SANTIAGO MATATLÁN, OA–As the sun rises over Santiago Matatlán, jornalero day-laborers blow cigarette smoke into the everpresent smog that hovers above the Oaxacan landscape. Around town, dozens of pit ovens are regularly filled with firewood, stones, and agave hearts before they are covered with tarps, leaves, and soil. The earthen cap on the ovens slowly emits plumes of the candied charcoal precursor to the famed aroma of the region’s mezcal. On the side of the highway, the jornaleros bide their time, hoping one of the land-owning palenqueros will come by in a pick-up truck looking for labor.
I’ve come out to Santiago Matatlán, the so-called “Mezcal Capital of the World,” to ask these workers, not about mezcal, but about gusanos, or worms. In Oaxaca, as in other parts of Mexico, moth larvae (most often of the species Comadia redtenbacheri) invade the root systems of agaves destined for the mezcal industry. The larvae, called gusanos, are a delicacy in traditional Oaxacan gastronomy. They make appearances in snacks, chili salt, stews, and even tacos. Famously, they also float around in many bottles of mezcal.
I’ve come to speak with these workers because I have a problem: there seems to be a great dissonance in how beverage media dismisses the mezcal worm as an invention of the modern industrialist and in how the worms are coveted as delicacies by the most traditional and indigenous communities in Mexico. I’ve come to Oaxaca’s mezcal mecca in hopes of clarifying the story of the little red insect. I’ve come to look for worms.
In 1791, Antonio Pineda submitted a report to the Spanish crown that included the mention of a drink called tecolio. Tecoles, according to the report, were a kind of agave worm that were toasted and ground into dust. They were then mixed with pulque, the fermented sap of certain species of agave, and consumed as a light alcoholic beverage.
Pulque, of course, is the ancestral precursor of modern distilled drinks like mezcal and tequila. Nowadays, most flavored pulques are just called curados, but long lists of unique names exist in the annals of colonial Mexican history. Sangre de conejo added the blood-red juice of prickly pear fruits, charángua featured starch, chiles, and toasted corn husks, and chilocle contained ancho chiles, salt, garlic, and the herb epazote. Adding gusanos to pulque is exceedingly plausible.
Pineda’s mention of tecolio is isolated, but makes sense. Tlachiqueros, the artisans who have made pulque for what is likely thousands of years, would have known when their agave (a decade long period of maturation for cultivated specimens) was infected with the worms. And the worms taste and smell strong. Your agave is sick! Why not eat the disease?
Obliquely related to the worm flavored pulque, La Patria published a story in 1893 stating, “In Mexico it has been more than 20 years that a pulquería exists that has the name (chilocuiles), although it is not written properly, rather as: “Los Xilocuioles,” with an x, as it is written with a ch, then it gives the etymological result, which is that of ‘red worms.’” (La Patria, 1893-07-11) The Nahuatl name for the worms, chilocuil, actually means chili worm. Still, a pulque bar in the 1870s had intentionally associated itself with the gusanos for some reason.
During the Porfiriato regime at the turn of the 20th century, the pulquería was the predominant drinking institution in Mexico, but the traditional fermented agave beverage began to give way to domestic beer and imported spirits following the Mexican Revolution. While we cannot say how common the gusano was in pulquerías, we have some anecdotal evidence of their connection. We can, however, see that they became popular in the Mexican cantina in the coming decades.
By the mid 1920s, worms were entering the pan-Mexican diet. Newspapers describe villagers carrying mixiote agave-skin sacs of worms to urban centers to sell during this decade. By the 1930s, the gusano had become a cantina staple. On August 4th, 1935, La Prensa explained that the worms were most popular in “the cantinas and Mexican restaurants, where they are served to the clientele in the form of a ‘snack.’” In 1934, El Nacional published a description of a party in Antwerp, Belgium after a show at the Théâtre Royal Français. An attendee named Rafael Torres remarked that “Mr. Burgmestre even sang, but not before having tasted, with the accompaniment of ‘worm salt’ a ‘Flor’ mezcal from Potosí.” (El Nacional, Jul 29, 1934) In the 1930s, the worm salt and mezcal pairing you can find at America’s trendiest mezcal bars today was already international!
