ANT4930: Food and Gastronomy in Latin America Beverages of Latin America

[00:00:05.53] Beverages of Latin America for the court's food and gastronomy in Latin America. There have been many major contributions to beverages worldwide that have come from Latin America. Including one of the world's most widely consumed beverages Coca-Cola, the story is quite interesting.

[00:00:23.86] There was a pharmacist in Atlanta by the name of John Pemberton who heard about Coca wine being made in France. Of course, in France, they were getting the Coca leaves from the hyaline Andes where the plant is native. So he got some Coca wine and instead took the alcohol out of it but left the cocaine in and began marketing the syrup. The syrup was Coca-Cola syrup and with the addition of carbonated water people could make the beverage Coca-Cola.

[00:00:51.16] In 1983 the cocaine was removed from the beverage but the leaves were left in it as a flavoring agent, and to this day lives are still imported and make up part of the secret formula or so- called secret formula for Coca-Cola as a flavoring agent. Meanwhile tea from coca leaves has a really long history of consumption in its native habitat in the Andes. Long before European arrival, indigenous peoples there were drinking Coca tea.

[00:01:17.38] It's very beneficial for adjusting to the high elevations and it's quite common to find it in markets in the Andes today. The impact of Coca-Cola on Latin America has been pretty widespread. It's available everywhere, even in the most remote corners and it's been in many areas detrimental to local health and its impact on nutrition and diet. There's a term called coca colonization, this is a term coined to signify the imposition of American culture on other nations around the world.

[00:01:45.26] It ends up that the per capita consumption of Coca-Cola in Mexico, for example, is the highest in the world and it's increased consistently over the last 20 years throughout Latin America. In Guatemala consumption rates are around 268 ounce servings per capita a year, it's also 20% increase since 2003. There's an interesting study done in Chiapas, Mexico, found that Mayan households that had more income were more likely to have malnourished children. And end up the reason for this was due to the ready availability of junk food and Coca-Cola. While the poorer families that couldn't afford Coca- Cola were still relying on the traditional diet and up being healthier.

[00:02:24.99] Many of the beverages consumed in Latin America today have ancient roots in the numerous pre-Colombian civilizations. And the drinks are based on a number of native plants. And this illustration, these are some plants that are added to chocolate today called cacao. And notice one of these actually isn't from Latin America, it's been introduced there cinnamon, introduced by Europeans. But some of these other plants like vanilla, achiote, sopot, and chili peppers are from Latin America, and long flavored drinks there especially cacao.

[00:03:00.76] Fermented beverages show up everywhere in the world pretty much, in Latin America is no exception. In fact, fermentation, appears to be quite common in Latin America pre-conquest. And there was a number of different fruits and plant products that served as the base material to provide sugars that were then convert it ethanol usually with wild yeasts that are found on the fruit or plants themselves. [00:03:24.54] It's generally understood that Europeans introduced distillation. Or at least after European arrival distillation of fermented beverages became widespread throughout the region. However, some archeologists suggested maybe distillation occurred prior to conquest of Europeans. There's been some experiments done using different types of vessels that have been found in archeological sites. And so it's possible that there was some form of distillation of fermented spirits.

[00:03:52.73] However, if it did occur, they were generally used likely to produce a prestige product for ceremonial purposes with high social and cultural relevance. Of all the beverages that originate in Latin America, it's chocolate or cacao it's arguably the most significant. In precolonial times cacao is primarily used by the elite, and prepared as a beverage and was served as the last course of a meal. The beans were prepared by letting them ferment for a period of time and then cured, roasted, and ground on a powder and then added to hot water and froth. And the froth, that was a really important part of it.

[00:04:27.40] We know that the Aztecs, for example, would create a foamy head by using a spoon or special utensil. And in the Mayan iconography we see that they would pour from one vessel to another in order to create this foam. Once the cacao was prepared that way, it was common that additional flavors were added. Syrup from honey or maguey was added, mezda might have been added to thicken the drink, and different herbs and spices as well.

[00:04:54.98] Vanilla as I mentioned, was quite common as well as achiote. Although achiote was really there to provide the color, this deep red color rather than the flavor.

[00:05:06.30] Certain flowers were used as well, and each flower provided a very different taste. Generally the only people they can drink alcohol these times were the elite, and even then, only the males. After European arrival and chocolate was then brought back to the old world, the beverage changed, milk and sugar arrived and it became transformed more and more. The sugar making it less bitter, and now it's being served hot as well. That's really what we know is what we call hot chocolate today. They became very important in Europe and ultimately the rest of the world.

