Tequila has come of age in America. According to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, it is now the third most consumed spirit in the country behind vodka and whiskey. This is a staggering fact considering that tequila is controlled by a Designation of Origin specific to only 5 of Mexico’s 32 states (and only certain areas in 4 of those 5), while vodka and whiskey can be made anywhere. The drink’s popularity is remarkable and speaks volumes to the storied craftsmanship of its Mexican producers. The men and women who farm espadín, roast the great hearts of agaves, and oversee the fermentation and distillation of the pulp are to credit for the ultimate success of tequila. These workers make proud a rich heritage of agave farmers and craftspeople that date back thousands of years.
The workers of the tequila industry represent more than just Mexican culture though. This industry is symptomatic of a melding of cultures; the syncretization of Old World distillation with New World fermentation. With the stills that originally arrived from the Philippines on the Manila Galleons, agave farmers could make tequila. Before this, though, the agave and the farmer had another relationship. Tequila is a modern spirit, but ancient indigenous Mexicans knew how to ferment the agave as well. These men and women were known as tlachiqueros and made the drink the Aztecs, pulque. Today they represent a folk tradition that is built into the cultural heritage of the Mexican land and people.
Tequila is made after the hearts of agave are uprooted, roasted, mashed, and fermented. Pulque, the original agave alcohol, is born of an entirely different process. Rather than uprooting the mature agave plant, the cultivators of agave wait for the plant to effloresce. Agave are nearly all monocarpic, meaning they flower only once in their lives, then they die. Just before flowering, the agave grows a massive stem. The tlachiquero chops the stem, not wanting to waste any of the plant’s energy on growth and blooming. The newly castrated plant is then left for 4-6 months before the tlachiquero can perform his namesake duty.
When the agave has rested for some months and has begun to discolor, the sharp leaves are pruned away so that the center of the plant is more easily accessed. With a special spoon, typically made of hammered metal, the tlachiquero scrapes (tlachiquiliztli in Aztec’s Nahuatl) the flesh from the center of the agave. Then “el maguey llora,” the agave cries. The sweet sap of the plant oozes out of the wound and is sucked up by the tlachiquero in a hollowed out gourd known as an acocote (from the Nahuatl acocohtli). Scraping and sucking continue twice a day for 3-6 months. A healthy agave can exude up to 7 liters a day and could yield upwards of 420 liters of sap before it dies of exhaustion. The scraping method ensures that one agave, which can take a decade or more to mature, will provide far more sap than it ever contained at one time.
Some agave species were especially well equipped for this process. Agave mapsiaga is huge and is more approachable as it has flexible spines. Agave atrovirens, commonly known as maguey verde grande, is the largest of the agave species and is known for its pulque making potential.
The tlachiqueros collect their sap and pass it off to arrieros or muleteers who bring the haul back to processing buildings. The aquamiel or sap might be carried in a goat skin and then poured into larger vats known as tinacales. In these vats, the sap is left to ferment and may be supplemented with roots for color and viscosity. Once the liquid has fermented for 1 to 2 weeks, it can be sold at a pulquería by a pulquero. Drinkers might consume the white liquor out of any one of 15 different measures of pulque, the most traditional of which is the jicara or bowl.
The tlachiquero had been around since the days of the Aztecs, and likely before. The Teotihuacano already worshipped a god of some type of pulque by 200 BCE to 100 CE. Yet this bucolic occupation really came of age when it met modernity. During the Porfiriato which lasted in Mexico from 1876-1910, the country was rapidly modernized by its urbane strong man. Electricity lit up cities, cars graced road, and railroads connected previously remote country sides with cities. Pulque went from the donkey to the train, and Mexico City is estimated to have consumed about 67,000 liters every day.
This guzzling was not all good. The encroachment of modern urban areas on the folkways of the tlachiqueros has had negative consequences. The modernization of the Porfiriato benefited the middle and upper class, but left more campesinos just as poor, or worse off than before. Tlachiqueros and other farmers left their traditional occupations to join the burgeoning market economy as bus drivers and factory workers.
Today, pulque’s child tequila is slowly committing the Oedipal crime over jealousy for mother agave. The tequila industry consumes unprecedented quantities of agave, which takes a decade to mature and requires intensive manual labor. The payoff to the distillation barons is high and corruption leads to illegal uses of agave. This means that plants are being consumed prematurely or plants are being hauled in from areas outside the Designation of Origin. Either way, the industry steals up the agaves before the tlachiquero can even chop off a stem.
Mexico knows that it must save the knowledge and folkways of this ancient occupation. Pulque was a sacred beverage before the Spanish arrived. Since the Conquest, however, alcohol has become largely untethered from its previous cultural significance and the higher-proof tequila serves its purpose famously. The proverb “a acocote nuevo, tlachiquero viejo” (literally “a new gourd, an old scraper”) signifies the need for experience in the face of new challenges. This advise seems appropriate for the tlachiqueros tribulations. Perhaps what the he needs today is nothing more than the thousands of years of cultural experience and knowledge to guide him and his agaves into the future.
AGUADO, ALBINO. Los Mexicanos Pintados Por Si Mismos, Tipos y Costumbres Nacionales. Murguia, 1854, https://archive.org/details/losmexicanospint00mexi/page/14/mode/2up.
Arreola, Irais. Tequila: Designation of Origin., https://www.casasauza.com/everything-about-tequila/tequila-denomination-origin.
BROTONS, Mª Lucía NAVARRO. “Traduire la langue, traduire la culture. Le cas des proverbes multiculturels mexicains ayant des voix du nahuatl.”
De la Colonia a la actualidad: La Colonia: El siglo XIX; El Siglo XX. (2018). Arqueologia Mexicana. Edicion Especial., (78), 76-89.
Hinke, Nina, and URSULA BERNATH. “Breve Léxico del maguey.” Ciencias 046 (2007).
“Tequila Volume Overtakes Bourbon and Rum in the US – Why?” IWSR, 29 July 2021, https://www.theiwsr.com/tequila-volume-overtakes-bourbon-and-rum-in-the-us-why/.
Vela, Enrique. “El Pulque Prehispanico: REGALO DE LOS DIOSES. .” Arqueologia Mexicana. Edicion Especial, no. 78, Feb. 2018, pp. 8–47.
Villaseñor Salinas, Rocio. “Uso social del patrimonio cultural y la mejora de la calidad de vida, entre el ideal romántico y el escenario real caso: el oficio del Tlachiquero en mineral de la reforma y Epazoyucan Hidalgo-México.” (2014).
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