CACAO The origins of chocolate: Mexico

 An Aztec myth tells that when the god Quetzalcóatl descended to earth to offer agriculture, science and the arts to men, he married a beautiful princess from Tula. 

To celebrate the event, he created a paradise where cotton grew in different colors, where water gushed out, crystalline, and where there were all kinds of precious stones, plants and trees, among which stood out the cacahuaquahitl, the cocoa tree. However, it was the food of the gods, who wanted to punish Quetzalcóatl for having given it to men and murdered his wife. Desperate, the god wept on the bloodied earth. In this place then grew a tree that bore the best cocoa in the world: “Its fruit was bitter like suffering, strong like virtue and red like the blood of the princess. »

In fact, the cocoa tree is native to the Amazon basin. During the second millennium BC. AD, it became acclimatized in Mesoamerica, the region formed by Central America and Mexico. It was domesticated and manipulated there until a so-called “Creole” variety was obtained, with a more delicate flavor and less bitter than South American cocoa. The first Mesoamericans who used cocoa were the Olmecs (1200-200 BC), but it is not known if they domesticated the plant, or if they consumed its beans or only used the fermented pulp to prepare alcoholic beverages, as was done .