almost immediately after I bit into it, though, I spit it out. It was bitter, a little chalky, and nothing like I expected.
When we visited the Chocolate Museum as part of YJI’s 2024 Global Conference, we learned a lot of history.
Our tour guide first took us to a display of ancient tools used by the Olmeca people to mix a fermented drink made from the mucilage of the cacao pod.
She likened it to kombucha.
The later Mayan civilization pioneered the usage of the beans. They introduced the process of washing, drying, roasting, and grinding them to use in a cold, bitter drink, which was ceremonial and incredibly important in religious life.
The Mayans even had a deity for the cacao plant, Ek Chuah.
The arrival of the Aztecs changed the politics of chocolate.
Because the beans were only grown in the southern part of Mexico and the empire was centered around Tenochtitlan (modern day Mexico City), only the wealthy nobility, warriors, and priests had access to xocoatl, which was a mixture of chilis, water, corn, and cacao.
The beans were also used as currency, traded for produce, livestock, and crafts.
Hot chocolate was invented by the Spanish after the conquest of Mexico; the bitter, spicy drink sacred to the Indigenous people of the land wasn’t palatable to European tastes.
The roasted, ground cacao bean was mixed with sugar and milk to create what most people enjoy today.
Chocolate became incredibly popular within Europe, and as colonial powers expanded their global influence, they began planting cacao in Brazil, the Caribbean, the Philippines and Indonesia and southern Africa. Plantations often ran on slave labor.
Still today, most chocolate is produced in West and Central Africa in farms that exploit laborers, sometimes children.
It is difficult to know that the sweetest treats have terrible, sour stories.
Now, when I think about how much I disliked tasting that cacao bean, I also think about the centuries-long process that transformed it into my favorite candy bars.
I think about the cultural erasure of the Indigenous people who first discovered the plant. I think about the global inequity that goes into the chocolate I buy at the grocery store and the people on the other side of the world farming the beans.
I have an incredible appreciation for that cacao pod, the people that work tirelessly to harvest and process it, and of course, the joy that chocolate brings to me and so many others.
Sreehitha Gandluri is a Senior Correspondent with Youth Journalism International from Maryland in the United States. She wrote this piece.
Holly Hostettler-Davies is an Associate Editor with Youth Journalism International. She contributed a photo.
