Jungle Laboratories by Soto Laveaga

Laveaga, Gabriela Soto Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.

Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill by Gabriela Sota Laveaga traces the political, economic, and scientific development of the global barbasco industry from its 1950s-boom years, to the decline in the latter part of the twentieth century. A wild yam that invasively grows in rural areas of southern Mexico, barbasco and its extract, diosgenin, made possible the mass production of steroid hormones like progesterone and cortisone, and leading to the manufacture of oral contraceptives. Despite their elite knowledge of and manual labor harvesting the root, it was many years before Mexican peasants understood the financial and scientific value of barbasco. The scientific community’s reliance on rural Mexican’s knowledge upended a social hierarchy that had been in place for hundreds of years. Eventually rural Mexicans were able to utilize their scientific knowledge to mediate with transnational pharmaceutical companies, to approach the Mexican government for terms, and to alter how they were regarded by urban Mexicans.

A commodity chain analysis is a way of isolating and identifying aspects of historical change along the route that the commodity takes from production to consumption. In the case of barbasco, the commodity chain begins when Mexican peasants harvest the barbasco root from southern Mexico. Initially, picking the barbasco root was a form of ancillary income for the peasants. If peasants happened to see barbasco growing on their way home then they would pick it up. However, as the demand for barbasco grew, up to 25,000 families or 100,000 individuals would make a living by harvesting the barbasco root. The jungle conditions where barbasco grew were hazardous. Barbasco pickers reported venomous snakes and swarms of insects, not to mention the hot, tropical environment. In addition, the dangers of machetes were notorious, as the long, sharp knives were used constantly to clear the dense jungle flora.

Once picked and removed from the jungle, the commodity chain of barbasco moved to collection sites where the root would undergo basic chemical changes by fermentation and drying. The resulting barbasco flour had to be spread out over concrete slabs and dried by the sun. The flour also needed to be agitated to ensure consistent drying. Once dried, the barbasco flour was packed and shipped to laboratories in other parts of Mexico, the United States, and Europe.

Laboratories and scientists continued the chemical processes to yield diosgenin. Diosgenin is the precursor of steroid hormones like progesterone and cortisone. Progesterone was the original basis for oral contraceptives, which put Mexico on the map in the steroid hormone industry. Employed by Syntex, one Mexico’s leading pharmaceutical companies, Luis Ernesto Miramontes was able to synthesize an orally efficient progesterone contraceptive. The Pill revolutionized population control by allowing female reproductive systems to avoid contraception. The rural Mexican peasants had no idea that the barbasco they picked and sold to middlemen was turned into a pill used globally by millions of women.

The abundant availability of raw barbasco in Mexico made it possible for Mexican chemists and technicians to generate original and significant scientific research. Studying a plant that was innately Mexican inspired a sense of nationalism. Mexico created an entire industry around barbasco, with laboratories and other facilities created specifically for steroid hormone use. Mexican scientific nationalism can also be seen at the lowest rung of barbasco’s commodity chain. Barbasco pickers and campesinos were all proud of barbasco and their work, even when they did not understand why international companies demanded the weed. Fidel Santiago Hernández proudly described how he had been hired as a “chemist” at a barbasco processing plant. Many Mexicans viewed employment in the barbasco industry as a secure, dignified, and esteemed occupation.

            Amidst the barbasco boom, the United States as a scientific and pharmacological stronghold had to contend with Mexico and its emerging competence in science, as well as the only place where barbasco proliferated. Even when Syntex was sold to a United States company, the barbasco root was still grown in Mexico and, increasingly, regulated by the Mexican government. United States’ expansionism became a question of legal matters, like patents, and not territory. Mexican presidents Miguel Alemán and Adolfo Ruiz Cortines both issued protectionist measures and legislation to protect the economy surrounding barbasco. Foreign demand for barbasco permits ushered in the Mexican government’s domestic laboratory, Farquinal, responsible for the manufacture of diosgenin.

