Like Water for Chocolate: Feasting and Political Ritual among the Late Classic Mays at Xunantunich, Belize
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Proquest Review
November 29, 2013
Sarah pagano
Chicano Studies 141A Fall 2013
November 29, 2013
Sarah pagano
Chicano Studies 141A Fall 2013

Like water for Chocolate: Feasting and Political Ritual among the Late Classic Maya at Xunantunich, Belize falseLeCount, Lisa J. American Anthropologist103.4 (Dec 2001): 935-953.

In the article “Like Water for Chocolate: Feasting and Political Ritual among the Maya at Xunantunich, Belize, author LeCount documents the various reasons behind the feasting traditions of the Maya and how these are linked to the political rituals and power of the Mayan people. LeCount uses the discovery of the pottery vessels and their uses in the feasts. LeCount also shows the importance of the types of food and drink served and the significant meaning behind these foods such as tamales and chocolate. LeCount references articles by several authors to compile her data and come to her conclusion about the importance of the meaning behind the food, pottery and different types of feasts whether they are for political, religious or social reasons. Archeologists have discovered that the Mayans have symbolic uses for their serving paraphernalia and the foods that are served in them. The Maya have elite and commoner living in Xunantunich, Belize. The architecture is the easiest way to determine the status of the Maya. The location and the sizes help us to know the social status of a community. El Castillo is a settlement and it was a primary site for rituals. This was a multi-level complex that was centered in the community. It is surrounded by other smaller settlements and it is within these settlements that the archaeologists uncovered the meanings of the pottery and were able to determine that there were various festivals held by the Mayans.
Some festivals were religious events, where offerings of food were given to the gods, some were social events that only included people in the elite social and economic circle of the wealthy, and then there were the individual community type that were held for events like weddings or community celebrations such as day of the dead or Saints day. The meanings behind these feasts could be anywhere from a celebration, to show the wealth of a family in the community so that would continue to hold high social standing. They would also hold feasts of inclusion, where food was exchanged and given to incur indebtedness, these were very similar to everyday meals where food that was consumed was that of daily meals (LeCount 2001:935).
The Maya had different patterns for holding feasts; social and political feast held different arrangements of attendants, food and beverages as well as the containers they were served in as well as religious rituals. These feasts differed from the daily meals that the Maya would partake. The food items would vary between the late and modern era of the Maya. The Maya had specialized food items, vessels for serving as well as locations to differentiate the type of feasting that was to take place. However, even though the food items have evolved, the tradition behind the feasts have remained the same. One example is a feast for rain, this is a three day event. The setup is in a public plaza. The first day the men gather and create the altar, on the second day the food is brought out to the altar to be left for the gods. This is done on time intervals throughout the day. After each meal offering the men take part in a drink. “This is done in complete silence so as not to interrupt the feasting of the gods” (Redfield and Rojas 1934:142). At the end of the feast by the gods, the people that participated than eat the food and drink the beverages. Another type of feast is for celebration, such as for weddings, or community celebrations like days of the dead. In these feasts, the families host these festivals. The men organize these feast but the women prepare all of the food and drink. The families want to host the best possible feast because it shows that they have great prosperity. The community festivals are more elaborate in that they have larger amounts of people involved. At the end of such festivals such as saints’ day, the feast is still prepared by the women and organized by the men, however they end with grand events; bullfights, markets fireworks and heavy drinking and eating (Bunzel 1959:192; Redfield and Rojas 1934:153-154; Wisdom 1940:433-436). The act of feasting is only part of the importance of these rituals. The food items themselves help to determine the type of feast. There are two types, large or small scale as well as private or public, as previously discussed. For the larger, public feasts, special food items such as maize-based foods and meat are consumed. Tamales, tortillas boiled chicken, chocolate and rum are a few of the festival foods. These items were not offered for the gods, only consumed by the festival participants. These would be served as part of an exclusionary feast where the host would be trying to establish the social standing within the community and keep the following of the people in that community. Foods that are placed on an altar are made up of zaca, which is ground corn. There is a type of chicken soup called kol, it contains corn meal to thicken and is then baked, so to speak (Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934:37-41). These food were considered to be pure and help to bring rain from the gods. In the article by LeCount, Bishop Diego de Landa touches on the small-scale family rites feasts. Families would celebrate life passages and personal health. However, the larger rites where food was offered for the gods, the altars were setup as temporary to hold the offerings and at the end of these