Antigua Guatemala:'Sugar Bob' Levantino,Hernan Cortez Do Maya Ixcacao Cacao Godess Wrong
(Conquistador enslaver and mass murderer of Mexico and Central America)Hernan Cortes did not have the best interest of Mexico when he left Spain. When he left Spain in search for the New World, he only thought about his ambitions of greatness, and his search for more wealth, more gold, more power and more land. Despite this, however, his conquest of Mexico brought about many important benefits to it.(ha)One of the first major contribution of Hernan Cortes is Mexican civilization is his introduction of sugar.......
http://www.ewritegigs.com/essay-on-hernan-cortes/
The cocoa beans were used to make a thick chocolate drink, but far different than the hot chocolate we know today. Since they didn't use sugar, the Mexicas added peppers, corn meal and spices. A similar hot drink is still found in Mexico today with corn, known as atole.Though Columbus brought cocoa to Europe in the early 1500s, it was mostly ignored. Hernan Cortes was more interested, and substituted sugar....
http://www.aztec-history.com/aztec-food.html
New Agriculturist: Country profile - Guatemala
www.new-ag.info/en/country/profile.php?a=842Cached
Guatemala is now the third largest sugar producer in Latin America, and three quarters of production is exported. Mills are largely controlled by elite landowning ...What Our Sugar & Ethanol Habits Are Doing to Central American ...
www.treehugger.com/.../what-our-sugar-ethanol-habits-doing-central...
12 Dec 2011 – There's an epidemic of kidney failure in Central America afflicting men who work the sugarcane fields that supply the U.S. with sugar, to feed ...Native American and Guatemala Maya diabetes rates the result of ruining Maya Ixcacao chocolate with Hernan Cortez sugar ?
Why do Native Americans experience high rates of diabetes? A common theory is that they possess fat-hoarding "thrifty genes" left over from their ancestors – genes that were required for survival during ancient cycles of feast and famine, but that now contribute to the disease in a modern world of more fatty and sugary diets.
Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-feces-fossils-insights-native-americans-diabetes.html#jCp
sent after 'Chocolate Bob ' as he calls himself or 'Sugar Bob' as I prefer to refer to him appeared at the Tostaduria Antigua to inform me that he was taking our honey coconut filling that we created some time ago as a filling for our basic honey cacao chocolate formula,(50% ground cacao,50% honey),to use as a filler for his sugar chocolate products without so much as a thank you or an acknowledgement or even asking our permission ! My email communication to him below was sent last night and while he certainly could have replied for himself,he chose a second person to do so in his stead named 'Paty' whose reply to me is also here further below.I have looked on Bob's or Bob Levantino's www.ixcacao.com but have not seen this supposed 30 year old Milk Chocolate Coconut Bar she refers to but it never had honey in it or Sugar Bob woulkd have let me know a couple of years ago as well as Jessica from Canada who presented our cacao honey with coconut honey filling at an opening of a new Bagel Barn in Antigua, Guatemala at that time.(Note that unlike Bob and the other very recent clusters of so-called 'chocolatiers' who all use cocoa powder and cocoa butter and sugar rather than really making their chocolate 'direct from the bean' as we do,that unlike them we rarely ever make a 'milk chocolate' although indeed we can by making a honey condensed milk by cooking down milk with honey until it is quite thick,like commercial sugar condensed milk.However all they do is by powdered milk and through it in with their other processed ingredients.Most of those who are fanatics of our cacao honey bars and honey fruit or nut filings,(including almond and macademia nut butter with honey,etc.), specifically don't want powdered milk in their cacao chocolate bars..