Several factors surrounding barbasco changed throughout its medicinal demand and subsequent decline including agriculture and economics. With regards to agriculture, in the beginning of the barbasco boom peasants left a part of the root in the ground for regeneration. Combined with the slash and burn agricultural technique, barbasco continued to flourish. However, towards the end of the barbasco boom fewer pickers would leave even the smallest pieces of the root in the ground. Many in Mexico wondered if the barbasco would last. The Commission for the Study of the Ecology of Dioscoreas was a research group funded by transnational pharmaceutical companies in collaboration with the Mexican government and Mexican scientists to regulate and obtain information on barbasco and its ecology. Foreign companies understood the importance of researching barbasco in order to ensure the continued supply of the scientific- and financially-valuable raw material. This led to the change in economics by Mexico establishing Proquivemex, the parastatal company intended to challenge transnational pharmaceutical companies and protect campesinos. Proquivemex was established in 1975 during the administration of populist president Luis Echeverría Álvarez.

Echeverría had high hopes for Proquivemex. Ideally Proquivemex and its jungle laboratories would serve as the link between Mexican peasants who harvested barbasco and the transnational pharmaceutical companies who needed diosgenin. Within ten years, Echeverría planned to produce medicines at a fair price for all Mexican citizens. Another goal was that the middlemen of the barbasco industry would one day have a significant role in the company and control of barbasco production. However, when Echeverría left office, Proquivemex was beset with a funding crisis and dwindling interest, especially from the new administration. The jungle laboratories were abandoned and the barbasco industry in Mexico dried up.

Diosgenin-filled arbasco still grows in the jungle region of southern Mexico and the legacy of the barbasco boom years still lives on. Barbasco created the development of the steroid hormone industry and paved the way for Mexico to become a major factor in the global pharmaceutical industry. However, the failures of Echeverría’s populist regime and the social issues surrounding Mexican peasants and harvesting barbasco, as well as new scientific sources of steroid hormones, led to the weed’s subsequent medicinal decline and demand.

Andean Cocaine by Paul Gootenberg

Gootenberg, Paul Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

       Andean Cocaine traces the obscure processes and transformations of the global coca and cocaine commodity chain. Gootenberg documents the traditions of the Andean coca leaf, the birth of cocaine as a medical commodity, the early twentieth-century decline of licit cocaine, and cocaine’s reemergence as a global illicit good following World War II and the decades that followed.

                The commodity chain of coca and cocaine began with the extraction of alkaloidal cocaine from the dried Andean coca leaf. This discovery by German doctoral student Albert Niemann would soon transform cocaine into a world drug commodity. Initially, cocaine was essential as a high-value medical commodity. Medical uses of cocaine included treatment of opiate addiction, hay fever, asthma, or other respiratory ailments. Cocaine’s greatest medical impact in the United States and Europe was as a local anesthetic used during surgery. In Europe, cocaine’s commodity chain was defined by the coca elixir Vin Mariani developed by Corsican physician and chemist Angelo Mariani. Cultivated by Peruvian and Bolivian peasants living in the Andean Mountains, the coca leaf would be dried and shipped to the United States or Europe for refining. Due to the herb’s limited shelf life during transportation, the alkaloidal cocaine extracted would lose potency. The development of Peruvian crude cocaine by Arnaldo Kitz accelerated the industrialization of cocaine. Kitz’s cocaine extraction method involved processing the dried leaf on location in Peru into a crude form that could withstand global shipping.

Peruvian initiative and crude cocaine became the economic lifelines that would spur the licit cocaine boom at the end of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth. By 1900 Peru had a world monopoly on the product. Crude cocaine created a global connectedness in Andean networks of coca and cocaine. There were two major commercial chains: a German-European-Andean circuit and a United States-Andean circuit. Minor French and British nodes of cocaine science and culture also existed, but all combined to institutionalize and embed channels for the flow of research, medicine, political ideals, and influences in an attempt to monopolize and control the cocaine marketplace.

Declining medical demand and the United States’ anticocaine policies helped lead to an end of the licit cocaine era. By 1950 the illicit cocaine commodity chain was on the verge of erupting into one of the most prolific underground economies in the world. Contrary to popular belief, Colombians came to cocaine, not the other way around. Andean peasants continued to cultivate the coca bush, but by the 1970s Colombians would be responsible for the refinement and marketing of cocaine. Sociopolitical conditions in Colombia enabled narcos, like Pablo Escobar and Blanca Ibáñez, to aggressively manage the sale of cocaine in places such as Miami and Hollywood.

