A 3,500-year history that begins in Mesoamerica

But even before then, cacao beans were being fermented and turned into drink by the Olmec, and the Maya who mixed it with vanilla and spices to create a beverage taken during important religious and social ceremonies.

The precise date when humans began consuming cocoa is unclear —recent archaeological evidence suggests that Mesoamericans may have been cultivating the cacao plant and using it to make beverages as far back as 1400 B.C.— but historians agree that cocoa was an important substance held in high regard by our ancestors.

A precious bean also used as a form of currency

Cacao beans were also used as a form of currency; Cortés’s men observed how precious the beans appeared to the native peoples, and ancient records show that livestock and other goods were traded in exchange for them.  The Aztecs also accepted cacao beans in payment of their taxes, or tributes as they were known.

The Spaniards did not take to the bitterness of the Aztec cacao, but discovered that blending it with cane sugar (from Europe) or honey (from Yucatán) made it more agreeable to their taste.  In its sweetened form, the beverage became popular across Spain from the seventeenth century although, like tea leaves in England during the same period, cocoa was expensive and taken almost exclusively by the social élite and well-heeled.

The emergence of chocolate confections

During the mid-nineteenth century Coenraad Johannes van Houten, a Dutch chemist, worked out a way of creating cocoa in a powder form by removing some of the natural fat and adding alkaline to create a mixture termed as “Dutch cocoa.”

A few years later, the Englishman Joseph Fry discovered that a mold-able paste could be produced by mixing melted cocoa butter back into the Dutch cocoa powder—he is thus widely credited with having created the first ‘chocolate bar’.

Chocolate became ubiquitous during the twentieth century, although most chocolate products being purveyed were blended with large quantities of sugar and other additives reducing the cocoa content (and cost) of the end product.

‘Artisan’ chocolate has long been purveyed by specialist chocolatiers across Europe, and this practice is making a comeback today in the U.S. in the form of independent chocolate makers offering hand-made pralines created with higher cocoa content and blending the more expensive cacao bean varieties instead of the hardier, less expensive and less flavorful beans often used by mass producers.

Cacao production in Mexico

Despite having been the ‘birthplace’ of chocolate, Mexico’s cacao production now makes up just a small fraction the world’s total. (Africa is the largest producer.) Mexico’s cacao trees grow primarily along the coastal plains in the Gulf-coast state of Tabasco, where the esteemed plant thrives in the sweltering humidity of that region.  The state of Chiapas, with its fertile sub-tropical climate, is the second largest region in Mexico where cacao trees grow well.

Even from its low baseline, cacao production in Mexico has fallen by half since the early part of this century, and the Mexican government has been backing some projects in an attempt to revive the country’s production of the crop, particularly in the area of organic cacao which holds great favor in current markets and commands a premium price.

Chocolate in its mystical form: as a beverage

Although chocolate confections are widely available in Mexico today (and artisan pralines are a form of luxury here) modern-day Mexicans, like their Aztec ancestors, still prefer to take their chocolate as a liquid beverage, albeit with a European twist: by far the most popular method is melting tablets of cocoa mixed with sugar and cinnamon into hot water or milk, and whipping the drink into a froth using a specially-turned wooden whisk called a molinillo, which aerates the mixture.  According to Mexican folklore, the “spirit” of this mystical drink resides in the foam.

The elections this year are one month earlier than usual. The reason is that the change of administration will take place on October 1st, when in the past the elections were held in July and the handover of power took place on December 1st.

Mexico’s political architecture

Mexico’s political structure is formed through a republic of 32 states inside a union bound by a common constitution.  Mexico’s republic used to comprise 31 states and a Federal District (Mexico City), although constitutional changes in 2016 transformed Mexico City into a state in its own right.

The Mexican federal government comprises an executive branch, a bicameral congress composed of a Senate in the upper house, a lower Chamber of Deputies, and an independent judiciary, headed by a Supreme Court.

Mexican states have their own constitutions; however, the states’ constitutions cannot contradict the federal constitution, and state governance must adhere to a republican congressional system, headed by a state governor.

Terms limits in public office

The elected president serves as the head of the executive branch, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The president is elected for a non-renewable six-year term.

