Nectar Corridor
Episode 9
The History of Pulque
Niki Nakazawa VO:
Hello and welcome back to The Nectar Corridor, a podcast where we explore the incredible world of mezcal, the most emblematic and diverse spirit of Mexico. I’m your host, Niki Nakazawa.
Today I’m speaking with Raúl Guerrero Bustamante about pulque, an agave-based fermented beverage that has its origins in pre-Hispanic times and has been consumed for more than 2,000 years.
Raúl is a researcher, cultural minister, and pulque aficionado based in the state of Hidalgo. Pulque is a product of native Mexico, traversing many of this territory's historical periods, and as such is an early ancestor to mezcal.
This podcast was originally recorded in Spanish. Our conversation with Raúl is interpreted by José Jimenez.
Raúl Guerrero:
I am from Pachuca, Hidalgo, where 60 percent of our territory has depended on maguey as a fundamental element of life. Since ancient times, maguey has been used to build homes, to make clothing, and to be eaten as sustenance. Even now, it continues to provide families with food, drink, raw material and even construction materials. It is an incredible product that is representative of the culture of resistance.
If we think about which element generated the agriculture and drink of Mesoamerica, we have to understand that it was fundamentally maguey, which releases “aguamiel” (also known as “honey water” or “mead” in English). And when this is fermented, it becomes pulque.
And thanks to the culture of resistance, we have been able to keep the tradition of pulque alive all the way from pre-Hispanic Mexico to today.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
To talk about pulque, we start once again by describing the qualities of its mother plant – maguey.
Raúl Guerrero:
Mexico is a mostly arid country. It does have tropical territories, but the central mass between the Sierra Madre Oriental and Madre Occidental has a semi desert climate. Many species of thorny vegetation grow there, especially nopales, which are cacti, huizaches, which is a type of acacia, mesquites and magueys.
Magueys are natives to the Americas and they are wonderful species of nature. It’s often a giant plant that can resist all adverse weather conditions. It can withstand too much or too little rain, too much or too little sun, intense cold, etc. The maguey endures and survives, and this is because it conserves the nutrients that the earth gives it and that the rain gives it, and it carries all of them and circulates them throughout its leaves. And this makes the liquids that it keeps inside it highly nutritious.
If the maguey is injured or cut, it heals itself. If the maguey suddenly suffers from frost or fire conditions, or even sometimes if it catches fire, it’s able to continue living. So if you think about it, every time we drink aguamiel or pulque, we are drinking a complex beverage full of minerals and vitamins.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
Pulque is a product with a deep cultural significance, but is largely unknown outside of Mexico. And the production of pulque is directly related to the care of the maguey plant. The base of pulque is aguamiel, which is the sap extracted from a castrated or “capón” agave. To better understand how pulque is made, I asked Raúl to walk us through the process.
Raúl Guerrero:
Even though all magueys are technically able to make pulque, there are specific “pulquero” plants that produce more juice and more sugars to ensure a high-quality pulque.
The plant will reach maturity at about 8 or 12 years old. At that point, it will bloom into a chandelier shape. At a certain point, the maguey will become “capado” which means that the reproductive part of the plant – the part that allows it to continue to bloom – is cut off. Because once the maguey fully blooms, it dies. But by stunting this process, it keeps the plant alive and allows for the continued production and concentration of sugars inside of it.
The juice that comes from this sugar is then extracted and undergoes a cold fermentation, which is a process similar to making beer or wine. The aguamiel, or mead, that is generated for pulque, carries a low alcohol content. It begins to generate yeasts and then it undergoes two kinds of fermentations – one being lactic fermentation, which is what makes pulque thicken, similar to milk becoming yogurt. And the other is alcoholic fermentation, which is the consumption of sugar to release alcohol and carbon dioxide.