Nineteen Fifties-America witnessed cocaine consumption turn from an already declining licit trade to strictly illicit. Changing cultural tastes turned American drug users from harmless marijuana to the rush of cocaine. With Cuba as the pioneer test market for cocaine, the drug made an easy jump into Miami where there existed a large Cuban diaspora community already familiar with the drug. Increasing drug surveillance and international police cooperation between the United States and several Latin American countries resulted in futile attempts to end the illicit cocaine trade. Ironically, the United States policing of cocaine worked within its borders, but failed when imposed on other countries.

During the latter half of the twentieth century, several global changes occurred that unleashed the illicit cocaine boom. The first occurred in Peru. The Huallaga Valley, the central location of coca and cocaine activity in Peru, experienced a collapse of postwar development schemes. This paved the way for coca-growing peasants to actively intensify their cocaine activities. Second, the cocaine capitalism in the Andes created a rising class of Colombian narcos who crafted new heights and new markets for cocaine. Finally, Nixon-era politics and policies led to a vast new demand for cocaine. As recreational cocaine usage skyrocketed, Nixon’s politically constructed war on cocaine could not put a dent in the growing American cocaine trade or consumption. The main objective of the newly established Drug Enforcement Agency was to raise the price of cocaine to deter consumer use. Instead, the opposite happened.

Given its Andean genealogy, coca and cocaine held important cultural meanings in Peru. The scientific interest in cocaine was part of an awakening of Peruvian scientific nationalism. Lima’s medical elites and modern chemistry transformed the coca plant into medicinal cocaine in the nineteenth century. Peruvians took an herb steeped in Incan history and changed it into an exclusive and modern good. This early study of coca combined science and patriotism. Peruvian scientist’s proximity and experiences lent a privileged place as compared to scientists in Europe. With help from Peruvians like Moreno y Maíz and J. C. Ulloa, elite scientific nationalism made local and traditional coca and universal and scientifically modern cocaine into national subjects, or what Gootenberg calls “highland Andeanness.”

Peruvian scientist Alfredo Bignon’s place in the genealogy of cocaine as a world commodity cannot be underscored. His cocaine papers, published between 1884 and 1887, were investigations into coca and cocaine, but also laced with Peruvian nationalist and commercial overtones. Bignon’s prolific contributions to cocaine science rival that of Sigmund Freud. His cocaine papers were translated and published in major American, French, and German journals. Scientists like Bignon, combined with coca and cocaine, created an innate Peruvian nationalist culture and global commodity.

 Despite the turn towards Colombian narcos for its sale and marketing, the cultivation remained in the hands of coca-growing peasant population of Peru and Bolivia. Peasant cultivation knowledge did not easily progress, and as such the cultivation technology remained largely unchanged. Significant changes in the history of cocaine technology occurred when Kitz began his crude cocaine refining technique. Without question German scientists deserve a nod for their contributions in the science of coca and cocaine. The late nineteenth-century principal center of cocaine research, production, and distribution was Germany. Emmanuel Merck and others came from a well-financed and influential pharmaceutical and scientific European bloc. With modern research models, Germany was able to dominate the early coca and cocaine commodity trade.

After the epic invention by Bignon, the Peruvian migrant Kitz was able to install coca profitably into the Amazon. With nationalist undertones cocaine was promoted as a commodity by native Peruvian Augusto Durand. Even during the decline phase of cocaine during the first part of the twentieth century, Peruvian merchant Andrés A. Soberón continued the exploitation of the Andean plant and cocaine. Coinciding with the rise of anticocainism in the twentieth century, cocaine passed underground to nameless and faceless chemists and narcos who continued to develop cocaine into one of the world’s most lucrative commodities.

Banana Cultures

Soluri, John Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, & Environmental Change in Honduras & the United States. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.

            Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, & Environmental Change in Honduras & the United States combines the fields of Environmental History and Economics to look at the transformation of the banana from a simple Honduran plant into a staple in American kitchens, and how the banana export trade changed cultural practices and biophysical processes that have shaped global economic institutions. In particular, Banana Cultures outlines the commodity chain analysis of the banana export trade which involves processing and transportation technologies that enabled banana companies to hasten the pace of production, distribution, and sale of bananas while cutting labor costs. The commodification of bananas made possible the mass consumption of the fruit in North America.