But none of these examples put the worm in the mezcal bottle. Turns out, in what seems to be the oldest mention of the practice we know about in writing today, a 1931 dissertation titled “Los Chilocuiles o Gusanitos de la Sal De Oaxaca,” by Leopoldo Ancona H. discussed the topic specifically. In the text, the researcher writes, “The same worms are used by the natives of the region in Mitla and Ocotlán to impart a smooth ‘bouquet’ to certain wines and mezcals of local production.” (Ancona H. p270) He specifically says the worm is for flavor. Not only does this predate any industrial version of the gusano in mezcal, it also orients the practice in traditional communities just a 10 minute drive from Santiago Matatlán.
Almost a century after the dissertation was published, back in Santiago Matatlán, a jornalero named Eusevio from the nearby hill town of San Baltazar Guelavila supplements his income with the collection and sale of the red worms. He and the other workers are locals from Zapotec communities that fan off into the hills on the flanks of the government highway. They switch into Spanish from their mother tongue to speak with me, although they explain that “agave worm” is “bé’ld dóob” in Zapoteco.
“The gusanos are taken from the bottom of the agave that is already rotten.” He explains, “From there they are put in mezcal bottles. When we go to the cutting, we round up gusanos and sell them to palenqueros. The gusano does not belong to the owner of the land.”
Eusevio tells me that he can collect around 2,000 worms in a season which is largely during the rains of August and September. In the countryside, each gusano sells for 2-3 pesos. In the city, that number can balloon to 5 pesos per worm (and who knows how much American tourists pay in Oaxaca City!) At the base of the supply chain, the day-laborer stands to make a couple hundred US dollars off of the red worms each year.
Naom, a second Zapotec jornalero, chimes in, “The agaves that are reddish or yellowish have worms in the hearts. It’s a bit of a plague, because it doesn’t allow the agave to grow, but it’s good for the mezcal because it gives a good flavor.” Indeed, many of the shops selling mezcal around town have a selection of worm-infused bottles. Plague or not, the palenqueros generally agree: los gusanos dan sabor.
“They are scarce,” Continues Naom, “There’s not many. Not every agave has them. And the fumigation kills them. For this reason it is expensive. It’s something exotic to use in salt or food.”
When it comes to collecting the worms, the workers paint two pictures for me. Firstly, when they are out cutting the agaves, they sometimes find the worms in the stems and roots. Out of convenience, they collect them. Secondly, during the rainy season, the worms come out of the agave and squirm in the soil. At this point, some opportunists from town scavenge for the red insects in the fields. Additionally, Kawahara et al report the practice of extracting the larvae with a hook or agave spine to get the worms without cutting the agave, but this may not be common in the Mitla region. It is a decidedly labor intensive industry.
Still there is a third option, although it is more controversial according to local tastes—farm-raised gusanos.
Between Oaxaca City and Santiago Matatlán, sits the large market town of Tlacolula. With dreams of finding gusano vendors, I take a cooperative taxi there. Within minutes of entering the warehouse-like market, I meet Leticia Santiago Cruz. On the edge of a walkway leaving the vegetable section, she maintains a small table covered in dried edible insects and salts flavored with dust from their bodies, chili, and lime. Her worms are fastened through the middle on a thread, like a necklace (a practice Ancona H. observed in Mitla in his 1931 dissertation.) She tells me that she has been selling insects at the market for 8 years, but her experience with gusanos is far more extensive.
“These are true agave worms,” she points to her stock, “they look a bit ugly but they’re the real thing. There are other worms that are bigger and red, these are harvested and grown in the house. But it’s not the same thing as these.” Her main complaint against the farm-raised worms? They don’t taste as strong.
“They’re fed apples and the leaves of a plant called San Pablo. It’s a big leaf that holds a lot of water.” She elaborates, “They seem real, but they’re bigger. And they don’t work for anything because if you put them in mezcal, they rot. These real ones don’t, they are preserved.”
Santiago Cruz sources her worms from local foragers during the rainy season, but she has first hand experience trying to raise the delicacies herself. “I used to raise gusanos in the house, but to raise them in the house you must have a lot of patience,” She warns against the nasty consequences of mismanaging your worms. Flies can lay eggs in the worm enclosures. Maggots take over. You can’t tell the difference until it’s too late. She was a careful keeper, explaining, “If the fly does catch on, they will grow, but it’s purely fly larvae. So I had my worms in a square container and I covered it with a napkin with tiny holes so that the flies couldn’t enter.”
