THE CHOCOLATE MAKER
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Written by students from Paolo Borsellino School Mazara Class 2nd D Paolo Agrusa Wasim Alaya Giorgia Arone Giulia Castiglione Aya Chatti Antonio Davoli Marco Diliberti Laura Fanella Antonio Giacalone Gabriele Gianformaggio Sara Indelicato Giovanni La Paola Valentina Lamia Virna Molinari Alice Mondonuovo Salvatore Orofino Giada Parrinello Miriam Russo Ivan Sinacori Story created and Illustrated by Rocco Spanò
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CONTENTS Pag. 4
Santiago
Pag. 5
Santiago’s mother
Pag. 6
Santiago’s father
Pag. 7
History: Columbus
Pag. 8
History: Hernando de Oviedo y Valdez
Pag. 9
The legend of chocolate
Pag. 10
History of Modica
Pag. 11
The Cabreras
Pag. 12
Val di Noto
Pag. 13
The chocolate
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SANTIAGO
Santiago is 14 years old. He is a shy boy and he has a big problem, he cannot sleep well and he wakes up and cries because the big earthquake in 1693 shocked him. He relaxes only when he goes to the pastry shop and helps his father. He likes working there because he meets lots of people. He makes “pan di Spagna” and helps his father to make the new Sicilian cake. The cake is like we eat it today, the difference is in side, because during the Arabs invasion there was not the “pan di Spagna”.
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Santiago’s mother
Santiago’ s mother name is Carmen. She is 30 years old, she has long blond hair, and brown eyes. She is a housewife. She is very cheerful and friendly. Sometimes she helps her husband in the pastry shop. She likes to have the windows pastry shop in a beautifull view, so people is curious and stop to buy some sweets. She is a good cook and she can cook a lot of new food like poteto soup, pasta with sauce and eggplant parmigiana. 5
Santiago’s father
Santiago’s father name is Maurizio, he is tall and fat, he has black hair and blue eyes. He is gentle and generous like his wife. He has a small pastry shop not far from his house. He is an excellent pastry maker, and all people go to his pastry shop and buy all kind od sweets.
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THE HISTORY Columbus
In 1502, Columbus landed in Nicaragua.On his fourth voyage to America, Columbus landed in what is now called Nicaragua. He was the first European to discover cocoa beans being used as currency, and to make a drink, as in the Aztec culture. Columbus was still searching for the route to India. After his fourth and last journey from America, Cristofer Columbus comes back and brings with him cocoa seeds. First he goes to Ferdinand court and Isabell but they don’t listen to him
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Hernando de Oviedo y Valdez
Hernando de Oviedo y Valdez went to America in 1513 as a member of Pedrarias Avila's expedition, reports that he bought a slave for 100 cocoa beans. At this time, the name of the drink changed to Chocolat from the Mayan word xocoat [chocolate] and the Aztec word for water, or warm liquid. Hernando Cortez conquered part of Mexico in 1519, had a vision of converting these beans to golden doubloons. While he was fascinated with Aztec's bitter, spicy beverage, he was much intrigued by the beans’ value as currency. Later, Cortez established a cocoa plantation in the name of Spain… henceforth; "money" will be cultivated! It was the birth of what was to be a very profitable business. Chocolate affected many cultures and traditions, and even…international economics! In 1528 Chocolate Arrives in Spain: Cortès presented the Spanish King, Charles V with cocoa beans from the New World and the necessary tools for its preparation. And no doubt, Cortès taught him how to make Chocolat. Cortez Inspires a Major Break though: Cortez postulated that if this bitter beverage were blended with sugar, it could become quite a delicacy. The Spaniards mixed the beans with sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon. The results were tantalizing, coveted, fashionable, and reserved for the Spanish nobility, which created a demand for the fruits of his Spanish plantations. Chocolate was a secret that Spain managed to keep from the rest of the world for almost 100 years! It is no secret that Chocolate has enjoyed a reputation as an aphrodisiac ever since Conquistadores first became aware of the "pagan" ways of the Aztecs who regarded chocolate as a medicine, but probably not as an aphrodisiac. Initially the consumer concerned Spain, working with chocolate in bars, always of Aztec origin, such xocoatl, was extended to the domains and protectorates. So it was that the ancient Aztec recipe was imported in Sicily, where in Modica today is handed down. 8
THE LEGEND OF CHOCOLATE
Tezcatlipoca was the supreme god, the one who gives life and death. It was to him that live beating hearts of young victims were extracted and offered. But Quetzalcoatl was opposed to violence. On one occasion, in Tula, north of Mexico, when the god Quetzalcoatl collected cocoa and other plants and herbs, the god Tezcatlipoca expelled him from their land. In this paradise, the ears of corn were so thick one could not wrap both arms around them and cotton plants sprouted in the colors one desired. And the most precious gift to mankind of all was the cacao tree. According to legend, the Toltec Quetzalcoatl had to temporarily leave his country because Tezcatlipoca had exiled him. He left his wife as the defender of all their cultural and treasured properties. Their enemies, eager to seize not only their material fortunes but also the agricultural and medical knowledge of the Toltecs, took the occasion to attack. The queen, the wife of Quetzalcoatl, who had been left guarding the treasure of her husband and the borders of the empire, decided to defend from enemy attack. But ultimately, Tezcatlipoca troops defeated the Toltecs. When they made her prisoner, the of wife Quetzalcoatl refused to reveal any secrets she knew. The enemy tried in vain to force her to reveal where her husband, Quetzalcoatl, was hiding. As a result of her silence, she was murdered after a long public torture. She was killed and from the blood of the faithful wife was born the cocoa plant. The blood flowing from her body gave birth to a tree that her countrymen called "cacaotal", which is where the true treasure is hidden. The fruit hides seeds that are bitter, like the suffering love of the dead heroine, they are strong, as the determination of her virtue and slightly dark and pinkish, like the blood which watered the fertile land where she died. This was Quetzalcoatl’s gift, a symbol of the faithfulness paid by the death of his devoted wife. 9