            The commodity chain analysis allows us to study how products change along their routes from production to consumption. The banana’s commodity chain begins on farms on the North Shore of Honduras and ends on North American tables. Capital and power were concentrated specifically in places between those farms and tables. Companies like the United Fruit Company and the Cuyamel Fruit Company exploited the resources located within this commodity chain and created a fruit for international mass consumption. The construction of railroads in Honduras decreased the transportation time of bananas, allowing the expansion of the export banana trade.

            Fruit companies also experimented with quality control measures as a way to standardize production processes. This step in the banana’s commodity chain evolved around the Gros Michel variety of banana, which because of its ultimate perishability would accrue and lose market price in just a few days. When North American markets became saturated with Gros Michel bananas, quality became important. Due to the eventual near-monopolization of banana transportation methods, fruit companies were able to control those quality standardization processes to a great extent.

            Prior to becoming commonplace in the United States, bananas were pop culture icons of the tropics. Bananas were associated with a cultural inferiority of the tropics and exotic peoples. Over the nineteenth century the symbolic meaning of the banana did not change, however the banana’s economic importance changed immensely. As stated above, the rise of fresh fruit consumption went hand in hand with a rise and shipping and transportation methods. Because of the fossil fuel era, the banana went from a novelty to a commodity in a relatively short period of time.

Advertising served an important step in the commodity chain of the banana. Notwithstanding its tropical origins, the banana helped define every-day consumer culture in the United States. Fruit company executives dealt with how to market bananas and make them more popular than ever. In 1944 the United Fruit Company launched a radio campaign featuring a singing banana dubbed Miss Chiquita. After the launch of Miss Chiquita, the Gros Michel banana was replaced by the Cavendish variety. The Cavendish and Miss Chiquita turned an agricultural commodity into a product that consumers could distinguish by brand name.

American women played perhaps the most important part in the marketing of bananas. Women were responsible for the grocery shopping in most American households and they primarily bore the responsibility of making meals. As such, fruit companies aimed advertising at American women. Recipe books and The Chiquita Banana Song helped send the message that not all bananas were the same, but that the Chiquita banana was superior. The United Fruit Company also published pamphlets extolling the nutritional benefits of the banana.

            Labor relations on the North Shore of Honduras evolved as the banana generated mass appeal in North America. Easy to cultivate and harvest, the banana was initially grown by small- and medium-scale growers. Banana growers experienced a quick and steady return on labor and capital investments. The North Shore actually experienced labor shortages in the early years of the export banana trade. In the early twentieth century, fruit companies began to dominate the landscape of banana farming. With banana plantations, control of railroads and steamships, and the ability to control quality standards, corporate fruit companies created a stranglehold on banana exportation. The story of Luis Cabelleno illustrates how a small-scale banana farmer was unable to keep up with market demand and quality standards while turning a profit. Cabelleno lost steadily lost business over a six-year period, eventually giving up banana cultivation.

            By the mid-twentieth century, labor relations had evolved on the North Shore to reflect the corporatization of the export banana trade. Fruit companies created temporary employment opportunities with cyclical layoffs during production cycles. Alongside the expansion of the Cavendish, packaging plants were able to hire women and children. On the other hand, plantation farming had a negative impact on the agricultural opportunities for the Honduran working class. It became all but impossible for ordinary laborers to find suitable land for farming. Artisan and worker organizations developed after conflicts for the only profitable lands remaining for farming.

            Temporary jobs created by the fruit companies’ expanding operations attracted the underemployed and employed. Olancho, Honduras citizen, Juan Gavilán, remembered the importance of personal contacts during the boom years of the export banana trade. A motivated laborer had little trouble finding and exchanging jobs on the banana plantations of the North Coast.

