Laura Esquivel's novel Like Water For Chocolate takes a generally apolitical stance toward the civil war under way in the turn-of-the-century Mexico depicted in the book. This apolitical stance is not from any lack of passion on the part of the major characters in the book, but is rather due to the fact that their great passions incline toward more immediate concerns, namely food and sex.
When the rebels come to Mama Elena's ranch, it is telling that the primary subject discussed is not politics, or revolution, or liberation, or oppression, but food. Mama Elena has heard bad things about these rebels, and she prepares herself with guns to protect herself and her own:
Mama Elena immediately picked up her shotgun. . . . No one had ever had anything good to say about these revolutionaries. . . . They had told her how the rebels entered houses, destroyed everything, and raped all the women in their path. She ordered Tita, Chencha, and the pig to stay hidden in the cellar (84-85).
It is telling that she hides the pig along with her daughters so that the revolutionaries would not rape the girls of eat the pig. Mama Elena, like the other major characters in the book, even a number of soldiers, is not much interested in the political issues of the day. It is also telling that her first fears, upon hearing that the rebels were on their way to her ranch, were not for the lives of her family, but for her possessions and her food supply. As she cleaned her shotgun, "she plotted how to hide her valuables from the greed and gluttony of these men" (84).
In a single paragraph, Esquivel shifts smoothly from a discussion of the confrontation with the soldiers to a recipe for cooking and preserving chickens (88). At no time in the visit of the revolutionaries to the ranch was politics discussed. Again, what matters to these people is food and sex.
At all points, the passion for sex and/or food overshadows any consideration of political iss...