Como Agua Para Chocolate

 

 

 

 

 

 Like Water for Chocolate is a popular novel, published in 1989 by first-time Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel. The novel follows the story of a young girl named Tita who longs her entire life for her lover, Pedro, but can never have him because of her domineering mother's traditional belief that the youngest daughter must not marry but instead care for her parents. Tita is only able to express her passions and feelings through her cooking, which causes the people who taste it to experience what she feels. The novel was originally published in Spanish as Como agua para chocolate and has been translated into thirty languages; there are over three million copies in print worldwide. The novel makes heavy use of magical realism.

 

 

The novel was made into a film in 1993. It earned all 11 Ariel awards of the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures and became the highest grossing foreign film ever released in the United States at the time.

The book is divided into twelve sections named after the months of the year. Each section begins with a recipe of some sort, usually involving Mexican foods. The chapters outline the preparation of the dish and ties it to an event in the protagonist's life.

 

Young Tita de la Garza, the novel's protagonist, is merely fifteen at the start of the events in the story, which take place in the era of the Mexican Revolution. She lives with her iron-fisted mother, Mama Elena, and her older sisters Gertrudis and Rosaura, on a ranch near the Mexico-US border.

 

Tita's admirer, Pedro Muzquiz, comes to ask for her hand in marriage, but Mama Elena forbids it on the grounds of the De la Garza family tradition, which demands that the youngest daughter (in this case Tita) must remain unmarried and take care of her mother until death. Pedro then reluctantly marries Tita's older sister Rosaura instead, and a distraught Tita can hardly keep from being grieved, even though Pedro maintains it is Tita he loves and not Rosaura.

Tita has a love of the kitchen and a sharp connection with food of any sort, a skill her sister lacks. Tita unconsciously begins to use the power of food to draw Pedro away from Rosaura, with the rest of the family and hired help becoming pawns in the scheme.

 

As the story unfolds, Pedro begins to fall under the developing spell of romance caused by Tita's kitchen skills. But side effects do result, as when Rosaura and Pedro are forced to leave for San Antonio, Texas at the urging of Mama Elena, who is firmly against a Tita-Pedro union, and Rosaura loses her son Roberto and is later made sterile after complications with the birth of daughter Esperanza. Meanwhile, Tita's elder sister Gertrudis accidentally becomes affected by Tita's culinary delights and leaves the ranch naked with a revolutionary soldier (though she returns at the head of a revolutionary army).

Upon learning the news of her nephew's death, whom she cared for herself, Tita blames her mother; Mama Elena responds by beating Tita furiously with a wooden spoon. Tita, not wanting to cope with her mother's controlling ways, secludes herself in a dovecote until the sympathetic Dr. John Brown reasons her to come down. Mama Elena clearly states that there is no place for "lunatics" like Tita on the farm, and wants her to be institutionalized. However, the Doctor decides to take care of Tita at his home instead. Tita eventually enters into a relationship with Dr. Brown, even planning to marry him at one point, but she cannot shake her feelings for Pedro.

 

After the removal of all obstacles to the Tita-Pedro union, the lovers finally share a night of bliss that is so heated and passionate that Pedro actually dies while making love to Tita. Their passions then spark a fire that engulfs them both, leading to their deaths in union and the total destruction of the ranch. The narrator of the story is the descendant of Tita's niece (Pedro and Rosaura's daughter, Esperanza Muzquiz) and Dr. Brown's son, Alex, who marry at the conclusion of the story. The narrator then says that all that was found under the smouldering rubble of the ranch was Tita's cookbook, which contained all the recipes described in the preceding chapters.