In the boot prints of Spanish conquistadors, disease, destruction, and death invaded the hearts of great Mesoamerican empires. Above all else, religion was singled out by the Catholic clergy who came from a land controlled by the Inquisition. These scholarly men of the cloth intentionally learned about indigenous culture and religion in order to destroy the heresy they represented. Libraries of indigenous texts burned, priestly classes were murdered, and, in the Yucatan peninsula, the pitarilla tree was chopped down wherever it grew. The destruction of generational knowledge and the genocide of cultural leaders were universal tactics of the harsh Spanish invasion, but what did a humble tree do to deserve the indictment of heresy?
As it turns out, this indigenous tree was the cornerstone of a traditional Mayan practice, common to both the Yucatan and Lacandon peoples. From its bark a culturally important drink was made known as balché, which was the indigenous name of the tree. While the Maya drank balché for both social and religious purposes, the Spanish wanted to take no risks and decided to eliminate the problem at the root (in this case bark). If there were no pitarilla trees, nobody could make the alcoholic beverage to begin with. The heresy of the Maya would be chopped down one tree at a time.
Balché was the foremost drink in Mayan social and religious life. They traditionally used only three ingredients to brew the mildly boozy drink: water, honey, and the bark of the balché tree. Simple enough, but each of these ingredients was sourced in a way unique to the Maya.
The most basic of the ingredients, water, was no ordinary H20. Special ‘virgin water’ or Zuhuy Ha was sourced at dawn from sacred cenotes where fresh water naturally pooled underground. Appointed men or religious leaders would draw water from the holes where women were strictly prohibited from ever going. These natural wells would sometimes be capped with limestone to keep them pure.
The second ingredient, honey, was also quintessentially Mayan. The Maya were expert beekeepers and practiced meliponiculture or the rearing of stingless bees native to the Yucatan. It was common for an aspiring apiary to go out into the jungle in search of hardwood tree such as the gum-producing Sapotaceae or the ya’ax nik (Vitex gaumeri) in which a bee hive already existed. The colonized section of the tree was cut and brought back to a garden to be set on a tripod or suspended by ropes. These logs were closed on either end with clay disks which could block out rain and predators and were sometimes rubbed with Bursera simaruba, a natural repellent to other insects. A hole was also drilled in the middle of the log so the bees could come and go freely. These hives, a collaboration between man and nature, were (and still are) hobones.
A phenomenon to many, stingless bees exist in tropical places throughout the world, but 17 of these species live in the Yucatan. The Maya preferred to raise Melipona beecheii, or “xunan kab” which had a variety of advantages. All females of this species can develop into queens which makes hive propagation simple and scalable. Hives of this species also have the highest annual yield of honey, 1-2 liters. The Maya traditionally planted extensive gardens of flowering plants to feed the bees and raised corn which provided nourishment in the dry season.
Fray Diego de Landa, an early bishop of the Spanish archdiocese of Yucatan, wrote of the bees “They do not make honeycomb as ours do, but a kind of small blisters like walnuts of wax all joined one to the other and full of honey. To cut them away they do nothing more than to open the hives and to break away these blisters with a small stick, and thus the honey runs out and they take the wax when they please.” These “blisters” were called lek in Yuktekan and are commonly known as honey pots. After popping the bladders, the entire nest was tilted until the honey dripped into a container. This honey could be watery and was sometimes boiled in order to thicken it.
The final ingredient, nothing less than the namesake of the drink, was the bark of the balché tree. The tree is known scientifically as Lonchocarpus longistylus and its bark gave the otherwise boring mead its very Mayan character. There exist claims that the bark has hallucinogenic properties. While this is dubious, it does contain stilbenes which act as an antibacterial. Certain chemicals in the bark also infused balché with purgative property, cleansing the bodies of those who drank it. It lent the drink its color, flavor, and consistency. Above all else, though, balché was an inoculant to the otherwise sterile mead. By soaking the bark in water, a brewer inoculated honey water with yeast that could ferment sugars into alcohol.
To brew balché, the bark was pounded with sticks and soaked in water which was cut with equal parts honey. The mixture was left to ferment for 3 days in open log containers similar to dugout canoes. These were called maben. The alcoholic drink which likely clocked in at around 3% alcohol by volume was then portioned off into dried gourds. Drinkers had to consume a lot to feel drunk. This may be why the Maya were known to use alcohol in enemas.
