Photo by Glenna Augborne - The Mitsitam Cafe's Mexican Hot Chocolate

Using arbol chiles and dried poblano peppers to season the chocolate, as ancient Mayans and Aztecs did at the time of the conquistadors’ arrival, Hetzler blends the hot with the sweet to make this indigenously inspired drinking chocolate.

For summer cookouts and late nights watching fireworks, try this twist on an old favorite. Or taste it all year round at the Mitsitam Cafe in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The Mitsitam Cafe’s Mexican hot chocolate recipe

Serves 4-5

1 gallon milk

½ stick Mexican or regular cinnamon

3 arbol chiles

1 pasilla pepper, or dried poblano

1 cup sugar

3 pieces Mexican chocolate

1 cup cocoa powder

To prepare:

Heat milk with cinnamon and dried peppers. Once milk has scalded, remove cinnamon and dried peppers, and remove from heat. Break up Mexican chocolate into small pieces. Whisk in sugar, cocoa powder and Mexican chocolate pieces. Place the combined chocolate milk on heat, and whisk until it simmers. Serve immediately.

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The American Indian News Service is produced for the National Museum of the American Indian by journalist Kara Briggs, Yakama/Snohomish. All content is free to publish or post. Email her at editor@americanindiannews.org. Visit the American Indian News Service at www.americanindiannews.org.

By Katherine Fogden. New tastes are part of the "Power of Chocolate," a festival, which will be celebrated at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian on Feb. 13-14.

Mayans transplanted the cacao tree from the rainforest to their villages and fermented, dried and roasted its seeds to concoct a decidedly unsweet drink involving chilies and lots of froth.

The Aztec were drinking the bitter brew when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in the 1520s. Although the Spaniards didn’t like the beverage, they hauled the cacao seeds back to Europe. A century later, when someone thought to add sugar—a luxury the ancient Mayans didn’t have—this indigenous American flavor became a lasting worldwide sensation.

Native ties to making chocolate continue into the 21^st century via Bedré Fine Chocolates, a company the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma bought in 2000. Bedré, sold in Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale’s department stores, is particularly proud to provide the guitar-shaped chocolates to three of the Seminole Nation’s Hard Rock© hotels. Guests find the delicious products of the only Native American-owned chocolate company in the United States on their pillows.

At the Smithsonian’s Mitsitam Cafe, Hetzler likes to cook chocolate the old-school way, though with a twist. His Mexican hot chocolate is both sweet and spiced with pasilla peppers. And the Mitsitam’s Chocolate and Coconut Soup draws out the chocolate’s distinctive flavor with coconut milk, onions and pasilla negro chile peppers.

Hetzler will demonstrate cooking with chocolate during the museum’s “Power of Chocolate” festival on Feb. 13-14. The festival will travel back to the roots of chocolate with Bolivian cacao farmers and presentations about the history, mythology and art surrounding its origins.

Mitsitam Cafe shares the flavor, originally sipped with chilies by the Mayans, with two quick, tasty recipes.

The Mitsitam Cafe’s Chocolate and Coconut Soup, garnished with cocoa-dusted plantains

Serves 3-4

• 1 medium white onion, diced
• 2 medium shallots, diced
• 3 dried pasilla negro chile peppers
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 14-oz. can of coconut milk
• 8 oz. bittersweet chocolate (74 percent)

For garnish:

• 1 green plantain
• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• ¼ cup sugar

To prepare:

For the soup, sauté onions, shallots and the dried chiles until translucent. Add cream and half-and-half; bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add chocolate. Whisk until blended. Add coconut milk. Puree in blender. Season lightly with salt.

For garnish, peel a green plantain and slice fruit into thin discs. Lightly deep fry until crispy. Stir together cocoa and sugar, and use the mixture to lightly coat the fried plantain chips. Scatter the cocoa-coated chips atop each serving of soup.

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By Kara Briggs
American Indian News Service

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Illustration by Joe Poccia

Howard-Yana Shapiro, the global director of plant science and external research at Mars Incorporated, will give a talk about the mythology of chocolate and its relationship with indigenous peoples at 2 p.m. on both days.

Over his long career Shapiro has taught sustainable agriculture in universities, junior colleges and high schools throughout the United States. In documenting the oral history of seeds, he turned to the cacao bean—the basis of chocolate—and traced it through agricultural practices and archives to its roots in the cultures of the Mayans and their ancestors.

Shapiro is the co-author with Louis E. Grivetti of “Chocolate: History, Culture and Heritage” (Wiley, 2009), a book that takes a long look at the fascinating history of chocolate. Shapiro recently joined American Indian News Service editor Kara Briggs for a conversation about the Native American roots of chocolate.

Shapiro: From a domestic standpoint, chocolate really goes back only 1,500 years from the Mayans. The Olmecs, or however you refer to the people before the Mayans, are the ones who domesticated it. From a simple perspective, it’s a fairly recent crop, but because there has been so much complicated history about how it fits into mythology and the world story, it has really taken on this amazing role in culture.

Briggs: In your research you found stories about how cacao came to be sacred.