[00:05:44.67] Balche is a really interesting drink that comes from the Mayans, and still drink today in the Maya region. Comes from a plant known as Lonchocarpus violaceus the tree in the legume family. And the name of course is mine, but in Spanish it's known as pitaría. It's fermented and used in a lot of different ritual context. Sometimes honey's added to it to sweeten it, then it's covered with palm leaves and left to ferment and generally takes about a day or so.

[00:06:18.78] It was a ceremonial drink that was considered a food of the gods, and it showed up at a lot of different festivities. Depending on the type of plant other plants that were added it would change the effect of it, and it's still drunk today as I mentioned. And it may be that some of the additions to Balche made it psychoactive.

[00:06:40.24] Research by Jonathan Ott suggested that pre-Colombian Yucatec Maya were intentionally producing a psychoactive honey from a plant known as Turbin a corymbosa into the Balche. He also suggested that the Mayans would follow the bees around and when they found plants that were psychoactive from the honey they would then know where they existed.

[00:07:03.38] Atole from Mexico, is a hearty beverage that can almost be considered a meal. It's based on maize or corn. It's prepared by taking cooked corn grounded it up and then diluting it in water. It's then heated usually over fire and stirred continuously until the mixture becomes cooked and thickens up. At that point it's called white atole, And it may be served just in that form, but it's oftentimes uses the base to make other atoles by adding additional ingredient, fruits for example, such as pineapple or guava or different spices. And it's very popular throughout Mexico, and each region of Mexico might have its own particular style of atole.

[00:07:45.96] Sometimes it served sweetened with different sugars or honey perhaps, but then they're also sour atoles, salty atoles, and even spicy atoles. It really does serve as a meal for some people, especially during the day. In addition to being an important food, it's also sometimes considered to be medicinal or used for ceremonial ritual purposes as well.

[00:08:09.06] Pozol is another corn based beverage from the Nahuatl Pozolii word. It's usually found in southern Mexico in the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Yucatan. In this case though it's made with corn that's gone through the nixtamalization process then recooked and ground up. And other ingredients are sometimes added as well. At that point if you have a paste, and these balls are formed that are then put into water.

[00:08:38.88] Traditionally wasn't sweetened, but today sometimes sugar or even salt is added to it. There's also a pozol con cacao where chocolate's added to it. Sometimes ground beans are put into it. There's also sour pozol fermented in Leaves of a banana like a plant called guan which only shows up in that area.

[00:09:02.55] Chicha is a broad category of fermented beverages that show up throughout Latin America. And it's a little unclear where the term first developed. There's some evidence that it comes from Mexico, the name at least. There's some evidence that it comes from South America and Peru. In any case, it's common to find chicha in all sorts of countries. And depending on the country I mean, there may be more popular types of plants to use than others.

[00:09:26.91] I mentioned in an earlier lecture about manioc chicha, there's corn chicha. And in fact, chicha morada that's found in Peru is really considered to be the national drink and almost represents Peruvian cuisine. And this is a type of chicha that's made from the purple corn.

[00:09:44.44] There are a number of beverages both fermented and distilled, they come from a category of plants known as agave. In Spanish, is agave are known as maguey. The original Nahuatl name was metl. In any case, there's over 200 species of agaves, more than half were found only in Mexico. They live for around five to 70 or 80 years depending on the species, and they bloom only once and then die off.

[00:10:17.03] In addition to beverages, a well-known agave is used to make hanigan fiber, sisal. Let's start with pulque. Pulque comes from the Nahuatl poliqui, which means to corrupt oneself or destroy oneself. It's a fermented drink that comes from baking the meat that comes from agaves, generally between 7% to 15% alcohol. There's a very strong ritual aspect to pulque as might be expected based on its pre-Hispanic origin.

[00:10:50.07] In fact, the Spanish prohibited it for many centuries after they arrived, and it wasn't until later on they realized that were quite valuable for taxes. And at one point a large amount of money came to the Mexican government due to taxes on pulque. Today it's still drunk, and there's a number of places in Mexico City especially that still primarily serve that as their beverage.

[00:11:15.35] Next is mezcal. One way to think about mezcal is that it's pulque that's been distilled, there are many types of species, of agave species that are used to make mezcal. It's created by taking the pina or heart of the maguey roasting it which allows some of the starches to be converted sugars, and then the juice is extracted, fermented, and then distilled. Mezcal is found in many different states throughout Mexico, but Oaxaca is one of the most notable.

[00:11:51.68] Generally mezcal is there because of the processing method-- have a very smoky flavor to them. And that's the result of taking the pinas and cooking them in these earth ovens. There also wild agaves that are made in mezcal as well. A very unique type of mezcal, is mezcal de pechuga. Pechuga meaning breast in Spanish. And this is mezcal that has the addition of another distillation, a third distillation where chicken breast or turkey breast, and more recently even more exotic types of meats are allowed to cook over top of the fermented and distilled spirit.

