Like Water for Chocolate: A Personal Journey into Mexican History

I don’t know when I would have learned about this aspect of Mexican history if reading Like Water for Chocolate had not sent me in search of it.

It was a Friday night in the early 2000s and I was nursing a broken heart when my college bestie arrived at my dorm room bearing snacks, booze, and a box of Garnier Fructis hair dye. Like the good friend she was, she knew good company, a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos, truly terrible tequila, and a questionable hair decision was just what I needed at that moment.

Somewhere between rounds of shots and a 30-minute box color processing time, we decided we’d put on a movie. She suggested Like Water For Chocolate, the film based on one of her favorite books, and was appalled that I’d neither seen the film nor read the book. A few days later, she lent me her copy of this Laura Esquivel classic of magical realism, which I inhaled in a couple of days. 

The book is told in monthly installments, each opening with a recipe for a dish that appears in the chapter that follows. In recipes for dishes like tortas de Navidad (Christmas rolls), codornices en pétalos de rosas (quail in rose petal sauce), and chiles en Nogada (stuffed poblano chiles in a walnut-based cream sauce), the flavors and aromas of these beautiful foods were as bewitching to me as the story itself. This is actually what I originally set out to write about, how reading this novel made my mouth water as my heart swelled and inspired a whole journey of food discovery. 

But as I began to put to paper what this novel meant to me, I realized my connection to this book is deeper than tasty recipes and a lifelong love of magic + foodie fiction. This novel taught me a ton about Mexican history, a history I don’t know when I would have learned had this reading experience not sent me in search of it. 

---

Like Water for Chocolate is a novel by Mexican author Laura Esquivel, originally published in Spanish as Como Agua Para Chocolate in 1989. It was translated from Spanish into English in 1992, with the film adaptation premiering that same year. 

The story takes place during the Mexican Revolution on the De la Garza family ranch in Piedras Negras in the state of Coahuila near the Texas-Mexico border. Mama Elena is the widowed matriarch who owns the ranch, running a household consisting of her three daughters and several servants with an abusive and tyrannical hand. The novel’s protagonist is Elena’s daughter Tita, whose lot in life as the youngest daughter is to care for her mother. Tita’s entire life trajectory has thus been dictated by this family tradition: Tita isn’t allowed to dream, to want, and definitely not to love because she isn’t allowed to wed. So of course, dream and want and fall in love is exactly what she does.

The object of her affection, Pedro, figures surely Mama Elena just needs to be asked nicely for her daughter’s hand to lock this thing down. Mama Elena tells him to get bent in no uncertain terms and scolds Tita for trying to shirk her filial duty. She does however have an idea for Pedro: he should marry her other daughter, Rosaura, instead. Pedro agrees, because then at least he’ll get to be near Tita. What! Could go wrong! With this plan!? 

Shockingly, it doesn’t pan out so well for anyone involved, beginning with the day of the wedding. Because sometimes family is a bag of dicks, Mama Elena forces Tita to prepare the wedding feast. So Tita not only gets shafted out of love, but now she has to whip up some decadent celebratory meal for ol’ boy and her annoying-ass sister, including a very complicated cake. Truly could not be me. Making things even more #complicated: Tita’s heightened feelings and emotions seep into the food she prepares, and anyone who consumes said food is then subject to those same emotions. All kinds of shenanigans ensue not only at the wedding, but at several inconvenient times throughout the course of the novel. You can imagine how interesting that gets when those feelings are, say, white hot rage or unbridled lust. A mess!

Given what I’ve told you so far about the novel so far and from a quick perusal of the publisher copy, you might think the book is just one big romantic dramedy with some food peppered in for funsies, but that’s very much not the case. While unveiling the consequences of Rosaura and Pedro’s union and how it all pans out for Tita, Esquivel weaves in other storylines to explore heavier topics like classism and racism, misogyny, violence against women, generational trauma, and of course: the cost of war and liberty. 

At the start of the book, the war hasn’t hit too close to home, but that changes as the novel goes on. Tita’s sister Gertrudis up and runs away with a captain of the rebel army. (Remember what I said about the food and the lust earlier? Whew, what a scene.) Pedro is briefly captured when Piedras Negras is under siege. Troops show up and threaten the safety and food supply of the De La Garza Ranch, and other characters are met with terrible violence by bandits. The effects of the war don’t necessarily take up much space on the page, but their presence is obvious nonetheless.