The concern about farm-raised worms seems to be as old as the commercial use of worms in mezcal. On March 25, 1953 El Informador painted an unsanitary picture of worm growing operations:
“The breeding of counterfeit worms is done in cesspools watered with blood, vinegar, urine, and putrid water that are partitioned with walls. The larvae obtained through such a disgusting procedure are placed in ‘mixiotes’ [agave skin] so that they have a good appearance. Another less harmful procedure, but no less thieving, is to sell bags with a few worms and the rest is ‘xaxtle’ [pulque dregs] and waste leaves, which the passenger buys innocently and does not realize the trick until he gets home.”
A 2010 study by Llanderal-Cazares et al actually looked at the feasibility of growing worms on agaves inside greenhouses. Rumors in Oaxaca say it is being done at scale in Hidalgo state today.
Why is there such a demand for the red worms that a counterfeit market has arisen? “The mezcaleros buy a lot of worms to put in the mezcal,” answers Santiago Cruz from her worm stall, “because of this there is mezcal de gusanito, and various flavors. It tastes like gusano. If you taste this worm here, you’ll see the flavor.”
The demand is in the bizarre taste. The worms are unctuous, pungent, and always salty. A crunchy caviar with a bulbous body. But the supply is miniscule. In 2023, the community of San Luis Atolotitlán put a moratorium on worm harvesting due to scarcity. (Mixteca Noticias) Exploitation and fumigation of agave fields have diminished populations. Perhaps, greenhouse worms could be the future.
There’s a fly in my soup is the cliched complaint of the disappointed diner, but what of the worm in the drinker’s mezcal bottle?
A million beliefs exist about the gusano de mezcal—on both sides of the border. Mexicans will tell their friends to drink until the worm, meaning to finish a drink or drink it to the bottom. Americans sometimes say the worm has psychedelic properties or is good luck. The worm has lived quite a life in the age of commercial mezcal, but we can’t only talk about the last century.
Most indigenous peoples in Mexico have names for the worms, pointing to their antiquated use. The Nahnu Otomi people of Hidalgo call them thenk’ue, the Nahuas chinicuil, the Tarahumara meoqui, and the Zapotec bé’ld dóob.
It seems likely that the famous red agave worms have long been used as a seasoning, including in beverages. The exact date on which a mezcalero first decided to add a worm to distilled mezcal is unknowable, but it is important to understand that the tradition came from the Mexican countryside and not the industrial core. Popular media stories about some man named Jacobo Lozano Páez in the 1950s don’t begin to answer the worm question.
So drink your mezcal, and swallow your worm. Have no qualms about whether the worm is supposed to be in the bottle. The worm lives in the agave. Let it lay to rest in the agave too.
Ancona H., Leopoldo. (1931). “Los chilocuiles o gusanitos de la sal de Oaxaca”. (Tesis de Maestría). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México. Recuperado de https://repositorio.unam.mx/contenidos/105229
http://132.248.9.195/ptb2010/agosto/0660370/0660370_A1.pdf
La Farmacia. 1 Aug. 1924, p. 493.
El Informador, 25 March, 1953.
Kawahara, Akito Y., et al. “Mezcal Worm in a Bottle: DNA Evidence Suggests a Single Moth Species.” PeerJ (San Francisco, CA), vol. 11, 2023, pp. e14948–e14948, https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14948.
Llanderal-Cazares, Celina, et al. “Establecimiento Del Gusano Rojo En Plantas de Maguey En Invernadero.” Acta Zoologica Mexicana, vol. 26, no. 1, 2010, pp. 25–31, https://doi.org/10.21829/azm.2010.261677.
Lozano Armendares, Teresa. “El Chinguirito Vindicado: El contrabando de aguardiente de caña y la política colonial.” UNAM, 1995, DF.
Mixteca Noticias, May 26 2023.
El Nacional. 29 Jul 1934.
La Patria. La Fecha, 11 Jul. 1893.
La Prensa, Aug 4th 1935.
Salinas Pedraza, Jesus. “Testimonio de un Otomi.” Artes de Mexico, no. 51, 2000, pp. 30-45. Maguey, Reproducciones Fotomecanicas, S.A. de C.V., CDMX.
Wilson, Iris H., and Antonio Pineda. “Pineda’s Report on the Beverages of New Spain.” Arizona and the West, vol. 5, no. 1, 1963, pp. 79–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40167046. Accessed 28 June 2023.
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