OAXACA, OA—In the pantheon of Zapotec gastronomy, two drinks sit side by side, literally. Walk the streets of Oaxaca City and you will find vendors offering refreshment from two large clay basins. One is brimming with the complex tejate, while the other boasts sweet agua de chilacayota. These beverages are the daily drinks of Oaxaca (yes, more so than even mezcal) and both date back to pre-Hispanic times. But these twins are not identical. While agua de chilacayota is simple to make, tejate is a traditional art that is guarded by the cooperatives of local women who sell it.
Agua de chilacayota is an agua fresca of the chilacayote gourd from the Cucurbita ficifolia species. The drink almost always has a final “a” sound, while the gourd can end with “e.” The gourd, which is native to the Americas, has been consumed for centuries. It features in recipes for both savory and sweet dishes, makes an appearance as a candied fruit, and serves to make a delicious refreshment.
As a drink, chilacayote gourd is cut and boiled with a sweetener like sugar or piloncillo. Cinnamon, pineapple, and limes can also be added for flavor. The drink is served cold and tastes like liquid Thanksgiving squash with melty brown sugar. Vendors keep the stringy squash pulp and seeds in the clay vats of clear, brown liquid and ladle out chunks into the bottom of each cup they sell. It’s a chewy treat after you finish the juice. Pre-Hispanic versions of the drink would not have featured sugar, but perhaps other native sweeteners were used.
Not the most complex drink, but agua de chilacayota has a surprisingly limited geographic distribution. In Tlaxcala, a recipe is recorded for a chilacayote juice made with the addition of limes. Ultimately, though, agua de chilacayota is an Oaxacan specialty.
By its side, another clay basin is full of a grayish liquid that has Styrofoam-like chunks floating on its surface. This would be tejate, and it is much more difficult to make. When I approached the vendors who sell tejate in the markets of Oaxaca City, they invariably rejected interviews about the preparation process. They told me that it was forbidden to reveal the drink’s secrets by the tejatera cooperative that runs all of the stands. They are concerned, perhaps, because they have some competition.
Among the tejate vendors of Oaxaca, there are two distinct groups: those from San Andrés Huayapam and those from San Agustín Yatareni. These two towns are neighboring communities on the northeast outskirts of Oaxaca City. Women from both communities have taken up the production and sale of tejate as a specialized economic practice. But, the women from Huayapam claim that the folks in Yatareni stole their recipe. While this is strictly hearsay, Huayapam’s reputation as the home of tejate is commonly known in Oaxaca and the town holds a Fiesta de Tejate annually to attract tourism. Culturally, tejate does not belong to either town alone. It is a drink known throughout the Central Valley region of Oaxaca. Many in the other towns make it every day for home consumption.
Regardless of who deserves exclusive rights to sell tejate, the drink has been well documented by Mexican authorities. According to the book Los Atoles de Acapetlahuaya: Comidas y bebidas tradicionales, tejate means “masa batida y colada,” or beaten and strained corn dough. In this context, the term is used to describe an intermediary ingredient in the corn atole making process. Soleri et al cite Ricardo Salvador’s etymology of the drink’s name as combining the Nahuatl terms textli, meaning flour or dough, and atl, meaning water.
In Oaxaca, however, the drink is far more than just water and corn dough. Tejate is a unique kind of atole which includes corn, ash, white cacao, flor de cacao (actually the flower of Quararibea funebris), and pixtle (the seed of the mamey.) These ingredients are all native Mesoamerican plants. Modern tejate includes sugar. Other inventive renditions can infuse the flavor of coconut and corozo, or palm nuts.
While the tejateras of Huayapam may be up in arms that you now know the ingredients of tejate, you are not any closer to making the beverage at home. Each ingredient must be roasted to perfection on a comal and then ground. The resulting flours are then turned into a homogenous dough. It is the sorcery of the tejatera to use nothing but a bare forearm and ice water to turn that dough into a delicious tejate.
In the late morning, when the tejateras are setting up shop in the markets of Oaxaca City, you can see the magic in action. Slowly, the women combine the pre-made dough with ice water in their clay basins. Their hands circles the side of the basin, tejate paste plastering their arms. It is a gradual, patient process of mixing and churning. Only the trained Oaxacan hand can create true tejate properly.
During the massaging process, acids in the cacao bind together with other ingredients and come out of the solution as soft, floating islands of incredible delicateness. I have not been able to find any chemical explanations for the phenomenon, so I consider it to be a miracle of gastronomy. The foam is called the flower of tejate, from the Spanish flor de tejate, which likely derives from the Zapotec ghilo cu’uhb meaning the same thing. (Soleri et al)
Liquid tejate has a mellow chocolate flavor with a strong body from the corn meal. But then there is the foam. The flower of tejate, in my opinion, represents the apotheosis of chocolate consumption. This pre-Hispanic knowledge combines cacao and local ingredients to form weightless chunks that melt on your tongue. There is no semblance of cacao’s bitterness. It is an expression of chocolate I have tasted nowhere else delivered in a package of custardy, floral bliss.
Both tejate and agua de chilacayota represent an ancient part of Oaxacan gastronomy. They are tainted by the mestizaje of post-Columbian life only by the presence of sugar. So, should you pass through the streets of Oaxaca, don’t just drink the mezcal. Try these beverages as well.
It’s easy! They’re often sold together.
Los Atoles de Acapetlahuaya: Comidas y bebidas tradicionales, Roda Roman Lagunas, Consejo nacional para la cultura y las artes dirección general de culturas populares unidad regional guerrero, 1991, Editorial CARSA, S.A. Jaime Torres Bodet, Col. Sta. Ma. La Ribera.
Soleri, Daniela, David A. Cleveland, and Flavio Aragón Cuevas. “Food globalization and local diversity: The case of Tejate.” Current Anthropology 49.2 (2008): 281-290.
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