             The North Shore experienced drastic changes in the history of banana agricultural practices. Under the guiding hand of United States’ capital and technology, banana farming saw the transformation of small-scale banana farming into productive agricultural spaces. United States’ fruit companies initially focused cultivation efforts on Gros Michel. A bacterial plant disease, Panama disease, as it would be called, shifted those efforts away from Gros Michel and towards the Cavendish. After the onset of Panama disease fruit companies implemented a shift in plantation agriculture driven by banana biology, interconnected agroecosystems, and mass-market structures. Disease control became a primary focus of the fruit companies. At great expense disease-control equipment was installed on company plantations and non-company farms alike. Agricultural scientists were employed to study plant diseases, control methods, and prevention.

A major component in Banana Cultures is the disease control methods on banana plantations and the effects on laborers. With plant diseases like Panama disease and Sigatoka, fruit companies developed herbicides and insecticides to continue the export banana trade. Bordeaux mixture was made up of copper sulfate and used to combat Sigatoka. Laborers would be inundated with a mist of the Bordeaux mixture, leaving their skin and clothes a blue-green color. Cantalisio Andino worked on a North Shore banana plantation and reported the underside of his bed turning blue after working a Bordeaux sprayer. Laborers also reported respiratory illnesses that they attributed to the chemicals used on banana plantations. By the 1970s nearly every phase of banana production involved chemical involvement.

The complicated dynamic between fruit companies, laborers, Cavendish banana plants, and plant diseases prompted the greater use of fertilizers and herbicides to boost banana yields. All the while, mass market appeal in North America continued to grow. 

Mercury, Mining, and Empire

Robins, Nicholas A. Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.

Nicholas A. Robins is a professor of Latin American studies at North Carolina State University. His 2011 work, Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes provides a social and environmental history of the effects of mercury and silver mining on the people, economy, and environment in the mining towns of Huancavelica, Peru and Potosí, Bolivia. In addition to the histories of Huancavelica and Potosí and the effects of mining, the “Black Legend” and the caste-based system of labor drafting known as mita figure prominently in the thesis of Mercury, Mining, and Empire.

            Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas is given credit for publicizing what would ultimately become known as the “black legend.” The black legend is a historical portrayal of Spain as rapacious and callously exploitative of Amerindians. With the publications of Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias and Apologética historia sumaria, Las Casas supported the belief in the authentic humanity of the Indians and affirmed the view of the encroaching Spaniards as overly ambitious, imperialistic, and cruel. Bordering on treason, La Casas questioned the legitimacy of the Spanish conquest of Latin America because of the atrocities and exploitations committed against the Amerindians. Many Spanish policies aimed to culturally destroy and imperil the indigenous population. The policies were multifaceted, consistent, and enduring, and resulted in the cultural and linguistic destruction of the Amerindians. The genocidal nature of Spanish imperialism affected every part of the indigenous society throughout the Americas. In opposition to the black legend and La Casas, many of his contemporaries and some twentieth-century historians advocated the “white legend,” the ethnocentric view that the Spanish brought civilization and Catholicism to the Americas, thus bettering the Amerindians and their ways of life.

Without the plentiful and steady Amerindian population of laborers, mining and refining silver- and mercury-bearing ores would have been impossible for Spanish pursuits. As viceroy of Peru, prolific lawmaker Francisco de Toledo revolutionized the Latin American labor system by enacting a labor draft based on the Incaic system of temporary forced labor for public works, or mita. The difference in mita and absolute slavery is that the mitayo, or person serving in the mita, would only work for a temporary amount of time and would receive remuneration for their labor. Official drafts of the mita were based on a percentage of the population required eligible men to serve rotating shifts at refining and mining locations in the surrounding provinces, consequently making the mita a community obligation. The mita only applied to originarios, or those who lived in the communities in which they were born. As such, forasteros, or foreigners, were not required to serve the mita because they did not retain the right to cultivate community lands. The effects of this required labor led to enormous population shifts. Men fled their towns to become forasteros in other towns in order to avoid the mita. Women and children followed mitayos to Huancavelica and Potosí. In many cases, after their service in the mita had ended, instead of returning poor, hungry, and ill, mitayos and their families would stay in the towns as forasteros where they would be exempt from the mita, could choose their own work, have better prospects to earn better wages, and be largely free of the clergy.