This is what sent me down the rabbit hole of wanting to understand the setting in which the book took place, and this is when I discovered how truly little I knew about this period in Mexican history. I’d like to share with you some of what I learned and how I’ve reflected on that history upon rereading the book over 20 years later. 

---

Before the Revolution

Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, but the War of Independence left the country in shambles. The three decades that followed would bring much instability, including several military coups, a civil war, and invasions from not one but four foreign powers: Spain in 1829, France in 1838, the United States in 1846, and then a joint shakedown from Spain, France, and Great Britain in 1862.

It was during the Mexican-American war that a young priest in training decided to ditch the seminary and instead pursue a military career, enlisting in the national guard at the tender age of 15. His name was José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori, but history would know him as simply Porfirio Diaz. To set the scene for the rule known as the Porfiriato which sparked the revolution that is the backdrop for Like Water for Chocolate, allow me to give you a highly summarized crash course in Mexican history. 

Wars All the Way Down 

Let’s start with a period known as La Reforma (the reform), which began in 1854 with the Plan de Ayutla. The plan called for the removal of dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna, the guy in charge in 1845 when the United States admitted Texas into the union to expand its territory after the Mexican government explicitly warned them that doing so would mean war. War is exactly what followed, and it did not go well for Mexico; in 1848, Santa Anna was forced to sell most of present-day Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Texas, New Mexico, and California to the U.S. As you might expect, these results didn’t win Santa Anna any popularity points. Also: this is what Mexicans mean when we say the border crossed us.

Santa Anna was exiled in 1855 and a man named Juan Álvarez became provisional president but resigned shortly thereafter. Under the Comonfort presidency that followed, Benito Juárez and the Liberals swooped in with a list of changes that made the Catholic church big mad, including La Ley Juárez which eliminated special privileges afforded to the church and military. In 1857, Juárez was elected president of the supreme court, making him next in line for the presidency, and a new liberal constitution was drafted; it afforded Mexican citizens their first real bill of rights in addition to further limiting the church’s power and abolishing hereditary titles, among other things. 

Now put on your super surprised face when I tell you that the Conservatives, which included the clergy, military, and wealthy landowners, were not big fans of these changes or the constitution. Conservative leader Felix Zuolaga overthrew President Comonfort, and civil war broke out in 1858. This War of Reform went on for three years, ending with Liberals capturing Mexico City. New laws called for the seizure of church property and redistribution of said lands. The problem (one of them, anyway) is that those land laws backfired tragically: by the end of this period, the wealthy had even more and the landless poor had even less, a theme that will resurface in this mini history lesson.

Another problem: all of this war sunk Mexico deep into debt, and Juárez made the call in 1861 to stop repaying those debts for two years. Remember that joint shakedown I mentioned earlier? It turns out Spain, France, and Great Britain weren’t really into the whole loan forgiveness thing and teamed up to descend upon Mexico in 1861 on some Bitch Better Have My Money shit. Ultimately Spain and Great Britain weren’t all that invested and pulled out after some negotiating. Napoleon III, on the other hand, was still deep in his Pinky and the Brain try-to-take-over-world era and sent French forces in to capture Mexico City in 1862. He named Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg the Emperor of Mexico and then basically hit him with a hearty, “you got this, right?” pulling French troops out of Mexico and sending them back to France. Max did not, it turns out, have this; after just three years as emperor, he was defeated by the Liberals and executed. Benito Juárez was reelected as president in 1867, a role he served in until his death in 1872. 

Another Day, Another Dictator

Young Colonel Porfirio Díaz, 1861 via Wikipedia

Now we come back to Porfirio Diaz, who you’ll recall first joined the army during the Mexican-American war. He went on to make a name for himself during the War of Reform, and gained even greater renown during the second Franco-Mexican war, especially for his role in defeating the French in the battle at Puebla on May 5, 1861. (Yes, that’s Cinco de Mayo, and no, it’s not Mexico’s day of independence. Write that down once and for all.)

He was initially a supporter of Juárez, but soon became disillusioned with Juarez’s administration and decided he could do a better job himself. After protesting Juarez’s rule and then leading a failed revolt against Juarez’s successor Tejeda, Diaz defeated Tejeda’s forces the second time around in 1876. He was installed as president in May of 1877, ushering in the period known as the Porfiriato. 

