My enjoyment of Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures

A few weeks ago in class, after discussing From Silver to Cocaine, I had what was an epiphany (at least to me, in my very limited exposure to Latin American commodities) that "Western" culture is much more derivative of Latin America than I had ever realized; that many if not most of the things I like and enjoy have been chosen for me by native Mesoamericans. Marcy Norton, of course, states this much more eloquently in Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures. She notes that items like cacao trees have been domesticated, experimented with, hybridized, cultivated, and made the focus of social rituals concerning distribution, display, and consumption. (pg 7) People have chosen this item and imbued it with social and cultural context and symbols which Europeans, when thrown into contact with the Americans, then borrowed because of the context and symbols, not just in spite of them.

            Norton takes issues with the Coes whose second half of the True History of Chocolate seems to support the discourse of European supremacy by adopting cacao but then modifying it for their unique purposes. Norton seems to be saying that there's nothing unique about European purposes.  I like that Norton uses the term syncretism because it is often associated with colonial societies, but she turns the lens of syncretism back towards Europe.  I agree with Joseph's comment that, in general, the term creolization might work better, but it is so often applied to America that it seems contraindicated in this case.

 
            Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures really begins to impress in the use of narratives and contemporary experiences in order to tell the story of tobacco and chocolate from the periphery to the center.  I believe that Norton is interested in the commodities and the Americans who "constructed" them in equal measure.  Europeans in the first half of the book are subtly (and not-so-subtly too) pictured as the Other.  Consider how Norton describes the reaction of Diaz del Castillo when watching Moctezuma "enobling" chocolate or Juan de Grijalva making friends with native tribes through smoking rituals. (15, 50)  Diaz "grasped very quickly" the situation, as Grijalva "received a smoking lesson" and found solace in the rite.  Norton describes these men (a conquistador and an explorer) as essentially bright children who understand new ideas quickly but also who step into the cultural mold made by the Americans, even as they undermined these societies with their actions.  

            In my opinion few of our texts in class have offered what Norton does.  She, like the Coes, focus on Native Americans through native and European eyes, but unlike the Coes' story, Norton does not just leapfrog across the Atlantic, she remains in Central and South America and holds the microscope steady on creole or mestizo society.  She does not abandon one end of the commodity chain for the other; in fact, she tells us this is more of a web of people, goods, and events that she is weaving, and she does this with truly astounding sources.  Norton comfortably shifts laterally through the interactions between colonizers and natives with the help of inquisition roles, court documents, sacred texts, personal letters, shipping manifests, paintings and tile works, etc... Her level of research is impressive. Her sources are not simply discussed and discarded either, many she brings back later in the text to help prove secondary and tertiary points.   

            I see that James puts his focus on the last chapters that deal with mercantilism and absolutism in Europe, and I believe this is the weakest section of the text, mostly because the early chapters place the bar very high, and because the author’s true interest is Americans.   Joseph explains Norton’s argument as cultural immersion – a term of which I heartily approve.  I wish to immerse myself in Norton’s sources and narrative and swim around as long as I can.

            One question that the text did present is that of corn.  Maize, like tobacco and chocolate, was imbued with sacred meanings and rituals in the Americas.  It spread around the world following the conquest, and it saved many a civilization from serious famine.  I wonder why the text focused on chocolate and tobacco but not maize.  Too mundane a commodity, perhaps?