events the food was eaten by all the participants. The annual ceremonies that were held in order to have a prosperous year, ended with communal festivals. Whereas the larger ceremonies that were held for the end of the year or political events were celebrated by many days of feasting and they were attended by lords and priests from different villages, and there was dancing, sacrifices and other ceremonies (LeCount 2001:944). Just as the Mayas had different types of foods and beverages depending on the type of feast, they also used different types of pottery to serve these items dependent on the formality of the feast. Because of the preparation for the festival foods that involved soaking or boiling the food, they used large open mouth jars for these items. They had certain styles of plates for ritual foods, they had Hieroglyphic texts along the rim or an elaborate name tag that would include the name of the vessel, the contents and social status of the owner of the dish (Houston et al. 1989: Rents-Budet 1994; Taube 1989). The vessels were then also broken up into categories; plates, dishes, bowls, vases and jars. This was based on a ratio of the height to maximum diameter. These variations helped to distinguish the elite and commoner, it was found that the elite had many small bowls that they would use for both daily as well as sacred rituals whereas the commoner had very few small bowls (LeCount 2001:946). The elite were discovered to have vases that were used for drinking chocolate, and platters for serving of tamales. All though the percentages over the different groups from El Castillo to the Mound Clusters indicate that it was customary to partake in drinking chocolate and eating tamales, this was more commonly associated with elite events (LeCount 2001:947). This information has been established by the types of formal or non-formal pottery uncovered in these groups by the discovery in the different settlements. The types of vessels can help determine the status of a group as well as the type of foods, or type of ritual that one group participated in. It is difficult to know for sure if the pottery, for example, small bowls, were used by a commoner for daily use or perhaps it was an elite group that used them for sacred offerings. It is however apparent that no matter the social status, participants would consume tamales and some amount of chocolate.
Chocolate is of a higher value to the Mayan people even more so then maize, balache or chicha (beer). This is due to two reasons, one is the myth that the gods created humans from maize and chocolate found in the Mountain of Sustenance, and because of the difficulty involved in growing the Cacao trees (LeCount 2001: 948). Because of these two reasons the Maya drank the chocolate as a symbolic gesture that was for religious, economic and political meaning.
LeCount reviewed these articles in order to prove that there was meaning behind the types of pottery vessels, the types of food and their ingredients. There was more to the findings of platters, vases and bowls. These items helped to prove that there were in fact different social classes, different types of festivals, gatherings and their significances in these different economic and social classes.
After reading the article by LeCount, I found it interesting that the discovery of the hierarchy of the Mayans could be differentiated by the containers and types of food prepared. It made me think of the way food has always been the integral part of any gathering, whether it be for a religious or social gathering. For the Mayas, the food was offered to the gods to feed them in order for them to give back to the people, rain for example. In other religions such as Catholic or Christian, the members of the church partake in communion where bread or crackers are representative of the body of Christ, and drink wine or juice to represent the blood of Christ. In our society today, with so many diverse cultures, it is easy to see traditions that have been passed down. For instance, we have a grand feast for Thanksgiving. Our tradition of having turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing etc. It is taken for granted that today we can go buy our food from the store and prepare it in our fancy kitchens with our cookware that is also purchased from the store. The serving vessels that are discussed are similar to the “fine china” that we have today. It is usually only used on special occasions and passed down to each generation. Whereas the Mayas, they made their platters, grew the ingredients to make their food and cultivated crops to have their meals.
In reading the conclusion by LeCount, it seems that in starting out her research, she felt that it would be easy to determine the reason behind the feasts for each of the different settlements and the elite or commoners. However, she found that it wasn’t as simple as deciding that because of the tableware that was found, it couldn’t easily be determined if a class was elite or common simply because of the small bowls possessed. She discovered that no matter if the people belonged to commoner or elite, they all shared the common use for the same similar items, she found that there was a love for chocolate not simply for the chocolate itself but more so because of the meaning behind it. I really enjoyed the article because it made me think of the value in having traditions and the meaning behind them. I could relate to the ritual aspect of the feasts because of the traditions in my family. We have special serving platters for our holiday meals and menus that we always prepare for these festivities. I enjoyed learning about the meaning of chocolate and how highly regarded it was by the Mayans. Something so simple for us today has such a symbolic meaning for the Mayan people.

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