Fetishizing the Past to Imagine the Present

Abstract

This article looks at the way that producers and consumers have fetishized the Mesoamerican beverages chocolate and pulque. Chocolate has become a commodity fetish in the Marxian sense, in which it is seen to have an inherent and autonomous value in the marketplace. Pulque has become an ethnic fetish, in which it is celebrated inside and outside of Mexico because of its associations with Indigenous people and particularly the Indigneous past. This article examines how these processes began in the colonial period, when Spanish colonizers learned about the value of both drinks from Nahua and other Indigenous consumers. In the end commodity fetishization and ethnic fetishization are closely related and function in similar ways to distance chocolate and pulque from their Mesoamerican origins.