“Serpentes parvulæ fallunt nec publice conquiruntur; ubi aliqua solitam mensuram transit et in monstrum excrevit, ubi fontes sputu inficit et, si adflavit, deurit obteritque, quacumque incessit, ballistis petitur. Possunt verba dare et evadere pusilla mala, ingentibus obviam itur.”
Lucius Annæi Senecæ «De Clementia» I.XXV.IV. Ancient Rome, 55-56.
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This century has revealed that cacao consumption dates back 5,500 years to the Mayo Chinchipe Marañón culture, linking ancient cacao to the Fine Aroma variety, prized in today’s premium chocolate production, from the Amazon region now known as southern Ecuador. Cacao usage, spanning millennia, migrated to Mesoamerica. The Olmecs are believed to have concocted beverages from ground cacao, water, spices, berries, and herbs. This legacy persisted among the Mayan people and Aztecs, who infused cacao into potions, medicines, and sacred rites, ascribing to it divine essence and provenance. Something later preserved in the scientific nomenclature of the tree, Theobroma cacao (Linnæus, 1753). In Náhuatl, it was called cacahuacuahuitl, and its fruit simply cacahuatl, giving rise to the term cacao.
Chocolate, on the other hand, stems from the Náhuatl term xocoātl, blending ātl for water and xoco for sour. Spanish conquerors first encountered cacahuatl on Isla Guanaja during Columbus’s fourth voyage in 1502, shortly after Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel authorized Nicolás de Ovando to import slaves of African descent to Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), marking the first official instance toward the institutionalization of transatlantic slave trade in the ‘New World.’ It was later, during Hernán Cortés’ time, that cacao’s significance was understood, and that preparation methods for chocolate were introduced to Spain, possibly at the Monasterio de Piedra in 1534, although the specifics of this introduction are debated.
For the conquest of Mexico, very few African slaves participated due to their elevated cost, but it is known that in some other expeditions, they even outnumbered Spaniards. In this process, they could earn their freedom and, in some instances, land as a reward for their contributions. One notable example is Juan Valiente, who arrived in Mexico in 1505, and after convincing his owner to allow him to join various expeditions in 1533, he participated in the conquest of Chile, where he obtained lands in Santiago and an encomienda (an abusive system by the Spanish crown for granting rights to exploit by demanding labor or tribute from indigenous peoples).
The rapid depopulation of indigenous peoples due to their conquest, coupled with the Spanish Empire’s increasing demand for labor to meet the growing economic ambitions in agriculture and mining, accelerated the importation of African slaves to sustain key industries, including cacao production. As an example, by 1530, approximately 87% of Puerto Rico’s 2,619 inhabitants were slaves. Cacao seeds, esteemed by Mayan and Aztec societies within the echelons of nobility, warriors, and merchants, served both as a prevalent currency and a prime example of early payment methods. Yet, counterfeit cacao seeds as currency also emerged. Despite this, their substitution by metal coins spanned centuries, with cacao seeds enduring as currency through the colonial era and into the early 20th century in south-eastern Mexico, with varying practices regarding their decline.
Anything was purchased with cacao: attire, provisions, slaves, and even gold, a material adeptly refined. Before European arrival, gold had already been adopted for transactions. The self-sufficient Chibcha civilization, masters in gold-working had a measurement system that exceeded Spanish precision. But regardless of its amazing form or function, gold was looted and exchanged for colourful trinkets and beads, to be basically melted down into bars or ingots.
In 1535, the Spanish crown established the first mint in their Kingdom of the Indies, allocating 90% of its production for export. But cacao seeds persisted in circulation. A hare was priced at 10 cacao seeds, a slave at around 4,000 cacao seeds (often prisoners of war, debtors, or criminals), and 200 cacao seeds equated to 1 silver real—a metallic coin that devalued over time, plummeting to 15 cacao seeds per unit by 1720.
The New Laws of 1542 forbade the enslavement of indigenous people in New Spain, declaring them vassals of the King, although enforcement was often inconsistent. Concurrently, the Crown issued two copper coins for lesser exchanges, yet these were promptly withdrawn from circulation due to the populace’s refusal, despite the threat of fines, lashes, and compulsory labour.