Diaz promised sweeping change that would benefit all Mexican citizens, change he sought to bring about through modernization. He did achieve some of those goals—construction of railroads, paved streets, electric lights, the flourishing of mines and foreign crops. But he also quickly got down to the business of consolidating power and suppressing revolts, effectively destroying local and regional leadership. He silenced the press, controlled the courts, let groups like the privileged Creole class and the Roman Church do what they wanted in exchange for noninterference with their 100% good, on the up-and-up, not at all morally bankrupt activities. Those groups were of course very happy under Diaz for getting rid of the pesky reforms Juarez had helped usher in. As for lower classes, including the Indians and mestizos, they were flat out ignored when not being actively harmed, just like they’d been before.

Diaz also promoted foreign investment by granting “concessions for land use and mining rights to wealthy landowners and entrepreneurs and to US and European companies,” land he stripped away from poor peasant communities. Yes, Diaz’s policies did indeed bring in a ton of new wealth, but that money didn’t benefit much of Mexico at all. Most of it flowed abroad or stayed in the hands of a few rich Mexicans. To drill the Porfiriato down: it was good for some, bad for most. The rich and elite got more money and more power thanks to Diaz’s corruption and favoritism while everyone else clawed at survival. This is the song that doesn’t end. 

Diaz’s reign was not a short one. He was 80 years old, still in power, and running for reelection against a man named Francisco Madero in 1910, an election he “won” with coercion as per usual. Diaz was used to getting his way at this point and figured that was that, but Madero wasn’t giving up that easily. He called for Mexicans to rise up and revolt in November 1910, and they answered the call, particularly the Indians and mestizos who’d long been shoved to the margins, disenfranchised, and generally hung out to dry. It is around this time that we first meet the members of the De la Garza family. 

---

A still from the movie adaptation of Like Water for Chocolate

It is really only because of Like Water For Chocolate that I learned any of this in detail, which was a weird thing for me to confront. Though my parents are both Mexican immigrants, I was born and raised in the US and thus educated here, too. I think I’m being generous if I say I got a few paragraphs of Mexican history in my high school AP world history class, and what little made its way in was almost certainly highly sanitized. What’s more, I wasn’t actively seeking this information out. I was probably outright avoiding it. In a move I know many kids of immigrants will recognize, assimilation won out over cultural pride for a long time in my youth. I was too busy trying to lose all traces of my accent and sort of blend in to be concerned with learning more about Mexican history. 

College was different, thankfully, when I found a robust Latine community through my involvement with a few different campus organizations. I felt a rekindling of my pride in my identity as a Latina and a Mexicana specifically. That’s how I came to meet the bestie introduced at the top of this essay and finally discovered Like Water for Chocolate. I read the book in Spanish, and in the ensuing research missions found deeper understanding and connection. 

I’ve thought a lot about the themes in the book that I didn’t have as clear a perspective on at age 19 as I do now. I’ve ruminated on the conflict between traditional values and “modern moral relativism.” Though I was living this very conflict in my own life as a Catholic Mexican whose views were evolving, I hadn’t considered how Tita’s uneasy relationship with tradition spoke to the social and ideological revolution happening alongside the political one in Mexico. I’ve thought about Mama Elena in all her terror, forcing myself to consider how the “hurt people hurt people” angle while still despising her with my entire soul. Not to excuse her brutality but perhaps better understand it, I’ve thought a lot about the effects of generational trauma and how for some, the experience of hatred and gender-based violence begets more hatred and more violence. I’m being vague to avoid spoilers here, but there’s another history lesson to be had here about Mexico’s role as a safe haven for the enslaved.

The part I come back to the most is the treatment of rural workers and peasants, the members of the lower classes, and how the revolution, though often explained as a reaction to the policies of the Porfiriato, was really a long time coming. I’ve thought about families like the De la Garzas and how many empty promises came with each new ruler, each of whom talked a big game about being better than the one that came before. I think the most about the way life back then, as it does now, goes on even while war and other tragedy happens frequently and not far away, and how jarring an experience that can be. 

But through Tita and her heart, her food, and her spirit, and the strength of the other women in the De la Garza house, I’m reminded that sometimes there is love and beauty and triumph in unlikely places. There is a romance to this book that in spite of its bananapants trajectory does taste sweeter for all that it took to achieve, and even a levity in moments where you wouldn’t expect to find it. And so I’ll close by saying that while Like Water For Chocolate doesn’t shy away from darkness, it crawls back to the light. My mouth waters and my heart swells anew, and with a deeper understanding and appreciation of this journey.