Atole de Pataxte de Arroyo de Banco

This is from Arroyo de Banco, a small community in the Papaloapan basin of southern Veracruz, on the lowland side of the river that splits the state from Oaxaca. Not from Veracruz the city. Not from Xalapa. From the rural, Afro-Mexican and indigenous Mazatec corner of the state where the cacao trees grow alongside the corn and where November is the month the dead come home.

The ingredient that defines this atole is pataxte, Theobroma bicolor, a pale cousin of cacao with a thick white shell and a flavor that has nothing to do with chocolate. Floral. Slightly smoky. Cured tobacco and dried jasmine in the same sip. The women of Arroyo de Banco bury the pods in damp earth or pack the beans in clay tinajas wrapped in banana leaf for two to four months, and that long fermentation is what turns pataxte from a bitter wild seed into something worthy of the altar. Unfermented pataxte is not the ingredient. Cacao is not the ingredient. If your vendor cannot tell you when and how the beans were fermented, find a different vendor. Si no conoces el mercado, no conoces la cocina.

This atole is made once a year. The first days of November, when the marigolds are cut and the bread of the dead is baked and the altars go up in the houses along the river. The jarritos of pataxte sit beside the photographs of the muertos because the dead recognize the smell. That is what the senoras in Tlacotalpan told me when I went looking for the recipe in 2017, and I wrote it down exactly the way they said it.

My mother never made this. She was from Jalisco and she made champurrado with dark chocolate and never knew pataxte existed. Most Mexicans have not tasted it. That is the point of the work. Esto no es comida de un solo Mexico. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and inside each state there are towns like Arroyo de Banco where the recipe is held by twenty women and dies if nobody writes it down.