Read the fine print on a can of commercial antiartacker spray, and you may discover it's one of the brands that use capsaicinoids as the active ingredient. For centuries people have used chiles in place of cash. In pre-Columbian Mexico, Indians paid their taxes in chiles. After the Spanish took over from the Aztecs, the conquerors continued to accept chiles as taxes. In northern New Mexico in the late 1700s, with one ristra of chiles you could buy a deerskin, a pair of shoes, a pound of chocolate, three dozen eggs, a yard of linen, or a nannygoat.
Chiles serve a literary function, too.
Writers as diverse as Amy Tan, Martin Cruz Smith, Marc Talbert, and Zora Neale Hursron have seasoned their fiction with chiles. In the fiction-devouring decades before and after World War 1, writers like Amanda Marhews Chase and Lucia E. Smith sometimes used chiles, or chili stew, as a major ingredient in their short stories. But the most famous literary use of chiles comes from master storyteller O. Henry, who wrote a fictional piece about the chili stew of San Antonio, Texas. That ees the secret. Everee month you must eat it, having care to do so before the moon is full, and you will not die any times.