Although Bob's website that takes its name from the Mayan cacao goddess Ixcacao it should probably be named for Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortez who brought sugar cane to Mexico.The Aztecs and Maya
and Zapotecs and other indigenous cultures of Meso-America,(generally considererd to be the area stretching from around Mexico City,the former Aztec capital of Tenochtittlan,to northern Central America),
did not have the sugar that the Spanish and Europeans later used to sweeten chocolate drinks although they did have stingless bees.Strangely no chocolate bar was made until AFTER the Dutch separated cocoa butter
from what became kknown as cocao powder in 1825.Only then,centuruies after drinking cxhoclate for the first time, did these Europeans decide to make a chocolate bar ! And then to do so they had to recombine the very same cacao butter and powder they made by sepating the two under tons of pressure per square inch because they needed the 'buttery' properties of the cocoa butter for texture and to hold the newly created powder together again to make a chocolate bar with finely ground sugar ! Often greedy makers of chocolate bars buy cheaper hydrogenated oils to replace cocoa butter and nearly all add extra hydrogenated oil or real cocoa butter instead of nature's and the Aztec and Mayan narural bean content of approximately
52%.
No wonder Bob is so desperate to associate his processed chocolate bars using sugar and processed cocoa powder and butter and even powdered milk as do all the so-called 'chocolatiers who have showed up since we developed cacao honey bars in 2005 here in Antigua Guatemala,with honey or even the real Meso American white chocolate pataste we rediscoverd while pretending a coconut honey filling is his idea !He only showed up here a couple of years ago and is only repeating and copying the same old tired cocoa powder sugar recipes of all the other Hersheys or Nestles candy bar want a be-s who aLL BEGAN AFTER OUR CACAO HONEY BARS WERE MADE BY US AT TOSTADURIA ANTIGUA IN 2005.
http://www.ixcacao.com/Chocolate.htm
Dear Bob,
You may not have realised I was in shock when you stated that you were
going to take our honey coco filling we developed for our honey
chocolate for your own.If this is the case I certainly plan to do a
blog registering my protest in combining Hernan Cortez's sugar
chocolate with our honey coco filling innovation.
When Jessica of Canada displayed our honey chocolate bars made
strictly and directly from the bean without any industrially derived
cocoa powder or cocoa butter only direct from bean with honey as
described on our tostaduriaantigua blogspot it was not for the purpose
of presenting it to you in the first place but to display OUR
honey-cacao innovation that to my knowledge is our personal
invention.Sure we explain for our clients and for individuals who wish
to make their own chocolate without all the processed butter and
powder as you ands all the other 'chocolatiers' make it - but it was
not displayed at the Bagel Barn so that you could rip off our
innovations.¿Capische?
By the way is your last name Levantino or do I have you mistaken for
someone else ? While my last name appeared in The Revue,I didn't see
yours but Chocofino and Ixcacao seem to turn up that last name.
Also as I will explain on my blog I don't think the Mayan cacao
goddess Ixcacao would be exactly pleased to say the least to find
that her cacao is mixed with Hernan Cortez's sugar that he produced my
enslaving her people and that now threatens to destroy much of
Guatemala and Meso America.And if you really are an artist you might
sympathize my my and my Guatemalan partners art in cacao honey and how
disgusting when we were trying to make a cultural statement with 100%
honey and cacao chocolate and honey etc.,fillings that you now wish to
rip off and put in your sugar chocolate.
Do you have no sense of decency.Would you have simply taken George
Washington Carver's peanut butter after discovering how simple his
discovery was,(which in fact are the best discoveries),and put your or
your company's name to it without giving him credit !? Would you take
my ideas or my Guatemalan partner's who has struggled with me for
years through some very rough times and just put your name or your
company's name without crediting him !?
When Thor Janson mentioned in passing that you even wanted him to do
his article on chocolate ONLY about you without mentioning our honey
cacao or other of your fellow 'chocolatiers' who are all like you
making Hernan Cotez sugar chocolate I couldn't believe
it.Unfortunately since your threat to rip off our ideas and
innovations -I believe it already !
Sincerely.
Tony Ryals
....................................
Hello Tony,
I am the business administrator for Chocofino.
I believe the product of ours that you are questioning is our 30 gram Milk Chocolate Coconut bar. As I am not familiar with your products, I cannot say weather it is similar to something you make, but what I can tell you is that the recipe we use is one that Bob started his company with over 27 years ago.
We are not in any way trying to take business away from you or copy any of your products or recipes. Any similarities that you may find that our products have with yours is purely coincidental.
