Christ of the Cacao

17th Aug 2022

The Christ of the Cacao (Señor del Cacao), Mexico City Cathedral

Tucked away in a side chapel (Capilla de San José) in Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral sits a forlorn, humble statue of Christ bearing a crown of thorns, his right hand propping up his head, the left hand holding a 3-4 foot long plant stalk. The whole figure was made out of maize cane pulp, the long flowing human hair is natural, the anonymous statue has been painted and repainted - and re-clothed - several times over the centuries, and only a couple of decades ago was it removed from its glass case and made more accessible to visitors. Intriguingly, this Christ holds a branch of a cacao tree... (Written by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

If you read the description at the chapel, in Spanish, of the Señor del Cacao (see pic) you are presented with an engaging and faintly naive message - that the statue dates from the early 18th century, and that it was placed outside the cathedral entrance to encourage worshippers to donate cocoa beans - traditionally used as money in ancient Mexico - towards the cost of (re-)building the cathedral. Some locals believe it still empowers construction workers in their endeavours. To this end, the statue was brought out on in May 2021 during the Covid pandemic, placed in front of the main Altar of Kings, and called upon by workers employed to remodel the Cathedral.
But historians of chocolate have revealed an ever-so-slightly darker side...

According to the leading Mexican historian Manuel Aguilar-Moreno the statue was in fact made in the 16th century. He goes on to write:-
When the Indians went to worship in the cathedral, they left offerings of cacao beans as alms at the feet of the Christ, much as they might have once paid tribute to gods at the Templo Mayor. The true beneficiaries of these offerings would have been the priests at the cathedral. Thomas Gage, a friar who worked in both Mexico and Guatemala in the early seventeenth century, noted the wealth of many monks in Mexico and the frequency with which they consumed chocolate... He was himself the perfect example of how a religious official could grow rich by encouraging the offering of cacao and other prestige items to saints and Christ images in churches... (Gage went on to retire to Europe, taking his wealth with him in the form of jewels and precious stones - though pirates stole all from him before he even reached the shore...)

Source/reference:-
• Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel (2009): ‘The Good and Evil of Chocolate in Colonial Mexico’ in Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao edited by Cameron L. McNeil, University Press of Florida, pp. 276-7.

Photos by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore.

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