The Catholic Church held an interesting position with regards to the mita labor system.
In general, the clergy supported the draft, regulated the mita, and accepted the legitimacy of the forced labor of the mitayos. Informed by an Aristotelian view of the world where there are masters and slaves, clerics believed that the Indians were born to be slaves. Indian labor was for the common public good and so considered acceptable. From the church’s standpoint, Huancavelica and Potosí were placed in Spanish hands by God through divine will to aid Spanish efforts of spreading Catholicism. After the mitayo’s term of service had ended, clergy members also exploited their labor. Mitayos would be expected to tend to the clergy’s animals and pastures, along with the expected exorbitant monetary tributes. Eventually, with depopulation of indigenous communities due to relocation or flight of eligible mitayos, the Catholic Church also experienced the troubling effect of the mita with a shortage of people available to be burdened with steep fees for Mass, funerals, and marriages.  

In addition to relocation and flight, the health effects of mercury and silver mining contributed to the desolation of the native Amerindian population. Poor working conditions in the mines of Huancavelica and Potosí made mining deadly work for mitayos. The advent of amalgamation-based process of mercury refinement brought another dimension of danger to laborers. Laborers were in direct contact with mercury. This contact created acute exposure to mercury and led to chronic poisoning. Rockslides, cave-ins, falling ore, and carbon monoxide were constant threats to laborers. Ingestion of silica and mercury vapors led to coughs and certain early death for mitayos. As a result of mercury exposure, birth defects and deformities were common in Huancavelica and Potosí.

Additionally, the natural environments surrounding Huancavelica and Potosí suffered extensive ecological damage as a result of smelting and mining operations. In the early years of silver and mercury mining efforts laborers used the native kenua tree as fuel for smelting. In both Huancavelica and Potosí the kenua forests were depleted by the seventeenth century. The ichu plant was also used as fuel and it, too, was quickly denuded from the landscape. Perhaps the most significant environmental and ecological disaster of mercury and silver mining in Huancavelica and Potosí are the ongoing effects of soil contamination. High levels of mercury can still be observed in the soils of these mining communities today. Furthermore, native animals around Cerro Rico, the mountain where mining and refining took place in Potosí, disappeared from the landscape.

Violence in Huancavelica and Potosí was also directly related to mercury exposure and intoxication. Crimes of passion, debts, and minor disagreements were all made worse by madness as a result of mercury poisoning. The phrase “Mad Hatter’s disease” originated in felt production because of the mercury that the felt was treated with. After wearing the felt hats, wearers would often exhibit the symptoms of madness related to mercury toxicity. The opening vignette in Mercury, Mining, and Empire describing the madness exhibited by an elderly cleric named Juan Antonio de los Santos is indicative of someone suffering acute mercury poisoning. Father de los Santos’ rage, threats to parishioners, excess saliva, and overall insanity combined with residence in Potosí provides compelling evidence that even residents who were not actively engaged in mining operations were affected by the toxic nature of mercury and silver mining.

The late seventeenth century saw the decline of mining and refining operations and an end to the mita in Huancavelica and Potosí. As a protector of the Indians, Victorían de Villaba brought a sincere interest in protecting the Indians in his province, unlike his predecessors. A former professor of law at the University of Huesca, Villaba launched an attack on the mita upon his arrival. Echoing the black legend, Villaba challenged the fact that the mita was for the public good pointing to the enormous toll it took on the indigenous population. He countered that instead of the crown and wider society, miners and refiners received the most benefit, all at the expense of the Indians. Villaba also disputed the Aristotelian view that the natives were lazy. With a lawyer’s argumentative brilliance, Villaba pointed out that even if the Indians were lazy, that was no reason to force them into labor. In 1809, a war for independence consumed the region and interrupted the labor supply to Potosí. Productivity in Potosí suffered, and finally by 1819 the labor system that had sustained a silver empire was abolished.

Mercury, Mining, and Empire fundamentally argues that the silver mines of Latin America were an integral component in the rise of modern global capitalism. New trade routes created to import and export silver, mercury, and any other product associated with their production in Latin America set the foundation for the industrial revolution and helped to maintain a global economy for centuries. The silver mined in Latin America created the profligate spending of the Spanish Empire. This unprecedented and massive flood of New World silver sparked high inflation in the Old World during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Bough with silver refined in Potosí and mercury amalgamated in Huancavalica, African slaves could have theoretically been brought back to Huancavelica and Potosí to labor alongside Indian mitayos. Finally, mercury and silver mined from Huancavelica and Potosí elevated Spain to the status of a world power.