I hope this clears up any misunderstanding there may have been.
We wish you the best with your business.
Saludos,
Paty
-----
Chocofino
Tel (502) 4406-6415
Chocofino
Tel (502) 4406-6415
..................................,,
http://gt.linkedin.com/pub/patricia-kell/4a/110/232
Patricia Kell - Guatemala | LinkedIn
gt.linkedin.com/pub/patricia-kell/4a/110/232 - Translate this page
Guatemala - Business Administrator at Chocofino -- Ixcacao Chocolate
Patricia Kell. Business Administrator at Chocofino -- Ixcacao
Chocolate. Location: Guatemala; Industry: Producción alimentaria ...
http://gt.linkedin.com/pub/bob-levantino/9/8b0/584
Bob Levantino - Guatemala | LinkedIn
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Guatemala - Chocolate manufacturer
Ver el perfil profesional de Bob Levantino (Guatemala) en LinkedIn.
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George Washington Carver's invention of peanut butter and how simple as it may be was at the time quite radical and an invention that has endured its discovery even though for all we know it may even have been a rediscovery and the indigenous of Meso America may well have ground cacao into a paste just as they do so many grain,bean and seeds even today.Besides mole sauce that incorporates ground chocolate beans and is generally used to compliment over chicken,Guatemalans have another sauce called pepian that does not contain cacao but instead is made from grinding various seeds to make the sauce and is also generally used to spice a meal of chicken.It appears that the Maya were making a sauce judt like 'mole' that Spanish nuns are given credit with inventing just like the sugared choclate drinks inspired by Hernan Cortez slave based sugar plantations.
Holy mole! Chocolate found on ancient Mexican plates
www.msnbc.msn.com/.../holy-mole-chocolate-found-ancient-mexica...Cached
I mention George Washington Carver not only to explain to people such as Bob Levantino who have never had a unique idea or thought in their lives but have copied others, however well or poorly,that it is no better to take ideas from others without credit or acknowledgement at the very least as he has threatened to do with our coconut honey filling for his on processed sugar chocolate made with cocoa powder and cocoa butter bought or imported from who knows where,rather than the natural ground bean and honey from Guatemala as a base that we have been doing since we devised it on our on in 2005.Even if George Wshington Carver was not the first to invent the admitedly simple, in retrospect,ground peanuts that we now call peanut butter ,we still have no proof that anyone else did and we would not have it now if he had not shared his discovery earlier in this century.If indigenous Americans did grind peanuts before George Washington Carver it was probably not to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but like mole sauce with ground cacao beans or pepian sauce of Guatemala with various ground seeds,it was used in unsweetened dishes if at all.
And I have always admired the African American George Washington since I was a kid and read about him in our segregated elementary school in Louisiana where no black kids were allowed to attend.What Mr. Carver was trying to do by his invention of peanut butter was so idealistic one cannot help admire him but for his altruistic ideals alone.You see,at that time George knew that many black share croppers and small landowners faced the danger of kosing their own lands in the U.S.South in part because the land thew plowed was alreafy old before itrs time from groewing the very same cotton that was used as a justification for enslaving their ancestors and even parents and grandparents only a short time before Carver who was one of the few blacks luoky enough to get an education began his agricultural products research.
Unfortunately the exhaution of the land and soil from the slave-cotton system combined with the fact that agro chemicals and fertilizers were being developed at the time along with increasing mechanization of agriculture drove those rural decendents to bsankruptcy and off the land and into the cities and urban ghettos anyway.And the people,particularly children of former black slaves, that George Washington Carver had hoped to help stay on they land their fore fathers slaved over in cotton fields were replaced by a new middle class or upper middle class farm owner who adapted to the new mechanization and finance of rural life such as the ironically,the white family of our ex President Jimmy 'peanut farmer' Carter.(No relation to George Washington Carter to my knowledge.)
George Washington Carver - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Washington Carver (January 1864[1][2] – January 5, 1943), was an American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor. The exact day and year of his birth are unknown; he is believed to have been born into slavery in Missouri in January 1864.[1]
Carver's reputation is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, which also aided nutrition for farm families. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life. The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts.[3] He also developed and promoted about 100 products made from peanuts that were useful for the house and farm, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline, and nitroglycerin. He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP.
