Chocolate and cacao - a cruel history

Cookbook references: Chocolate raspberry brownie; Rich chocolate cake; Hedgehog slice; Coconut raspberry slice; Chocolate peanut butter cups; Chocolate cupcakes; Double chocolate cookies; Gluten-free chocolate chip cookies; Oaty chocolate apricot cookies; Bliss balls

Most work days, I enjoy a square of dark chocolate from the bars in our team chocolate tin - a sweet treat that is delicately presented in golden foil and paper wrappers depicting colourful flowers, birds, trees, and so forth. Chocolate, however, has a long history that is much less pretty than the packaging suggests.

The Mayo-Chinchipe culture first domesticated the cacao tree over 5000 years ago, in present-day southeast Ecuador, and Maya and Aztec elites seem to have consumed cacao as a beverage. Cacao became highly important in Mesoamerican cultures, being used as a currency, in medicine, and in ritual practices. In Puerto Escondido, Mexico, traces of cacao have been found in ancient bowls and jars, indicating that cacao was consumed in Central America over 3000 years ago.

In 1519, Spanish colonists encountered chocolate while invading Mesoamerica and brought it to Europe, where it became a popular upper-class drink. Chocolate in solid form first appeared in the 19th century, when factories began to produce blocks of sweet chocolate for mass consumption.

Chocolate, however, is not merely a sweet drink or desert - it also offers a lens through which to examine colonisation, enslavement, capitalism and exploitation. African American academic Carla Martin has analysed the links between racism and chocolate and uncovered many brutal practices. In early 20th century Congo, the Belgian rulers policed African workers by cutting off their hands if they did not to meet quotas for extracting rubber. Belgian colonists collected and smoked these severed hands to preserve them for their tallies. Meanwhile, in the Belgian city of Antwerp, hand-shaped chocolates were, and still are, sold to tourists as a symbol of the city, which profited from the brutalities of colonisation.

The chocolate industry continues to involve slavery and injustice. Child labour is rife in Western African cocoa farms, which supply most of the word’s cocoa, and child exploitation and slavery has also been reported on cocoa plantations in Brazil.

As the Food Empowerment Project points out, “Over the years, the chocolate industry has become increasingly secretive, making it difficult for reporters to not only access farms where human rights violations still occur, but to then disseminate this information to the public. In 2004, the Ivorian First Lady’s entourage allegedly kidnapped and killed a journalist reporting on government corruption in its profitable cocoa industry.”

Many children begin labouring on cacao farms at a young age to help support their families, or because they have been sold to cacao traffickers or farm owners. This is hard, dangerous work. Young people are exposed to poisonous agricultural chemicals without protective clothing. They are forced to wield sharp and dangerous machetes or to carry loads as heavy as a hundred pounds in weight. Often they are denied the opportunity to attend school and many children have scars on their bodies from their work in on the cacao farms.

There are fair trade products available in Aotearoa. While these are not entirely free of exploitation (no industries are in a capitalist economy), the associated companies do incorporate some checks in their supply chains to prevent the abuse of children and the use of slave labour. Samoan cocoa products also appear to be free from child labour.
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Imaged credit: Wikipedia, Luisovalles, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matadecacao.jpg

Links and references

History of chocolate - Wikipedia
Antwerp’s Appetite for African Hands - Jenny Folsom, 2016
Slave free cocoa products in New Zealand | Just Kai
​Koko Samoa | Just Kai
Child Labor and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry - Food Empowerment Project
The Dark History Behind Chocolate | Harvard Magazine
Chocolate, Politics and Peace-Building | Latinolife
Indigenous Chocolate: Chocolata Inda
Exploring Cultural Appropriation Through A Chocolate Tasting | Chocolate Class