Avoiding the Aztec Taboo of the Fifth Pulque

Dona Chenchita Pouring Pulque

SAN LUIS POTOSI, SL—Six hours and four liters of pulque later, I watch through watering eyes as a steady stream of white liquid spews from my mouth. The vomit spatters into the dry desert dust at the base of a prickly pear cactus. I’d stumbled off into the cactus orchard when I felt that my stomach was finally going to turn from all the pulque I had drunk. I hurried past two huge magueyes pulqueros, the variety of agave that produce the kind of sap that ferments into this ancient Mexican beverage I had in my stomach. I thought about how those massive teal plants did this to me, but I made no accusations. It’s okay to puke from pulque. At least it is here in the desert soil. 

See, after four liters of the still fermenting, natural drink, my stomach was distended. Many Mexicans talk about how pulque cleanses the intestines. This discomfort, I decided, must be part of the experience. Indeed, as I’m watering the cactus, I think about the 50 gallon barrel from which Doña Chenchita, the woman who has owned Pulquería Flor de Mexquitic for the last 22 years, scoops each liter of pulque. It is crowned with a thick and quivering foam. That foam is now inside of meself–replicating, creating CO2 bubbles, busting through the turns of my intestines. One way or another, I have to let it out.

Pulque fermenting
Pulque continues to ferment and bubble in both the cup and your stomach

Four liters of pulque. Each one served in a rotund clay jug which we cover between sips with a wooden shingle because the desert flies flock to anything with the sheen of liquid. Black dots buzz around the eyes of horses lazing beneath an arbol de Peru, around the wound of a pitaya fruit recently split by the sun’s heat high up on an organ pipe cactus, and around the fine white foam of this natural pulque.

Before the pulque, we had arrived here before any other local drinkers had shown up, sometime around noon. The place wasn’t easy to find. My friend, who happened to be a taxi driver, had driven 20 minutes outside of the city of San Luis Potosí to a small dusty town. We asked at every corner after the pulquería we knew to be there. We passed a shop that sold caldo de rata, a soup made with a kind of wild desert rat. This was certifiably the countryside.

Eventually, we turned down a dirt road with some unfinished cinder block structures lining it. We thought we were mistaken and considered turning around to try a different road. But, as we bumped through the hard ruts of orange dirt, we turned a corner and saw little ranch. A vinyl sign was tied to the wall: Pulquería Flor de Mexquitic.

Our intentions, when we arrived, were just to try the product. It is uncommon to get pulque that you know is 100% pure. For over 100 years, Mexicans have complained about adulteration of the ancestral beverage. Charlatan vendors can cut the fermented agave sap with liquor, water, or the goo of cacti. But in a place like this in the countryside, all you have is agave sap and your reputation. Plus, rural joints don’t mess around with curados, or flavored pulque. They just sell the natural stuff of the ancestral variety.

After our first liter of the drink, we felt outgoing and took up company with some day laborers who hadn’t found employment that morning. For the next couple of hours, we kept going back to Doña Chenchita for more pulque. She ladled out liter after liter thinking nothing of it.

Transfering Pulque
A customer storing old pulque to ferment into something stronger at home

After two liters, we settled in a bit more comfortably on the worn-out and stained sofa they had there. My friend went off for a bit to use the bathroom as the pulque had already hit his intestines. He returned, joking that he had been “meditating.” We laughed with understanding. 

We were drinking outside, sheltered from the desert sun only by the shade of a slanted roof of corrugated plastic and the refreshment of our pulque. The drink here was more liquid than some of the pulque I had drank in Mexico City, which can be so thick as to be stringy. It was tart too, symptomatic of the acetic acid bacteria that coexists with yeast in Chenchita’s great barrel. Without refrigeration out here, fermentation runs rampant. The vinegar note, though, quenches the thirst even more. 

As we sipped the agave drink, I got to know the other men drinking the Monday afternoon away. They talked about consuming natural things. Pulque, marijuana, mushrooms. They discussed the things that their Mesoamerican ancestors consumed (all of those things.) They praised the pulque here as pure and fresh, scraped from an agave that very morning for our enjoyment. One man chopped a node of prickly pear cactus off and despined it. He wiped the table with his hand, plopped the green oval on the table, diced it, sprinkled some salt, and we had ourselves a gooey drinking snack. 

Everything in a place like this is from the land. The only other snacks to be had at the pulquería are squash seeds roasted and salted. The spiky green explosions around us are the pulque agaves that provided the drink from which we slowly became drunk and distended. It’s an oozy and primordial drunkenness with elements that beer and liquor don’t seem to have. It’s not just in the brain. You feel an abnormally intense bond of brotherhood, a peaceful and woozy vibe, a deeper connection to the land. The stomach distention is a hard and uneasy pudge in the abdomen, often requiring a bathroom or, as I found out, the trunk of a cactus. The drink is alcoholic, but it is also alive. As the day wears on, the mother barrel of pulque is increasingly more boozy. As the day wears on, the brain is increasingly woozy.

Agave with graffiti
Maguey pulquero, usually of the species A. Salmiana, grows right next to the pulqueria

But there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the natural aspects of pulque. The Aztecs knew it all too well, although they were often very sober people. The rules of the empire scared the drinker away from his octli, as pulque would have been called before the Spanish arrived here.

Priests were allowed to drink it, but if they got drunk, they were flogged. The elite class could lose status for the same offense. But those without power, especially young, unmarried folks, faced worse consequences. Several penalties varied in severity from the forced cutting of the hair (hair kept the soul inside the body) to public beatings. Worse still, drunkards faced expulsion from the Aztec community and, according to at least one source, death by strangulation in a special house called a tepuxcali.

As we went on to order our third and fourth liters of the tart, alcoholic fermentation, we were toeing the line set by the Mesoamerican drinkers before us, but we never transgressed the great Aztec taboo, the Fifth Pulque, or macuilloctli.

Pulqueria Flor de Mexquitic

Aztec legend tells of the king of Tula, named Quetzalcoatl, and three courtiers, Tezcatlipoca, Ihhuimecatl, and Toltecatl, who brought their king the original invention of pulque. Quetzalcoatl drank the novel ferment and liked it, He asked for another cup. Feeling drunk, he told his servants to call for his sister so that she could try the drink too.

After drinking five cups, the siblings slept together, breaking the ancient incest taboo. The following morning, the king awoke and realized his transgression. He left his capital forever and wandered the southern reaches of Mexico until he died and transformed into the morning star, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli. The morning star would go on to haunt those who forsook society for eternity. 

Within the religious cult of pulque or octli in Aztec times, the Fifth Pulque held weight as well. The priest of Patecatl, one of the pulque gods, prepared the Fifth Pulque and brought it to the priest of Toltecatl (the same name which appears in the Tula myth, also a pulque god.) This macuilloctli was a sacred cup and was consumed during the festival of Panquetzaliztli.

Even though I found myself vomiting on a cactus, we only drank four liters of pulque. We broke not the taboo of the ancient beverage. At the worst, I became drunk and watered some thirsty plants with a bit of my own pulque. But, as pulque ferments inside of you, the pressure builds. At the end of the day, it’s all natural and the ancestors knew it. 

jars of pulque

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