Chocolate and the Spanish Conquest


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Chocolate was first noted in 1519 when Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez visited the court of Emperor Montezuma of Mexico.

In 1521, led his forces against Montezuma’s warriors and defeated them in battle. The Aztecs thought that Cortez, the Spanish conquistador was the god Quetzalcoatl who is linked with cocoa and chocolate. In Aztec myth Quetzalcoatl was forced to leave the country by a chief god, but was lovingly remembered by his devoted worshippers, who waited for his return. When Cortez arrived with his fleet of galleons, the Aztecs thought he was Quetzalcoatl returning, they would soon realise him to be a cruel conqueror.

The Aztec's prized Xocolatl (cocoa) well above Gold and Silver so much, that when Montezuma was defeated by Cortez and his conquistadors searched his palace expecting to find Gold & Silver, all they found were large amounts of cocoa beans. The Aztec Treasury consisted of Cocoa Beans. Cacao became one of the spoils of war. Spanish soldiers claimed the Aztec’s supply of cacao and began to demand it from the same peoples from whom the Aztecs had demanded tribute. Before long, cacao and chocolate made their way to Spain.

In 1528 Cortez brought chocolate back from Mexico to the royal court of King Charles

V. Monks, hidden away in Spanish monasteries, processed the cocoa beans and kept

chocolate a secret for nearly a century. It made a profitable industry for Spain, which

planted cocoa trees in its overseas colonies.

In 1544 Dominican friars took a delegation of Kekchi Mayan nobles to visit Prince Philip of Spain. The Mayans brought gift jars of beaten cocoa , mixed and ready to drink. Spain and Portugal did not export the beloved drink to the rest of Europe for nearly a century. The Spanish began to add cane sugar and flavourings such as vanilla to their sweet cocoa beverages. In 1585 the First official shipments of cocoa beans began arriving in Seville from Vera Cruz, Mexico.

It took an Italian traveller, Antonio Carletti, to discover the chocolate

treasure in 1606 and take it into other parts of Europe.

With the decline of Spain as a power, the secret of cacao leaked out at last,

and the Spanish Crown's monopoly of the chocolate trade came to an end.

In a few years the knowledge of it had spread through France, Italy, Germany, and England.

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