Towards the end of the 16th century, the annual tribute payment in the Viceroyalty amounted to either 1,600 cacao seeds or 1 gold peso. The cost of an indigenous person for forced labour ranged between 300 and 500 cacao seeds, contingent on factors such as gender, age, health, and skills, while 8 to 10 seeds could secure a session with a prostitute. By 1600 the population of pre-Columbian descent had practically disappeared from the Caribbean. Moving southward, the encounter between the Spanish Empire and the Incas markedly diverged. Inca dominion, entrenched in disciplined collective progress, included forms of servitude but scarcely knew poverty or enslavement,. These thoroughfares facilitated governance and defense, eschewing mere mercantile aims. An expansive societal schema, comparable to communistic principles, esteemed conquest and coinage as peripheral to rule and trade. Yet, this agrarian paradigm was overturned by the mining imperatives of the Conquistadores, propelled by a religious zeal to amass untold wealth from precious metals and beyond.
In these harrowing odysseys, cacao crossed seas to the Iberian shores, where the once bitter aphrodisiac was enriched, sweetened, and rapidly adopted by the European elite. Beyond Spain, cacao’s conquest extended to France (1615) and England (1650), sweeping through the entire Slumil K’ajxemk’op [‘Rebel land’]. Yet, it met skepticism: ‘ilquale più pare beveraggio da porci, che de huomini,’ Girolamo Benzoni critiqued in Historia del Mondo Nuovo, dedicated to Pope Pius IV in 1565. Nonetheless, merely four years hence, Pius V sanctified its consumption as not violating the fast. The surge in European consumption necessitated increased production, leading to the enslavement of Africans for the cultivation of cacao and other crops in the Americas, such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton, earmarked for Europe. In fact, as early as 1619, the Dutch ship White Lion, carrying approximately 20 African slaves, arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, marking the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade’s expansion into North America. During this epoch, each Spanish settler could employ two to four indigenous individuals, compensating them with approximately 100 cacao seeds for a day’s toil from dawn till dusk.
In 1663, Maryland passed legislation that established the legal basis for slavery, differentiating between enslaved individuals and indentured servants, thus laying the foundation for systemic racial slavery.
The Sveriges Riksbank, established in 1668 as the world’s first central bank, preceded chocolate’s arrival in Scandinavia by about two decades. By that time Louis XV sought to regulate both wholesale and retail chocolate sales in France, while in 1711 a Swedish abundance ordinance stipulated: ‘Den som brukar Thé, Caffé och Chocolade hemma i sitt Hus, betalar Två Daler Silfvermynt utan åtskillnad.’
The “Asiento de Negros” agreement between Spain and England in 1713 allowed the importation of African slaves into Spanish territories for 30 years. This legal framework for the transatlantic slave trade encouraged increased participation from all European powers. This is the case of Denmark-Norway, which was already partaking in a triangular trade that involved exchanging European goods for African slaves from the Gold Coast (now Ghana), who were then transported to Caribbean colonies to work on plantations producing sugar and other goods shipped to Europe.
Spain monopolized cacao until 1728, relinquishing control of its trade to the Netherlands. In the ensuing years, the first chocolate production machines were set in motion in France (1756) and Barcelona (1780). In France chewable chocolate in the shape of coins was designed to make bitter medicines more palatable for Marie-Antoinette (Debauve, 1779). These ‘utile dulci’ chocolates were termed ‘pistoles,’ a French word for Spanish gold coins. The ensuing decade marked the peak of the transatlantic slave trade. By the late 18th century, European-style chocolate had made its way to North America, coinciding with revolutionary France’s efforts to abolish slavery in its Caribbean colonies, formalized on February 4, 1794. In 1801, Toussaint Louverture occupied Santo Domingo and proclaimed freedom for the enslaved. Denmark-Norway became one of the first participants in the transatlantic slave trade to prohibit the practice in 1803, having traded over 100,000 individuals. Haiti declared its independence in 1804 after more than a decade of slave rebellions. In 1807, the British Parliament enacted the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, while the United States prohibited the importation of slaves in 1808.
In 1810, Miguel Hidalgo called for the abolition of slavery in Mexico during his push for independence, and between 1811 and 1814, the insurgent general José María Morelos minted the first truly Mexican coin. His decree expunged emblems of the Spanish monarchy, heralding ‘una flecha con un letrero al pie que señala el viento donde corresponde, que es del sur.’ This act marked the advent of the inaugural fiat currency, pledging redemption upon the revolution’s triumph. Though Mexico secured independence in 1821, the anticipated redemption remained unrealized.