HISTORY OF MODICA
The County of Modica was a semi-independent feudal territory which existed within the Kingdom of Sicily from 1296 to 1812. Its capital was Modica, on the southern tip of the island, although the cities of Ragusa and Scicli housed some government offices for a period. On 25 March 1296, King Frederick II of Aragon conceded the great County of Modica to Manfredi I Chiaramonte, which fought the Angevin and their king James and married Isabella Mosca, daughter of the rebel count Federico Mosca. The first dynasty of Counts obtained from the King lots of feuds in Agrigento, Caccamo, Licata and Palermo, where they built a beautiful palace called the Steri or Palazzo Chiaramonte; after being residence of the Viceroy and of the Holy Inquisition is now residence of Palermo University. It contains on its ceilings one of the most important pictorial cycles on wood of the Italian Middle Ages. At the death of king Frederick IV, Manfredi III Chiaramonte became viceroy and tried to defend the throne of Sicily supporting the illegitimate king Martin I. Unfortunately the city of Palermo fell and his governor Andrea Chiaramonte, son of the late Manfredi, 8th Count of Modica, was beheaded on July 1, 1392, by the new king Martin I of Aragon in front of his palace in the Marina Square of Modica.
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The Cabreras
Bernat Cabrera became the new Count, a Spanish who actually conquered Sicily for the new Spanish king. The County of Modica was now bigger and stronger: it included the city of Scicli, Spaccaforno (today’s Ispica), Ragusa, Chiaramonte Gulfi, Comiso, Giarratana, Monterosso Almo, Biscari and the castles of Dirillo and Cammarana. The Count had the right to export 3,112.68 tons of grain per year free of duties from one of his 7 ports, Pozzallo, where he built the beautiful Cabrera Tower. Modica since 1296 was the capital city of a ‘state as written in the Investiture to Bernat Cabrera: Sicut ego in regno meo tu in comitato tuo (“You in your county as me in my kingdom”). The county had a Governor, its own Tribunals including the Tribunal of Second Instance, and a police force. The city part of the state were ruled by a municipal magistracy according to the Governor. In the 15th and 16th centuries the privatization of the land with the reformation of the Governor Bernaldo Del Nero gave the city the leading role in the south-east of Sicily. The lower part of Modica grew with churches, high-class palaces and monasteries, until the 1693 earthquake, that killed over 60,000 people in Sicily from Catania to Siracusa, and destroyed numerous buildings. The late Baroque of Val di Noto is the result of the reconstruction. On March 5, 1607, Vittoria Colonna Enriquez-Cabrera, Countess of Modica, daughter of the Viceroy Marcantonio Duke of Tagliacozzo and wife of Ludovico III Enriquez-Cabrera, founded the new city of Vittoria, now the second most populous city in the province of Ragusa. The title and the position of Count of Modica was held in succession by two other noble families, the Alvarez and finally the Fitz-Stuart. However by the time of the latter dynasties the title of Count was meaningless and carried little power, and Modica ruled on its own. This situation continued until the 18th century when Sicily was ruled by the Austrians, then in the late 18th and early 19th century as part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies), and then finally after the Risorgimento it was unified with the rest of Italy in 1860. Modica remained district capital until 1926, when it was included in the province of Ragusa. In 2002 it became a UNESCO city, for its wealth of Baroque architecture..
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Val di Noto
Ibla
Noto
Ragusa
Modica
In 1693, the region Val di Noto was struck by a terrible earthquake, an earthquake that is now infamous and famous. Infamous for its considerable human toll and destruction. Famous because the architects who breathed new life into these cities were masters of the Sicilian Baroque. Their work lives on in Modica, Ragusa, Ibla, Scicli and other towns, eight of which are World Heritage Sites, and in the words of UNESCO, “represent the culmination and final flowering of Baroque art in Europe”. So important is this architecture that students even know it simply as “Earthquake. Modica reached the height of its splendour in the Aragon Dynasty and you can feel a little of the Spanish influence everywhere, from the dialect of the local people, to the ornamentation of the buildings. This wasn’t all they left. The Spanish had brought with them customs and secrets, acquired fresh from the adventures of the conquistadors. Perhaps most important was a recipe. It was unique. It originated from distant Mexico, and from a fabled people. Who were they? What was the recipe? They were, of course, the Aztecs, and the recipe was for chocolate. All cities were reconstructed in a new style “Baroque”. 12
The Chocolate
Santiago and his father hear about how to make chocolate and Santiago asks if they have the recipe. The men say yes and give it to the pastry maker. Santiago and his father start to make chocolate as a drink and a lot of people come to test it. Santiago says to his father to change the signboard in the shop. The next days they start to make chocolate bars. Today the chocolate of Modica is also known as the Baroque chocolate and is famous all over the world.
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