[00:12:29.75] They're generally associated with a special event, a celebration, a holiday. And as mezcals become more and more popular in the United States, distilleries have started to release more and more types of mezcal de pechuga adding ingredients, including Texas brisket, prickly pear cactus, fig, mango, and a wide variety of other types of additions.

[00:12:56.36] Tequila is probably the most famous agave-based beverage. Tequila is actually just another type of mezcal. However, it's a mezcal that comes from a very particular variety of agave, the blue agave that's grown in the state of Jalisco. There's a lot of regulations and laws related to tequila because it's so important as a beverage, and an important industry. It's required that tequila be made from 100% agave in order to put that label it as such. However, some tequila that doesn't say 100% agave can have additional sugars up to 49%.

[00:13:37.91] Some lesser known agave-based beverages are Raicilla. There hasn't been much production of this until recently, even though it's been made for a very long time hundreds of years. But it was only in the last 10 or 15 years that there's been commercial production. Again it's a type of mezcal that comes from Jalisco. But the processing technique is a little bit different than with tequila. These are pit roasted pina's, and it generally has a type of smokiness to it that's different than tequila and also different than mezcal.

[00:14:09.16] There's two main types of-- there's coastal Raicilla and mountainous Raicilla. Sotols and even more in common beverage, and technically it's not agave but it's from an a closely related species and genus known as Dasylirion. As you can see here, it's similar in appearance to the maguey and agave but the leaves are thinner, flattener, and narrower. It's produced in a similar way to mezcal and ends up having a similar taste as well.

[00:14:40.54] There's other species as well that are used for their 16 wild species in total.

[00:14:47.14] Moving to the Caribbean now, specifically to Haiti, is it type of rhum known as clairin. Rhum is commonly associated with the Caribbean, but what's not commonly known is that between 500 and 600 distilleries in Haiti, while in the rest of the entire Caribbean there's fewer than 50, these are very, very small scale types of production. And unlike most industrial rhum that's made from a molasses, clarins are actually made from pure sugarcane juice. It's very much considered a rhum of the people and it's closely linked to different rituals and religious ceremonies.

[00:15:29.19] There's a long history of making this from, and each distillery has a very distinct flavor and taste to it.

[00:15:38.56] The cashew Anacardium accidentale. The cashew growers in Central America and in Belize, and some of the Caribbean countries a wine is made from the fruit, not the nut, but rather the fruit. There's very limited production of this, and it hasn't entered into much commercial sale because the cashew fruit doesn't last very long. And so it's very hard to manufacture in large quantities.

[00:16:06.71] There's also a number of tisanes from Latin America. You may be wondering what a tisane is. Well, there's a distinction between tea and tisane. In common usage tea is used to mean any type of beverage. But in actuality tea is only a beverage that's made from one plant, Camellia sinensis. On the other hand, tisanes can come from any type of plant when they're made into hot water and infused.

[00:16:35.95] And in fact there's thousands of tisanes that are found throughout Latin America. Go to most any market and you'll find bags such as these. A lot of these tisanes are medicinal, but some of them are also primarily used as beverages. One of the most significant is yerba mate, plant known as Ilex paraguaeriensisa Francis. This is a type of holly that's native to South America. This was commonly used by the indigenous peoples in the region of our present day Paraguay, and Argentina, and Southern Brazil, and Uruguay. And the Guarani and Tupi communities there were cultivating it, and using it long before the arrival Europeans.

[00:17:17.43] It prepared much in the same way as tea, and then it's known as mate. It's known as sources of cold. The beverage also similar to tea, has a lot of methylxanthine alkaloids in it such as caffeine. And today, mate is drunk in many other places throughout the world.

[00:17:38.16] The last beverage I'd like to discuss is quina that comes from the Cinchona tree. Now there's a story that this beverage was discovered in 1631 when the Countess of Cinchona was a Spanish noblewoman, fell ill with malaria and a Jesuit priest made it a concoction from the bark of this tree and she was cured, and that's where it received its name from.

[00:18:02.66] However, long before the Jesuits arrived the indigenous peoples in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador we're using this to treat fever. When it became known that it was quite effective against malaria, there was widespread demand for it and the tree was almost eradicated as a result. Europeans took the tree and introduced it into other parts of the old world and in Asia. And the beverage it's produced from the bark, from the powder, and then put into water to make a beverage is incredibly bitter. And so British colonialists started adding sugar to it and tonic water was born as a result.

[00:18:44.73] And today there's a number of beverages such as Campari or Pimms that contain quinine from the cinchona bark. So it's still uses a flavoring agent, even though it's used to treat malaria-- has become greatly reduced due to the development of other compounds in drugs.

[00:19:03.81] These are the sources for some of the images you / Thanks for watching.