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On February 8, 1815, Austria, France, Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Spain, and Sweden-Norway signed a declaration at the Congress of Vienna, committing to abolish the transatlantic slave trade while allowing each nation to determine its own timeline for abolition. The following year, Simón Bolívar decreed the abolition of slavery. As liberal and abolitionist movements gained momentum in the Americas, Portuguese colonizers shifted cacao cultivation to their African colonies, continuing the exploitation of slave labor for production.
The Industrial Revolution further fueled the thirst for growth. In Amsterdam, a machine separated cacao butter from powder (Van Houten, 1828), facilitating its dissolution in hot liquids—such as milk, a long-standing British preference. The first blending of chocolate with hazelnuts was introduced in Switzerland (Kohler, 1830), and England saw the debut of the first chocolate bar for sale (Fry & Son, 1847). Concurrently, in France, soluble cacao powder was commercially introduced for both adults and children (Poulain, 1848). The last documented shipment of slaves arrived in the Empire of Brazil in 1858. A few years later, the United States abolished slavery by amending its constitution (13th Amendment, 1865). Two years after that, the final shipment of slaves arrived in Cuba. In the same year, the invention of milk powder in Vevey marked the beginning of Swiss milk chocolate (Nestlé, 1867), paving the way for chocolate that melted easily in the mouth shortly thereafter (Lindt, 1879).
Spain decreed the abolition of slavery in Cuba in 1886, nearly two decades after revolutionary forces had already proclaimed its end on the island (though a system of patronage persisted until 1894). In 1888, slavery was officially abolished in Brazil, with the with the signing of the Lei Áurea (Golden Law) making it the last country in the Americas to end the practice.
In the Roaring Twenties, confectionery firms in the eastern United States innovated by introducing chocolate disks wrapped in gold foil as part of the Jewish custom of presenting coins to children during the Festival of Lights. This practice echoed traditions already established in Belgium and the Netherlands in conjunction with Saint Nicholas. Over time, these sweet images of money became enduring symbols of both Hanukkah and Christmas celebrations.
During World War II, German saboteurs devised a chocolate bar with a concealed steel bomb set to detonate moments after being cut. Additionally, in Germany, Nestlé‘s subsidiary Maggi utilized thousands of prisoners of war and Jewish forced labourers. By 1947 next to the square Albert Premier in Brussels made a machine an engineer began the tradition of embossed chocolate coins; and in 1970 Cadbury began producing chocolate coins to mark decimalization in 1971.
Since the middle of the XX century, plant breeding was acknowledged for enhancing cacao production. Since then, both stock and consumption have steadily increased, a trend mirrored by anthropogenic global warming. Nevertheless, headlines proclaiming ‘Chocolate is on track to go extinct in 40 years’ sporadically emerge, yet it’s likely the small-scale cacao farmers who will perish first.
At the onset of this century, the Save the Children Fund disclosed to the BBC that children in Mali were trafficked to labour forcibly on cacao farms for €30. This revelation spurred unforeseen scientific inquiries into the health benefits of chocolate. Concurrently, it prompted the establishment of the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a collaborative endeavour to eradicate the worst forms of child labour and trafficking within cocoa supply chains by 2005. However, a few years past this target, subsequent findings indicated that the cost for children trafficked from Burkina Faso to the Ivory Coast rose to €230, equivalent to about two sacks of cacao at international prices during that period. Morbidly, in Ivory Coast, an undercover investigation revealed that a typical plot allotted to a diligent farmer—as their sole recompense after years of slave work from childhood into adulthood—yields a meager average of just 2 cacao sacks per season. [ca.130kg]
In 2019, a trafficker, known as a ‘locateur,’ was captured on film confirming that a payment of €300 was considered acceptable, remarking that “not all have the same price, like lambs.” The following year, a study conducted by the NORC social research group at the University of Chicago revealed that in the 2018-19 period, approximately 1,560,000 children, aged 5-17, were engaged in cocoa production in the agricultural households of cocoa-growing regions in Ivory Coast and Ghana. This report highlighted that 95% of these children were subjected to at least one hazardous aspect of child labour, including land clearing, heavy lifting, use of agrochemicals, handling sharp tools, extensive working hours, and night shifts. In 2021, eight children from Mali, former slaves on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast who successfully escaped, launched legal actions in the United States against major chocolate companies (Nestlé, Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Mars, Mondelēz, Hershey, and Olam Americas), accusing them of aiding and abetting slavery on cocoa farms. Although the judges acknowledged the case’s validity, they dismissed it due to its occurrence outside the United States.
