Two Ways of Seeing a Bean

Goal: After this lesson you can read primary sources on cacao for perspective and bias. Subject: English Language Arts | Run time: about 7 minutes

Quick recall

Last time we traced the words. Two quick checks. One: what does xocolatl mean? Bitter water (Coe & Coe, 2013). Two: where did the word cocoa come from? It is an English corruption of cacao, likely a shipping-document misspelling (Coe & Coe, 2013).

Why this matters

One bean. Two people look at it. To one, it is sacred, the stuff humanity itself is made from. To the other, it is a drink fit for pigs. Same bean, opposite stories. When two sources disagree that hard, you are not looking at confusion. You are looking at perspective, and reading both is how you see the bias in each.

The idea

Open the documents panel for this lesson. You have three primary sources, and they do not agree. First, the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation narrative (Christenson, 2007). In it, the gods try to make humanity more than once. First they try mud, and it falls apart. Then they try wood, and it has no heart. Finally they make people from corn and cacao, and that one holds (Christenson, 2007). Notice the shape of the story. Mud, then wood, then corn-and-cacao. That three-attempt structure is progressive revelation, each try getting closer to the truth, and cacao sits at the climax, woven into the very substance of the first real people (Christenson, 2007). Second, the Florentine Codex (Sahagun, 1569). This one is layered. A Spanish friar, Sahagun, interviewed Aztec informants, so indigenous voices are preserved inside a colonial book. Listen to how the cacao seller is described. The text piles up qualities, the round, the well-formed, the selected, the chosen (Sahagun, 1569). That piling-up is enumeration, accumulating detail on detail, and the matched phrasing is parallelism. The technique itself tells you these were a people who saw the bean closely enough to grade it, to know the good from the fraud (Sahagun, 1569). Third, Cortes, in his letters (Cortes, 1520). Here the view flips. Cortes calls the drink something more for pigs than for men (Cortes, 1520). And yet, in the same breath, he records its economic value, noting it was used as money. So he dismisses the culture and pockets the cash at once (Cortes, 1520). Now hold them together. To the Maya, cacao is food of the gods, the matter of creation. To Cortes, it is for pigs. Same bean. The gap between those two readings is bias, and you can only see it because you read both. One source alone would have told you only half the truth.

Picture it

Look at the documents panel. On one side, the Popol Vuh and the Florentine Codex, voices that hold cacao up as sacred and precious. On the other, the single line from Cortes that drags it down to pig feed. Picture the bean sitting in the middle, unchanged, while two pairs of eyes look at it and see opposite things.

Remember this

The fact to carry out: the same cacao bean is food of the gods in the Popol Vuh and the Florentine Codex, yet a drink more for pigs than for men to Cortes, and reading both sides at once is how you spot the bias in each (Christenson, 2007; Sahagun, 1569; Cortes, 1520). Perspective is not a flaw in the sources. It is the thing you came to read.

Quick check

Quick check. What is the three-attempt structure in the Popol Vuh, and what did Cortes call the drink? Mud, then wood, then corn-and-cacao (Christenson, 2007), and Cortes called it a drink more for pigs than for men (Cortes, 1520).

Key Takeaways

The Popol Vuh makes humanity from corn and cacao on the third try, after mud and wood, a progressive-revelation structure (Christenson, 2007).
The Florentine Codex preserves Aztec voices through Sahagun's interviews, using enumeration and parallelism, the round, the well-formed, the selected, the chosen (Sahagun, 1569).
Cortes called xocolatl a drink more for pigs than for men while still claiming its economic value (Cortes, 1520).
The same bean is sacred to the Maya and for pigs to Cortes, and reading both is how you see bias (Christenson, 2007; Cortes, 1520).

Sources

Christenson, A. J. (2007). Popol Vuh: The sacred book of the Maya. University of Oklahoma Press.
Cortes, H. (1520). Letters from Mexico (A. Pagden, Trans., 1986). Yale University Press.
Sahagun, B. de. (1569). Florentine Codex: General history of the things of New Spain (Anderson and Dibble, Trans., 1950-1982). School of American Research.