Iberians in colonial Mexico delighted in American chocolate. Mateo, Mariana’s Iberian born brother in law, drank and ate so much chocolate that her father asked him what doctors in Spain thought about chocolate. Mateo, who argued that Spanish food was better than Mexican, replied, “blessed be the Lord because he put on the earth blessed chocolate, and the doctors say that there is nothing better in the world on which one can get fat, and because fat is pretty, we all eat a lot of chocolate.” (Dario de Mariana: La vida de una joven en la sociedad colonial del siglo xvii, editorial por Carmen Saucedo Zarco (México, D.F.: Editorial Planeta Mexicana, 2000)