Shapiro: In the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico—where I was doing research on the Zapotecs and their use of cacao—it was so integrated into their lives, its preparation and its ceremonial use. There were myths about how the chocolate came into being. There is a Mayan myth about how it was like any other tree in the forest, then Christ appeared and he was persecuted by his enemies and he ran into the forest and took refuge under the cacao tree. When he touched it, the tree blossomed with white flowers, and the flowers covered him. He gave the tree to the people; they called it a tree of knowledge. Later when they used the cacao beans for money, it lost its power. There is another story that while the emperor was away, his enemies came and assaulted his wife. Still she wouldn’t tell them where the treasure was hidden. They killed her, so the cacao beans are bitter like suffering, and they are strong seeds like virtue.

Briggs: Is the history of the cacao bean tied to indigenous people both in its origins and in its ongoing cultivation, by indigenous peoples who live near the equator around the world?

Courtesy of Mars, Incorporated Howard-Yana Shapiro

Shapiro: When we consider chocolate was domesticated by the Olmecs, used by the Mayans, spread around the world by the Spanish, cultivated by the Ivoirians of West Africa and the Indonesians, it’s been inextricably linked to indigenous people for 1,500 years. The cacao tree is very susceptible to diseases. In history we find references shortly after the conquest of Mexico that the tree already showed signs of suffering from diseases, suffering because it didn’t have enough shade. In the 1,500 years when it was domesticated, it has suffered from disease.

Briggs: Is chocolate still a significant crop in the Americas? Is it still farmed? Is it still used culturally by Native peoples?

Shapiro: It’s significantly farmed in Brazil, which was the second-largest producer in the world until the late 1980s, when this disease called witches’ broom wiped out the production. West Africa produces 70 percent of the cacao crop. Indonesia and Brazil are coming back under different production models. It is grown a little in Mexico, Belize, Honduras and Panama. Farther south, there is a substantial production in Ecuador and Venezuela. Mexico absolutely is where its hold went beyond mythology to a central part of culture. In Oaxaca, and in Mexico City and Monterrey, on the Day of the Dead it is completely integrated in the culture. Even around Veracruz, the indigenous peoples are still very involved with cacao. I’ve seen necklaces strung of cacao beans and corn hung around the necks of church statues of the Virgin Mary and Christ. I’ve seen processions of people carrying strings of cacao beans on bamboo poles to be blessed by priests. In the Oaxacan lowlands, the Sierra highlands and the Sierra mountains, it is expected that you will be served hot chocolate made with water and sometimes chile in the mornings. There are ceremonies where they will add a froth on top, and that is an extreme honor.

Briggs: Is the chocolate bar the most common use of chocolate in the world?

Shapiro: The ubiquitous chocolate bars made by companies like Mars Incorporated, include its brands M&M’S®, SNICKERS® and others. Mars is the largest user of cacao beans. We source from all over the world. It’s hard to go somewhere where there hasn’t been a traditional use of chocolate, or else they are evolving it, like in China. China is developing a taste for chocolate.

Briggs: Eleven years ago, Mars Incorporated convened a meeting with the Smithsonian Institution and non-governmental organizations from around the world to talk about the role of the cacao tree in sustaining the tropics, and maybe sustaining the peoples of the tropics.

Shapiro: Out of that meeting, Mars developed a program to encourage best practices in farming the cacao tree. In West Africa, we do it through the sustainable tree program. Since June 6, 2006, we have been sequencing the cacao genome. The findings are being put in the public domain and they won’t be able to be patented. That is unique in the world of agricultural research.

Briggs: What does this mean for cacao farmers, who as we’ve said are indigenous from many regions of the world, and who are small farmers, who eke out a living from this globally-traded, fragile crop.

Shapiro: In modern times we assumed there were only three genetic structures of the cacao tree. Over the centuries people bred these and didn’t make other selections. Over the last 15 months, we discovered that there are 10 genetic structures of the cacao, and there is a potential to add to the gene pool. All those things point to the potential to strengthen this fragile tree that is cultivated by indigenous people around the world, but is linked to the GNPs (gross national product) of countries. It is 30 percent of the GNP of the Ivory Coast and 20 percent of the GNP of Ghana. It is more valuable in modern times than gold, and it is dependant on 6.5 million small farmers around the world, working an average of 2.5 hectares (about 6 acres) of land each.

Briggs: Mars Incorporated is the largest buyer of cacao beans in the world, and since 2002 it has set a goal of buying cacao beans which have been certified to have been grown using best practices.

Shapiro: When we started, there were probably only 20,000 metric tons of sustainably-grown cacao beans available globally. Now there are probably over one million metric tons that you would call certifiable. Mars is forming a coalition of the largest chocolate companies, and with these partnerships, it is likely that the idea of sustainability will soon sweep the chocolate world. The result—that farmers will have better yield and better productivity, matched with the social issues—is amazing to consider. A farmer should be able to triple his yield with good agronomy, and to get out of the kind of marginal life we imagine in North Africa. With a triple yield, the farmer should be able to get out of the poverty cycle

Briggs: Does chocolate, which began in its earliest-known use as a sacred plant, still carry some of that importance even in other cultures? I ask considering the deep feelings that people express through the giving of chocolate?

Shapiro: In Central Sulawesi, a state in Indonesia, in a town that has been built largely on the success of cacao farming, there is a statue, a set of hands 18 to 20 feet high which hold a giant cacao pod. I’ve seen metaphors like that on different scales everywhere. Chocolate is one of the great stories of the world. Unlike corn or wheat that can be grown on a large scale, cacao will always be a crop for small, indigenous farmers. Even if we can make the crop more robust, it will still be a tropical plant, grown in forests as an understory plant. You can’t get to it by tractors, you can only harvest it with the human hand.

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