During the Reconstruction-era South, monoculture of cotton depleted the soil in many areas. In the early 20th century, the boll weevil destroyed much of the cotton crop, and planters and farm workers suffered. Carver's work on peanuts was intended to provide an alternative crop.
He was recognized for his many achievements and talents. In 1941, Time magazine dubbed Carver a "Black Leonardo".[4]
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpeanutbutter.htm
Agricultural chemist, George Washington Carver discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. He start popularizing uses for peanut products including peanut butter, paper, ink, and oils beginning in 1880. The most famous of Carver's research took place after he arrived in Tuskeegee in 1896. However, Carver did not patent peanut butter as he believed food products were all gifts from God. The 1880 date precedes all the above inventors except of course for the Incas, who were first. It was Carver who made peanuts a significant crop in the American South in the early 1900's.
And it is probably incorrect to believe that the Aztecs or Maya or myriad smaller tribal groups of Meso America or Mexico and Central America never used cacao or chocolate beans for anything but drinks even though they certainly NEVER put the Conquisator Hernan Cotez sugar or sugar cane as an ingredient because he brought it from the 'Old World' for the very purpose of employing Aztecs and other enslaved indigenous groups for the purpose of raising it to export to Europe to supplement his and Spain's income from gold and silver looted from these same indigenous cultures.So the Maya Goddess of Cacao or chocolate would be very revolted to say the least to find that her cacao had in the ends been contaminated by Hernan Cortez sugar and in fact the overproducrtion of this crop in Guatemala today is caising untold damage to land and people and where bees once pollinated a diverse number of plant species,the cultivation of sugar cane has turned much of the land into bee-less sugar cane desert.
And although the Aztecs and Maya had stingless bees before the Old World apis bee was introduced it appears that they enjoyed their cacao bitter and in paricular recent discoveries of cacao or the theobroma molecule on plates rather than in just cacao drinking and serving jars indicates that the Maya and Aztec and orther Meso American cultures probably made unsweetened chocolate sauces with various ingredients suich as corn and beans and chiles long before the Spanish Conquistador nuns who claimed for centuries that they were the first to do so.
Below is 'Sugar Bob's present Cacao Sugar Bar refered to in the email reply by 'Paty' that obviously does NOT have honey or it would have been a if not the premium ingredient to highlight MAYTBE HE WAS JUST TRYING TO GET ME IRRITATED AND LYING APPEARS TO BE ONE OF HIS STRONG POINTS.The fact that he has insinuated about taking my pataxte or Theobroma bicolor discovery as his own as well has only added to my irritation.And of course like the Catholic nuns who apparently lied about being first to make a ground unsweetened chocolate sauce or mole before the indigenous of Meso America,
we would no doubt expect that after Sugar Bob announces his 'discovery' of coconut honey filling for HIS
' Milk Chocolate Coconut bar' as mentioned by his assitant 'Paty',(but strangely not listed as one of the products listed on his own website),it will certainly be his 'disovery' and all mention of myself and Tostaduria Antigua and Jessica of Canada who intoduced him to our innovation at the Bagel Barn will be conveniently forgotten.You can take the link and peruse Sugar Bob's sugar chocolate website that makes choclate like virtually all others from cooa powder and cocoa butter and sugar wheres the Maya ansd in my opinion higher quality natural sweet chocolate bars should just grind the whole beans after light roasting and in my opinion add honey NOT Hernan CORTEZ sugar which even Sugar Bob would have to admit if he thought about it would be more than a little repulsive to the Mayan Cacao Goddess Ixcacao whose name he uses in vain to promote his sugar chocolate. I have cut and pa<sted Bob's website for the record to see how it changes when and if he adds his supposedly 30 year old Milk Chocolate Coconut Bar as mentioned by his assistant Paty but not shown on hios website.Wil it appear as a reincarnated Honey Coconut Bar that rips off me and my Guatemalan partner or will he grow a set of ethics ? .:
