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I didn't know I was going to end up reading about Marxism.... But I suppose that it would be near impossible to read a book that was just about cacau. This is the first book I've ever read in Portuguese, and reading the book in its original language was definitely a very enlightening experience. However, aside from the written language of the book Cacau was also eye-opening in its reflections on class conflicts and the condition of the workers on plantations in southern Brazil. I read much of the book at the same time as reading Toni Morrison's Beloved, and though the treatment of laborers varies in its level of harshness it is still harrowing to see how much similarity there is in the abysmal condition of the labor in early 1900s, both in Brazil and in the United States. We can find the discrimination based on color that still pervades brazilian culture with the deification of the Coronel's children because of their golden hair, and how this even elevates José, our narrator the Sergipano in spite of his position as a laborar. One character doesn't even beat around the bush when he tells Honório- the stereotypically ignorant black hitman - that he would kill himself if he was black even for a minute. Perhaps this can shed some light on the class conflicts and the perception of blacks as murderers and thugs that has spawned an atmosphere of "guilty until proven innocent" for many black brazilians today. Perhaps it can explain media that is almost bare of the culture diversity that Brazil is world renowned for. Cacau is not a love story, and very little of it has to do with the cacau at the end too.