Balché was medicinal, ritual, and sacred. It was important, and so the Spanish saw it as a threat. The Mayan Codex Madrid contains 10 screenfolds dedicated to apiculture, bees, and honey. The mead’s medicinal uses were well known. Hives were sometimes set up near certain homeopathic plants to enhance the medicinal qualities of the resulting honey and balché. The Maya purposefully drank their mead to purify. They knew it to cleanse the body of worms, with some Spaniards describing drinkers literally vomiting up the parasites. It was also used to heal colds and other maladies.
Socially, balché served a vital purpose in solidifying roles and hierarchies throughout the Yucatan. Mayan elites would throw great feasts dominated by ritual drinking. After offering balché to each of the cardinal directions, partygoers would consume their share of the drink according to status. The elites expected reciprocity from one another and profited by selling balché to others in their communities.
Finally, and most problematically for the Spanish, was the religious aspect of Mayan balché consumption. Some rituals involved forming a ring or ropes and suspending gourds of balché from them to create a sacred area. Drinking rituals assisted in communicating with deities and were often held in places of spiritual significance like caves or cornfields. Beekeepers held two religious festivals every year during which they came together with priests and gave offerings to the gods while conjuring images of honey. Balché was always consumed at the end of such rites. Lastly, they invariably drank balché during sacrifices.
It did not take the most anthropologically minded friar to determine the significance of balché to the Maya. The Spanish knew right away that it stood in the way of their campaign of christianization. To eliminate the drink, the diocese of Yucatan chose to eliminate the tree. The Spanish could not touch the other ingredients. Honey was economically important, and beekeeping provided not only honey, but also wax for metallurgy. The importance of water need not be explained.
Don Augustin Francisco de Echano, an 18th century Spanish judge in the Diocese of Yucatan advised, “You should place much caution and be efficient in prohibiting the dangerous beverage called Balche, impeding totally the cutting and trade of the bark of this tree so that under no pretext will the Indians have access to it.” Warnings such as his were heeded for hundreds of years. It was illegal to possess the shaved bark of the balché tree. It was illegal to cultivate the balché tree. It was even illegal to have the balché tree on one’s property. The number of balché trees felled at the hands of the Spanish is inestimable, but the tradition of balché did not die.
In spite of the laws, many Maya persisted in the ancestral brewing and drinking of balché. In fact, the bark of the increasingly scarce tree became a prized black-market commodity. The elites who had controlled the production and consumption of the drink prior to colonization became the kingpins of smuggling operations. It became a highly lucrative commodity. The courts of Yucatan would try over 100 cases against Maya who drank balché or possessed the bark of its namesake tree.
The Spanish extirpation of balché from the Yucatan countryside proves just how significant the drink was for the indigenous Maya people. In the face of enslavement, coercion, and complete erasure, the Maya proved resilient. A drink that had once been medicine, neighborly bond, and spiritual vehicle became an act of subversion. While the damage the Spanish did to the tradition of balché is incalculable, they did not succeed entirely. Many indigenous communities in the Yucatan today still keep bees and make a unique mead infused with the bark of the balché tree.
Aroche, Daniela Sánchez. “Con el diablo adentro. El consumo medicinal y ritual del balche’entre los mayas de Yucatán visto desde una perspectiva etnohistórica.” Historia 2.0: Conocimiento Histórico en Clave Digital 10 (2016): 42-55.
Chuchiak IV, John F. ““It is their drinking that hinders them”: Balché and the use of ritual intoxicants among the colonial Yucatec Maya, 1550-1780.” Estudios de cultura maya 24 (2013).
Paris, Elizabeth H., et al. “The organization of stingless beekeeping (Meliponiculture) at Mayapán, Yucatan, Mexico.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 52 (2018): 1-22.
Smet, Peter De, and Jennifer A Loughmiller-Cardinal. “4P-9a: Drink/Enema Rituals in Ancient Maya Art. Part One: Text.” Ancient Maya drink/enema rituals (2020): n. pag. Print.
“Stilbene.” Stilbene – an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/stilbene.
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