A TV feature in April 2022 showcased a producer whose farm yielded approximately 30 sacks of seeds a year (ca. two tons), earning him €2,800, including responsible premiums from major chocolate corporations at €1 per sack. Of this total, a substantial portion covered pesticides, transport, materials, and taxes, leaving less than a third for all employees. In those days, the international ICCO price for a ton of cacao was €2,242. However, cacao farms are often smaller than in this case. Another farmer mentioned producing six to eight sacks annually, thus having to involve his young children in the process, with total earnings of around €400.
Meanwhile, the giant family-owned company Mars initiated corporate responsibility pilot programs aimed at supporting a group of small holder farmers ‘on a path to a sustainable living income in the next 8 years’—from €1 to €2.5 daily. Although their effectiveness has been questioned. In September 2022, the World Bank set the poverty line at €2.15 daily.
The Brattle Report on Reparations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean of June 2023 quantified financial reparations [in trillion USD] for each enslaving country: USA 26.790, Britain 24.011, Portugal 20.582, Spain 17.107, France 9.288, The Netherlands 4.886, Brazil 4,434, Denmark 681, Argentina 58, Sweden 12.
Cacao ranks as the eighth illicit financial flow in Africa, underscoring significant economic challenges in the sector with farmers receiving less than 70% of its international value. Additionally, cacao prices have exhibited extreme volatility, significantly impacting farmers and market dynamics..
Today, over 90% of the world’s cocoa stems from plots under three hectares, with Ivory Coast alone hosting 1.2 million such smallholdings, yielding nearly half the global output.
In contrast, just three firms dominate 65% of the grinding sector’s capacity. Within the chocolate trade, the also few leading multinationals, controlling the majority of the lucrative multi-million market, have admitted the presence of child labour in their supply chains, engaging in the worst forms of exploitation. Despite profiting from these practices, they’ve ‘pledged’ to cut reliance on child labor by 70% by 2025.
On October 18, 2024, the Monetary Council of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank reaffirmed its decision from the previous year to replace the image of the late Queen Elizabeth on its currency, announcing that “ten prominent regional figures will be featured on the redesigned banknotes.” A week later, at CHOGM’24 in Samoa, Charles III—King of the UK and other Commonwealth realms—told the leaders of the 56 member countries, “None of us can change the past, but we can commit with all our hearts to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to right inequalities that endure.” The summit concluded with a statement in which the heads of state agreed that “the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity.” They also committed to actively fostering “inclusive conversations about these harms, paying special attention to women and girls, who have suffered disproportionately from these appalling tragedies in history.” At a subsequent press conference, British Prime Minister Starmer emphasized his “forward look and not on the backwards look,” asserting, “In the two days we’ve been here, none of the discussions have been about money. (…) Our position is very, very clear in relation to that.”
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antipodes café
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COMMENTS | DETAIL |
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i. Moneda de Cambio | 4000 cacao seeds (glued to the wall) |
ii. Moneda de Cambio | 2 cacao sacks (mound OR hanged) |
iii. 2 Marcos Alemanes | Diptych: 2 frames, each with 2 chocolate coins (both sides)—1 Deutsche Mark and 0.50 German Euro. |
iv. Hobby of Kings | Chocolate coin collection (+500 pieces) |
v. Dĕūro | Chocolate coins minted in Madrid |
vi. Cambio | Exchange booth (1 Euro ≙ 1 Dĕūro) |
vii. Cambio | Exchange machine (1 Euro ≙ 1 Dĕūro) |
DISPLAY | … |
Logroño City Hall | i,ii,iv,v,vi (2022.11) |
Obrador, Montevideo | i,ii,iii,v (2023.01) |
Illegal Tender (comments -PDF)
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