Although there were other mining towns in Latin America, Huancavelica and Potosí are different because of the nature and scale of the mining operations located there. The toxicity of mercury and the ever-present silica in the air were standard in the two towns. Along with the environmental and ecological toil placed on Huancavelica and Potosí and the surrounding areas, the price of Spanish imperialism was greatest on the indigenous population of Latin America. The depopulation, cultural breakdown, linguistic cessation, and the lasting effects of mercury and silver mining created a lasting disaster for Latin America.

History 5385: A Seminar on the History of Latin American Commodities

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures, by Marcy Norton

Mercury, Mining, and Empire, by Nicholas A. Robins

Banana Cultures, by John Soluri

Andean Cocaine, by Paul Gootenberg

Jungle Laboratories, by Gabriela Soto Laveaga

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures

Norton, Marcy Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.

                Marcy Norton is an established historian of Atlantic History and Spanish History in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World is the culmination of her studies and won the best book award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures seeks to clarify a history of tobacco and chocolate and reveals the repercussions the two New World commodities had in the European world. Norton discusses what it meant for Europeans to consume tobacco and chocolate when knowledge abounded that the two were enmeshed in nearly every aspect of pagan savages in the New World. Finally, Norton sheds light on how Europeans adapted tobacco and chocolate into their economy and lives. Europeans developed their own unique cultural meanings of tobacco and chocolate and would, with time, embrace the two goods.

            Norton begins by explaining the use and significance of tobacco and chocolate to the Native Americans in the New World. Aztec, Mayan, and other Mesoamerican groups were bound together in their common usage of tobacco and chocolate. Chocolate beans were used as a common form of currency throughout Central Mexico. Tobacco and chocolate were woven into rites that conveyed social differentiation based on bloodlines and battlefield skill. Also, tobacco and chocolate expressed ties that Mesoamerican peoples considered binding to divinity. In consuming tobacco and chocolate, humans could achieve corporeal states similar to those experienced by their gods. Tobacco and chocolate anchored, enriched, and defined many social and religious rituals. The two quintessentially American goods could be found involved in betrothals, homecomings, intermission after meals, as tributes to gods, childbirth, and many more Mesoamerican activities.

            The next step in the evolution of tobacco and chocolate as world commodities was the encounters Spanish conquistadors had with Mesoamericans who consumed the substances. While the initial encounters had no special significance, Norton contends that many conquistadors, such as Hernán Cortéz, wizened to the social importance placed in and around tobacco and chocolate. Another example is Galetto Cey, an Italian trader who had to rely on Native American guides who insisted on conducting a tobacco ceremony before beginning an expedition. In the context of diplomacy and need, Cortéz and Cey participated in chocolate rituals in order to get the assistance of Native Americans that was relied upon for Imperial purposes.

            Norton explains the stereotypes tobacco and chocolate would be known by, several lasting for centuries. Tobacco was associated with simple savagery and native depravity. There was a close association of tobacco and its smoke with the devil and sorcery. On the other hand, chocolate was associated with the highly evolved civilizations of Mexico. The beverage was considered a decadence. The recipes and the methods of preparation were looked at as art forms, with precise steps and ingredients. Even Spanish historian and writer Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés saw chocolate as acceptable for consumption because of its medicinal qualities.  

            The process of how tobacco and chocolate impacted and imprinted imperial Europe began as the Spanish overlaid colonial institutions onto existing social, political, and economic structures. Religious tributes involving tobacco and chocolate continued, political and ecclesiastical jurisdictions were built upon standing indigenous political units, and Catholic churches were constructed on top of demolished pagan temples. Norton asserts that tobacco and chocolate survived because the new Spanish regime was erected on top of the substratum of native society. Tobacco and chocolate became the link to past traditions and allowed their adaptation to new settings. Pre-colonial traditions could be remade to serve new rulers and new divinities.  

            Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures explains how European acculturation to native ways, especially the acquired tastes for tobacco and chocolate, led to the suffusion of tobacco and chocolate into mestizo society. Many who became aficionados of tobacco and chocolate in the New World maintained the habit when upon their return to Europe. Norton contends that very early on in Spanish Imperialization conquistadores recognized cacao as a valuable commodity. Cacao was an immediate colonial commodity because of its value as a long-distance trade good before Spanish conquest. Tobacco was not seen as a valuable colonial commodity until later.  

            Once tobacco and chocolate leapt across the Atlantic Ocean, Europeans struggled with how to reconcile the use of the two commodities. Could a European consume tobacco and chocolate without implicating themselves in native idolatry? Nicolás Monardes was the first university-trained doctor to systematically consider American materia medica. With respect to tobacco, his drawings and writings offer clear insight into the European debate over the beneficial uses of the herb, and the impressions that its use was linked to idolatry. For Monardes, tobacco used medically was properly European, and tobacco used for other purposes was not acceptably European. However, chocolate was received in Europe differently than tobacco. At times, chocolate was juxtaposed to other regional beverages and considered acceptable for consumption. Many writers attempted to excuse the use of chocolate.

            Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures documents the time period that tobacco and chocolate began to have a firm social and commercial foothold on the Iberian Peninsula. Norton argues that commodification of tobacco and chocolate was the result of the growing European demand for the goods. Tobacco entered through the wealthy and well-connected merchant class, along with the lower-class mariner community. Elite Spaniards were the earliest and most frequent buyers of chocolate. Clergy members, titled aristocrats, families of officials, and professionals all imported tobacco and chocolate. Similar to the cultural roles tobacco played in the New World, Europeans easily created social situations for people to consume tobacco. In the same way that tobacco was once sacred to the Indians, it also became sacred to Old World consumers. Sensory sensations, such as the practices, habits, and tastes of tobacco were maintained even across the Atlantic Ocean.   

            In no other place are the enduring legacies of tobacco and chocolate more pronounced than seventeenth-century art. Norton points to the Barcelona tile painting as evidence of the powerful rite of sociability surrounding the manufacture of chocolate and its consumption. In the painting, chocolate conveys sumptuous refinement and the nobility and high status of chocolate consumers. Also conveyed in the painting, chocolate portrays intimacy of an erotic nature. David Teniers the Younger’s painting, Peasants Smoking in an Inn (1640), illustrates the shared change in mood and consciousness that unifies the smokers depicted. An onlooker is seen on the periphery eagerly looking on to joining the other smokers’ altered states.   

            Tobacco and chocolate soon became fundamental staples of the Atlantic trade network. Spanish royal officials worked to monopolize tobacco, which mandated the procurement, processing, and sale of tobacco to be the exclusive right of the Spanish government. Through the use of leases within the royal tobacco monopoly, the commodities brought in substantial revenues and increased the importance and power of the Spanish state. Spain used its new trade leverage to expand its domain domestically. Norton argues that the fiscalization of tobacco and chocolate affected their cultural meanings. Instead of the medicine Monardes had envisioned, tobacco and chocolate became the first mass luxuries.

            Finally, Catholic Spain had to contend with the problems of tobacco and chocolate consumption during Catholic rituals. Would tobacco consumption interfere with communion? If used by holy people or in holy places, would chocolate be considered sacrilege? Through the Catholic Church’s reform program, tobacco was made to be seen as the same as all sins, no better and no worse. This validated the sacrament and reduced the threat of tobacco. Next, Catholics considered chocolate and its potential to violate an ecclesiastical fast. This particular issue was heavily debated among Spaniards of many professions. With no papal bull to direct Catholics, the pope laughed chocolate off as a strange Indian drink.

            Eventually, smoking tobacco became the dominant form of ingestion. Norton argues that tobacco smoking led to opium smoking. While Europeans connoted smoking tobacco with diabolically inspired idolators, Asian countries eschewed a friendliness towards smoking. Norton is also quick to point out that the social rites surrounding chocolate drinking inspired the use of tea and coffee. Mesoamerican tobacco and chocolate consumers would not recognize the world commodities that today we know as cigarettes and Hershey’s kisses.