Each state governor is directly elected in the state they represent, and may not hold office for more than six years.

Congressional Representatives are elected for three-year terms in the case of the lower house and six years in the case of the Senate.

Mexican political candidates contest seats in a single-round plurality vote, sometimes referred to as a ‘relative majority.’  This means that the winning candidate is the one who polls more votes than any other in the contest, even if the sum of those votes does not muster a majority.

Three candidates running for president

The main interest in June’s elections is the presidential race, in which there are three candidates:

• Claudia Sheinbaum for the ruling Morena party, along with the small Workers Party (PT) and Green Party (PVEM).
• Xóchitl Gálvez is running for a coalition of the PRI, PAN, and PRD parties.
• Jorge Álvarez Máynez is the candidate for the smaller Citizens Movement party.

With less than a month to go before election day on June 2nd, Sheinbaum is leading in the polls, followed by Gálvez, with Álvarez Máynez a distant third.

Voting, and the transition period

Around 98.4 million people are eligible to vote in Mexico, and an additional 675,000 Mexicans living abroad are also being encouraged to cast their vote. Results of the election are expected to be known the same day as the voting.

Some time after polls have closed in Baja California, which is two hours behind Mexico City, the country’s electoral institute is expected to release the results of its quick count based on a nationwide sample of results from polling places.

This is not an exit poll, and in the past the institute’s quick counts have always been close to the final results. If the margin of victory of any one candidate is big enough, the institute will virtually announce the winner.

If not, it will wait until results are in from all polling places. The results are posted online as they come in, so by the early hours of Monday, June 3rd, a high percentage of results is available.

Historically, Mexico’s elections took place in July, and the incumbent administration would handover power on December 1st that year, and that was marked with a national holiday every six years. Political reforms intended to reduce the length of the “transition period” moved the election date to June, and changed the handover date to October 1st—effectively reducing the transition period by from five months, to four months.

México Lindo y Querido
si muero lejos de ti
que digan que estoy dormido
y que me traigan aquí

The ballad was first made famous by  Jorge Negrete (1911 – 1953) who ironically died outside of Mexico—succumbing to hepatitis in Los Angeles at the young age of 42—and his body was repatriated to rest at the artists’ corner of El Panteón Jardín in Mexico City.  Even today, his name continues to be a musical icon in Mexico.  The original version of his ballad can he heard here on YouTube.

The song itself lives on as a centerpiece number for mariachi bands, and has also been continually covered by a roll-call of famous Mexican musicians; the most recognizable contemporary version is the one performed by Vicente Fernandez.

Another contemporary recording of the ballad has been produced by “Playing For Change”—who sent a team across Mexico recording the ballad as interpreted by over 70 independent Mexican musicians from all walks of life and combining the work into this extraordinary music video:

It appears that many people in the U.S. think Cinco de Mayo is Mexico’s Independence Day, the equivalent of the Fourth of July.  May 5 isn’t an official national holiday in Mexico.  Schools and some commercial office workers have the day off, but businesses open.

Cinco de Mayo marks the Battle of Puebla in 1862, when the Mexican army led by Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza defeated French invaders.  The following year the Napoleonic troops, with reinforcements, were successful and later installed Austrian archduke Maximilian of Habsburg as emperor.

Mexico’s Independence Day is celebrated on September 16, and that is a national holiday.  The date marks the call to arms in 1810 by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, which set off a long war for independence from Spain.  Independence was finally achieved in 1821.

Revolution Day, which marks the anniversary of the start of the 1910-1917 Revolution, is November 20.

The expression malinchista (or the practice, malinchismo) harks back five centuries to the native woman Malinche —the Aztecs called her Malintzin, and the Spanish doña Marina— who served as interpreter for Hernán Cortés, became his mistress, and bore him a son.

Incidents in her early life meant that Malinche spoke both Maya and Náhuatl, and along with Gerónimo de Aguilar, who knew Spanish and Maya, allowed Cortés to communicate with the Aztecs in his conquest of Tenochtitlán.

For some, malinchista is tantamount to traitor, although this is much too strong for its real connotation.  To say “no seas malinchista” in reaction to some comment, purchase, or opinion, can be as inoffensive as heckling a friend over his or her choice of favorite sports team.

Some writers have used the figure of Malinche to spin yarns about the Mexican psyche and the perennial search for a national identity—along the lines of the idea that the mestizos (people of mixed Indian and Spanish blood) were born out of treachery.  This quasi-Freudian adaptation of the doctrine of original sin, which, by the way, assumes greater haste in profligacy in the captain of the conquistadores than among his men, was popularized last century, with its cubists and surrealists and the odd journalist dabbling in existentialism.

It contrasts with the practical view of malinchismo of writers in the 19th century, when exile in Europe was, as often as not, a matter of survival in turbulent political times.  In his short novel, The Man of the Situation, —El Hombre de la Situación— Manuel Payno describes how Fulgencio, returning from England where he had liberally spent his father’s money to become a “gentleman,” is embarrassed by the rustic ways and unrefined tastes in food and dress of his parents and sisters. In their efforts not to offend the new-found sensibilities of the family heir, they find themselves sneaking into the local fonda for some real food: tostadas, quesadillas, mole. There’s nothing judgmental here, just teasing about the vanity of youth.

Mexico’s hot-and-cold relationship with foreign things, somewhat diluted in these globalized days, has two special cases: the U.S. and Spain.  These are the two countries with which Mexico has the closest economic and cultural ties.  But even a hard-core malinchista will think twice before extolling the virtues of the great neighbor and rival to the north, or singing the praises of the Iberian peninsula.

You could search high and low (on internet and in the microfilmed files of a century of newsprint) and not find a Mexican journalist who has gleefully qualified a president or cabinet minister with the prefix “Harvard-educated.”  That is the habit of the foreign press, for foreign consumption.  It’s not to say that they don’t study or take post-graduate courses in the U.S. and Europe, they do, but top of the list will be their alma mater: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Politécnico, Tecnológico de Monterrey, or ITAM.

Finally, many a malinchista at home is a patriot abroad, perhaps drinking nothing but scotch in Mexico but when away demanding the one true blue agave tequila. This isn’t so much bad manners as bad economics.

Spanish concessions to brew beer

The first official concession to brew European-style beers was issued by the Spanish authorities in the middle of the 16th century; however, despite the brewers’ attempts to expand the business by growing more crops locally to increase the supply of barley at a lower price, heavy regulation and high taxation imposed by Spain on locally-produced beers and wines stymied the industry’s growth.

Beer production following independence

After Mexico’s war of independence, beer production began to flourish in Mexico, and during the latter part of the 19th century an influx of German immigrants brought additional knowledge and expertise to the field which caused the local market to diversify and improve its products.

By the turn of the 20th century, beer had become big business in Mexico, helped also by prohibition in the United States at that time, which gave rise to a brisk and profitable trade of beer and other alcoholic beverages along Mexico’s border towns and cities.

Revolution and consolidation

By the end of the Mexican Revolution, there were more than thirty-five breweries operating in Mexico, and a period of consolidation that began in the 1920s brought about the beer market we see here today: independent breweries were absorbed into one of the “big-two” breweries, Grupo Modelo and Cerveceria Cuautehmoc-Moctezuma, which emerged as the dominant players of the Mexican beer market.

Successful beers produced by the acquired regional breweries were mass-produced and distributed nationally, and less successful beers disappeared from the market altogether.  Smaller breweries that were not bought-out were forced to close as they could not compete with the economies-of-scale brought about through consolidation.

Two breweries dominate the market

The two big Mexican breweries, which by the turn of the 21st century controlled over 90% of the Mexican beer market, were subsequently acquired by international conglomerates.  Cerveceria Cuautehmoc-Moctezuma, whose brands include Sol, Bohemia, Tecate, and Carta Blanca, was sold to Heineken in 2010; Grupo Modelo, which sells Corona, Modelo, and Pacifico brands among others, was acquired by Anheuser-Busch in 2013.

Mexican Corona beer is a light lager sold world-wide and has become an iconic brand.  Other, darker and craft Mexican beers can sometimes be found in the premium brews section of higher-end supermarkets and trendy restaurants across the US, Canada and Europe.

The colossal marketing budgets and the extensive distribution networks controlled by these two breweries ensure that their big-brand names are placed at the forefront of buyers’ choices across the country.

A re-emergence of independent craft beer breweries

However, changing consumer habits are fueling a boom in artisanal beer across Mexico, and independent brewers have been making a noticeable comeback recently with small-batch craft beer and ale labels appearing regionally in local stores, restaurants, and bars.

Contemporary beer culture in Mexico

The majority of beers sold in Mexico today are lagers, pilsners, Vienna-style light and dark beers, as well as Munich dark beers.  Beer in Mexico is served cold, or taken as a Michelada: beer with lime juice, or lime juice mixed with a variety of spicy sauces like Worcester, Tabasco, and soy.

The beverage is still regularly supplied using returnable bottles, although recyclable cans and bottles are becoming increasingly common.  If you are visiting Mexico and purchase beer from a local store, choose the cans or recyclable bottles with the words “No Retornable” printed on the label, which don’t require a deposit and can be recycled after use.

When you’re living in Mexico, it’s worth building up a small stock of returnable bottles which you can take back to the store when you want refills.  Over time, if you build-up a good rapport with your local independent shopkeeper, they might waive the deposit if you’re passing-by or forget to take your returnable bottles on that occasion.

Most Mexican beer bottle sizes are 325ml, although some brands of beer are also available in larger 925ml, 940ml, and full 1-liter sizes.

In Mexican slang Spanish, the larger bottles are called caguamas (sea turtles) or if you’re in north-eastern Mexico you might hear them referred to as ballenas (whales); in Mazatlán, ballenas refer specifically to the Pacifico brand of beer sold in the larger-sized bottles.

Greene traveled in southern Mexico during the anti-clerical persecutions of the 1930s, and produced two books, the commentary Lawless Roads and the novel The Power and The Glory.  Lawrence visited in the 1920s, and wrote The Plumed Serpent, while Lowry in the 1940s wrote Under The Volcano, which was made into a film in 1984.

The three can be associated with specific places in Mexico: Greene with sweltering Tabasco; Lowry with Cuernavaca, the land of eternal spring; and Lawrence with Lake Chapala—to this day a popular spot for foreign residents living in Mexico.

The Mexican historian Enrique Krauze considers in a 2015 article on British writers that lived in or visited Mexico that the works of the male authors lean toward what is dark in the country, while the female writers —Rosa King, Sybille Bedford, Rebecca West— tended rather to reflect the day.

More recently, writers like Tony Cohan, author of the memoir On Mexican Time (and its sequel, Mexican Days) show how the country continues to deliver inspiration for writers who come to visit or live here.  A good number of the more contemporary books are about people escaping to a quiet life south of the border —oblivious perhaps to Mexico’s own version of the rat race— and some are fiction.

Another modern-day writer, DBC Pierre of British and Australian parentage, grew up in Mexico in the 1970s.  While Mexico appears briefly in the latter part of his prize-winning first novel Vernon God Little, it’s in a later work, Release the Bats, that he shares several of his personal experiences in the country.

Modern writers are still finding inspiration in Mexico for turning out prose (not to mention blogs), and writing courses are also popular here.

Use the comments below to share your recommendation.

For many, the anniversary provides a day-off work; this national holiday is observed on the nearest Monday to the date, creating a long holiday weekend in March.  For the political classes, it’s an opportunity for speech-making and scoring election campaign points; for the intellectual, a chance to reinterpret history — again?— or at least run some new or resuscitated ideas by the readers of opinion journals.

Benito Juárez was born on March 21, 1806 in San Pablo Guelatao, in the southern state of Oaxaca.  Around age 12, orphaned and knowing no Spanish, he went to the state capital, Oaxaca City, to live.  He studied at the Santa Cruz seminary, but abandoned the idea of the priesthood for a career in law.  After becoming a lawyer, he entered politics, first in his home state and then nationally.

Juárez is best known for the the Reform Laws of 1859, which established the separation of Church and State, expropriated church properties, and introduced civil weddings.  He led the liberals in the Reform War of 1858-1861, which pitted them against the conservatives.  The conservative forces were defeated, and Juárez called elections, which he won, assuming the presidency in 1861.

