MÉXICO: EL BOTÍN

MEXICAN CHOCOLATE.

Many Mexicans today, go to the candy stores and grocery stores in search of a good chocolate to serve at your table, ask or look for the "French" chocolate "Swiss style" or or "Spanish" and if candy is thinking about buying a good chocolate "Hersey". Success as enjoyable and energizing chocolate drink listed, desired and tasted worldwide is a demonstration of the lack of knowledge we have about ourselves. In the Mesoamerican region in Mexico, cacao seeds were so prized by the Aztecs that were used as currency for trade at the time.

Chocolate originates from the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao) in the southeast of Mexico where its use and consumption in semi-liquid and liquid form as "beer" was popularized by the Toltec culture, and then spread entire plateau of Mexico and south, the Maya culture. Its rapid spread reached the tropical regions of South America, the Orinoco River to the Amazon.

The word chocolate is adapted from the Nahuatl word xocolātl, which referred to a "frothy drink made from cacao" and literally meaning bitter water. This is the result of adding to the word of Nahuatl origin (the central-western part of Mexico) atl ("water") Xococ word ("sour"), the word xocolia ("sour")

Other versions contradict, Michael Coe, professor emeritus of anthropology at Yale, says that the word xocolātl "does not appear in any ancient source text or (prior to the conquest), in the Nahuatl language, the language of the Aztec culture." Mexican philologist Ignacio Davila proposed that "Spaniards created the word by taking the Maya word chocol and then replaced the Mayan term for water haa, with the Aztec atl."

Many consumers today have no idea that the chocolate they love is of Mexican origin and that, after the conquest of Mexico was brought to Europe where production and consumption industrialized, with both economic success, countries Germany, Spain, Switzerland, France, Holland, England and America paternity fight, because each one of them, printing them was his particular way of preparing before marketing their sale with large palms.

In the sixteenth century, introduced Hernán Cortés in the Spanish court the Aztecs drank chocolate. The chocolate drink was popular with the religious of Mexico, and when they returned to Spain brought cocoa him to have that drink. With time was introduced in the upper echelons of European society.

The addition of sugar, vanilla and spices such as cinnamon, rum, gave him a certificate of naturalization from the nuns in a convent in Oaxaca, Mexico who added sugar to cocoa and Monasterio de Piedra, in Zaragoza Spain, are the two places, in America and Europe respectively, which seem to have been the first to put into practice for the first time that combination.

In 1606 the manufacture of chocolate to Italy by Francesco Carletti after a trip to the Spanish colonies in America. Others say it was Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, general of the Spanish armies true introducer.

In 1615 the cocoa arrives in France through marriage to the daughter of Philip III, Anne, King Louis XIII of France. In 1646 comes to Germany from Italy. For years, the Germans saw it as a medicine, and is only sold in drugstores and pharmacies. More important is the date of 1746, for a club of chocolate aficionados a great innovation occurs: the water, the only employee until then to mix with cocoa, is replaced by milk, adding him sometimes eggs, alcohol and old wine .

The industrialization of chocolate took a big jump from 1777 in Barcelona where mechanical processing replaced craft production of chocolate. In the early nineteenth century, with the development of cocoa plantations around the world, mainly in Africa, the chocolate industry was established and perfected in multiple countries.

The Italian Doret pioneered the solidification of chocolate for the tablet. Doret, was the first solidified chocolate in Turin. Shortly thereafter, the first chocolate factory moved to Switzerland in 1819. In England the first tablet was the Fry and Son. Here was a mixture of liquor, cocoa and sugar commercially in Birmingham in 1849 under the name of Chocolat Delicieux a Manger.

For 1828 a Dutchman, Conrad Van Houten invented a hydraulic press to squeeze the crushed cocoa beans and separate the butter from the new product could be obtained by the scouring: cocoa powder. The machine could extract up to 50% cocoa butter. Along with the development of the process known as dutching, achieve that cocoa is more easily dissolved in milk or water, the Dutch were placed at the head of chocolate production.

The great Swiss time was the invention of milk chocolate in 1875 by Daniel Peter by leveraging flour milk (milk powder) created by Henri Nestlé. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Swiss invented a process to further refine the chocolate called conching or homogenized, is to spend the dough between discs of porcelain for several hours, resulting in a smooth chocolate that melts in the mouth. Says that everyone better quality chocolate is subjected to conching treatment for a minimum of seventy-two hours.

Because entrepreneurs like Hershey, Kohler, Lindt, Nestlé, Peter, Suchard and-names Tobler who brought fame to certain brands of chocolate today - contributed much to this industry, and invented more efficient equipment, improving formulas - why is the chocolate one in the world considered Mexican.

Today the sale, export and consumption of chocolate generates huge amount of foreign exchange to Switzerland, France, Germany, Holland, Spain, Italy, United States and England, without these benefits reach Mexico as the country said the original generator tree. It originated 500 years ago. Since then to date, we have never drawn conclusions to reverse that situation. That is we are still living in the same mistake as being a country with enormous potential, we are still in the export of raw materials in areas such as oil, silver, gas, uranium, along with the most important pre-Hispanic cultural heritage world, and an eco system by which we could exploit ecotourism attracts 9% of the 1,000 million tourists visiting each year around the world and generate 400 billion dollars a year. No, our leaders do big business with the eco system and the Treasury receives in exchange, mirrors and glass beads as 500 years ago, the exploitation and exportation of our wealth.