"Society of New Spain, the colonial name of Mexico, turned out to be truly cosmopolitan and heterogeneous. It encouraged a social control to avoid mixing of races, which turned out to be ineffective. Mixed and common law marriages were seen as "dishonorable" because they threatened the stability of criolla society. However, criticism of these marriages could not stop them from happening. The idea of some mixes being considered purer than others emerged. For example, mestizos who were the children of Spaniards and indigenous women, and children of Spaniards and mestizos were called castizos, which means "of a good caste." These two categories were more closely affiliated with the Spanish group on the early days of the colonial period. Consequently, mestizos and castizos gained a closer level of privilege to the Spanish group than other castes.
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"Mixes between blacks and indigenous people wre considered inferior. Their names allude to animal names such as mulatto (mix between Spanish and black), coyote (mix between indigenous and mestiza), and lobo (mix between black and indigenous), or to the color of Moorish skin as is the case of moriscos.
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"...Chocolate is a drink of Mesoamerican origin that was quickly accepted by the population of European and African origin but that does not appear among the indigenous people in paintings of castes.
"The depiction of chocolate associated with black women has a symbolic element: it shows the belief that black women had the proclivity to practice witchcraft and cast lovesickness spells with this beverage that was considered an aphrodisiac. At one point, chocolate was even forbidden by the Church."
The African Presence in Mexico, pgs. 20, 22, 24.
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