When the French took the city of Puebla in 1863 and installed Maximilian of Habsburg as emperor, Juárez moved north, organizing an offensive from Paso del Norte which was later renamed Ciudad Juárez.  With the defeat of Maximilian in 1867, Juarez returned to the capital, where his government embarked on programs of economic and educational development.  He was elected again in 1871, and died before completing his term.

His most famous saying is that “among individuals as among nations, the respect for the rights of others is peace.”  Many plaques and statues —including the one pictured above— quote this famous line.

A fair historical comparison for Juárez might be Thomas Jefferson or William Pitt, but in the popular mind’s eye Mexico’s only indigenous president is more spectacular—an Abraham Lincoln or a Lord Horatio Nelson.

In his bicentennial year in 2006, it was again fashionable to be critical, to uncover the man behind the myth, to question the political assumptions of the victory of the 19th century liberals over their conservative rivals.  Wasn’t Juárez perhaps more like a modern-day conservative?  As a full-blooded Zapotec Indian, didn’t Juárez do less for the indigenous of Mexico than might have been expected of such a one? Isn’t he wrongly portrayed as a ‘demigod’ when in fact he was just as human as the next person with his good points and his faults?

One would not be thought ignorant by one’s peers, but faced with such an array of polemical possibilities, and armed only with a smattering of history from the handiest sources, one often can’t help but suspect, nay hope, that ‘the real Juárez’ is the one of official textbooks—the Nelson who saw no ships, the Lincoln of “fourscore and seven years ago.”

There is no question of the Mexican origin of this saying, which refers to the most revered of the country’s presidents and is similar in meaning to “water off a duck’s back.”

Several explanations are offered for how the expression came to be used, of which the most likely appears to be that offered by the late anthropologist and historian Fernando Benítez, in his work Un Indio Zapoteco Llamado Benito Juárez.

According to Benítez, when Juárez was a boy, he was caught in a wind storm on a boat on a lagoon. Other boys swam to shore but the young Juárez stayed aboard, rode out the storm and came safely ashore with the boat the next morning. Hence the saying, something does to one “what the wind did to Juárez” – i.e. nothing.

Another explanation offered is that of a supposed portrait of Juárez, which shows a flag waving in the background, but Juárez’s robes not moving at all. Given the serious poses in which Juárez appears in most portraits, this explanation at least sounds feasible.

Others, totally unconvincingly, talk about wind storms in Ciudad Juárez, originally El Paso del Norte, and renamed in Juárez’s honor after he and his forces briefly took refuge there during the French intervention, or even to the many statues of the former president being unaffected by wind.

Mexico’s 1917 Constitution

Mexico’s Constitution was drafted in the colonial city of Queretaro, north of Mexico City.   It was legalized on February 5th, 1917, by the country’s Constitutional Congress. Venustiano Carranza was the first President to serve under the terms of the new constitution.

In years past, Mexico would have marked this holiday on February 5th but, in 2006, Congress approved an initiative whereby a number of official holiday dates would be observed on the nearest Monday to the official date, thus creating long holiday weekends.

100th Anniversary

2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the Constitution and to commemorate the centenary, the Bank of Mexico issued a limited edition 20-peso coin and a limited edition 100-peso banknote which are introduced here.

On the centenary of the revolution in 2010, the bank issued a 100-peso commemorative banknote for that occasion: although they remain legal tender, they are rarely if ever seen in trade now, and have become a collector’s item.

The Mexican Constitution was drafted following the Mexican Revolution, led by Francisco Madero against the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Diaz (an era known in Mexico as “El Porfiriato”), in pursuit of political and agrarian reforms, and social justice.

Although it took several years for Mexico’s political upheaval to settle-down following the revolution —and subsequent enactment of the Constitution— to this day, the document continues to influence and shape Mexico’s social, political, and economic landscape.

Land ownership in Mexico

One of the key Articles of the Mexican Constitution to come to light in recent years is Article 27—which deals with the ownership of land in Mexico. Specifically, it states, foreigners may not own land within 100 km of a land border or 50 km of a sea border.

In a bid to open up land development to foreign direct investment the administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari introduced ‘Land Trusts’ (fideicomisos) in the 1990s; administered by banks, they provide foreigners with title of the land in all but name.  You can learn more about property ownership in Mexico in our free eBook about real estate in Mexico.

Before this law came to pass, foreigners who bought land near the border in Mexico used a ‘presta nombre’ (borrowed name)—a Mexican national whom the buyer could trust to hold title of the land, with a gentleman’s agreement existing between the buyer and the title holder.

2010 marked the centenary of the episode, during which time a number of special events were held, and a limited edition commemorative $100 peso banknote (now a collector’s item) was produced.

Low-key by comparison to Independence Day

While Mexico’s annual Independence Day is celebrated with vigor on September 16th each year, featuring parties, fireworks, gatherings of family and friends to eat traditional dishes such as pozole and tostadas, and the 11 p.m. “grito,” either watched on television or attended at the local zócalo, Día de la Revolución is little more than another día festivo —a day off school or work— and the reflections and orations on the achievements of those years of turmoil are left almost exclusively to the political classes.

Now part of Mexico’s long-weekend holiday dates

Mexico’s Revolution Day is one of the public holidays which was folded into a selection of designated “long weekends,” introduced in 2006, and is observed on the third Monday in November regardless of what day the 20th falls on.

The Revolution Day holiday weekend is also tied to an event known as “El Buen Fin” (“the good weekend”)—where retailers and travel companies across the country join in a promotional extravaganza offering discounts and other savings, emulating the US tradition of Black Friday, when stores begin their holiday season sales.  The initiative, which was first introduced in 2011, has become a de-facto annual shopping event in Mexico.

Historical viewpoints vary

While few Mexicans question the importance of the birth of an independent nation after three centuries of colonial rule, the 1910-1917 period of conflict that led to the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution was far more complex, and to a certain extent inconclusive. A number of the better-known heroes of the Revolution were themselves killed in acts of treachery well after 1917. Emiliano Zapata in 1919, Venustiano Carranza in 1920, Francisco Villa in 1923, and Álvaro Obregón in 1928.

Disagreements continue to this day on the significance of the events that made up the revolution, with ideas usually influenced by political views. The revolution is not the same thing seen from the left as from the right, and its success or failure from either of those viewpoints is not something that can be easily settled. The Wikipedia article (Spanish) shows how complicated a matter it was.

The actual date marks the call to arms by Francisco I. Madero in 1910, as he sought the removal of dictator Porfirio Diaz through elections, with the slogan “effective suffrage, no re-election.” Although Diaz didn’t last much longer in power, and Madero briefly reached the presidency, the next decade was one of great upheaval and confusion. A number of the heroes of the revolution — Madero, Francisco Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Venustiano Carranza, Alvaro Obregon — were at times rivals in the fighting, and all of them ended up being killed by enemies.

To keep it simple, the rogues were Diaz and Victoriano Huerta, the general who overthrew Madero and is widely blamed with having Madero killed. The others were heroes.

For a blow-by-blow account of the shifts in power, the battles and betrayals during this period, there are plenty of history books to be found in both Spanish and English. For a portrayal of what it was like among the ragtag armies of rebels during the turbulent period, the novel Los de Abajo by Mariano Azuela is the book to read.

The book tells the tale of Demetrio Macias, who leads a marauding band of rebel fighters moving across the Mexican countryside. Received at first as heroes, the rebels soon become as resented as the federal army as they go from town to town pillaging “advances” on their non-existent wages.

The short work makes only a passing mention of the renowned revolutionary leaders, focusing more on a handful of fictional characters typical of the time. From the idealistic, and at first naïve, student Luis Cervantes, to the murdering güero Margarito and La Pintada, the author shows the light and the dark sides of the insurgents.

A few military successes are sufficient for Macias to rise through the rebel ranks, but as the sides change (as they often did during the Revolution) it becomes apparent that Macias doesn’t care who he’s fighting against. The book has been translated into English as “The Underdogs,” which makes a better book title than “those at the bottom,” or “the lower classes,”—but doesn’t quite capture the meaning.

Mariano Azuela, a Jalisco native, was a writer and doctor who served in the ranks under Francisco Villa.

Article Image: Night view looking up at the illuminated Monument to the Mexican Revolution, situated in Mexico City.