So when we drink a pulque it could be similar to drinking a beer, but it could also be similar to drinking wine. It can have flavors that range from very sweet, to something like avocado, to much stronger flavors. You really have to educate the palate to understand what a good pulque is.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
Pulque has different notes and nuances of flavor according to the growing conditions of the maguey from which it is extracted and the yeasts and microbes that participate in the fermentation. One might perceive aromas of wet earth, or herbal notes of spearmint or oregano. Flavors of peach, strawberries, almonds or walnuts.
And then there’s pulque curado, which is when pulque blanco is blended with fruit and other ingredients.
Raúl Guerrero:
People often add fruits like pineapple to the pulque to make pulque curado. And you don’t just blend together or liquify the pineapple. What happens is that the sugars of the fruit ferments along with the pulque. You can use celery, beets, walnuts, pine nuts, guavas, whatever you can think of. Pulque curado has endless flavor options.
Pulque is tied to the most ancient cultures in Mexico. It is also complementary to our rich gastronomy which is based on corn. All of Mexico is a melting pot of flavors, but the flavor of central Mexico is pulque.
It was sacred in pre-Hispanic times, it was profane in colonial times and it’s been damned in modern times because it’s often considered a peasant drink. But that's pulque. That's where it comes from and that is what it means for Mexicans.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
Raúl tells me that there are certain areas that are particularly favorable to pulque production such as the state of Hidalgo, the mountains of Puebla and Jalisco, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, Michoacán and Oaxaca.
Raúl Guerrero:
The most optimal regions to grow pulquero maguey are above 2,000 meters above sea level. So we’re talking about the entire Valley of Mexico, Mexico City and its surroundings, Cuernavaca, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Toluca, and the entire north that is Hidalgo.
There are many indigenous communities in Oaxaca that, in addition to being mezcaleros, produce pulque. Chiapas has, for example, Comitán de Domínguez, where agave is produced and there is a distilled beverage called Comitéco based on the pulquero maguey, and there are other places where this culture of resistance is noticeable. For example I’ve seen pulque made and sold in Tijuana and Baja California and that is wonderful to see. I think of maguey as a cultural pollinator – once it arrives, people begin to yearn for those flavors.
But the area that produces and consumes the most pulque is Mexico City and its surrounding regions. These areas would historically make enormous quantities of pulque. In the state of Hidalgo alone, there were approximately 250 pulque haciendas. Landowners lived on these haciendas, which had massive amounts of planted maguey alongside factories that fermented the aguamiel. The pulque would then be shipped by rail.
Now what does it mean to have 250 pulque haciendas in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries? Well pulque was the most consumed drink in Mexico, so this was the equivalent of having 250 Coca Cola factories today.
[BREAK]
Niki Nakazawa VO:
As Raúl commented, there are many species of maguey that can be used for the extraction of pulque, but I was interested to learn about the most common species.
Raúl Guerrero:
The main species of pulquero maguey is the Agave salmiana. That is the one that best serves pulque because it grows mostly in regions above 2,000 meters above sea level, which generates an immense amount of mead for eight months. And approximately 10 to 15 liters of mead are removed for each batch.
Maguey cultivation also already relies heavily on human practices. There are places where magueys used to grow wild, but are now no longer planted. They are a great agroecological system. You can even see lines in the Mexican landscape lines where maguey delineates the land and helps solidify the soil. The fertile soil prevents the ground from washing away during heavy rainfall.
But the most wonderful thing is that magueys cool the atmosphere, which causes rain. The maguey is as biologically important as a tree. If a tree is 80 years old, even if it’s dead, it retains carbon and fixed minerals in the soil. Now imagine what the maguey has been doing for our lands since pre-Hispanic times. It was an incredibly important plant for precolonial civilizations.
Upon their arrival, the Spanish immediately saw the benefits of what they called the “Tree of Wonders,” which was the maguey plant. They noticed, for example, that its fibers were resistant enough for clothing and textiles. And at this point, sugar had not been introduced to the Americas, so the sugar was extracted from the aguamiel and turned into a syrup. It was used to pay tribute to Tenochtitlan, and in some areas as an object of commerce.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
Raúl gave me the context for understanding the history of pulque as a sacred drink. To make sense of this, we have to consider the topic of drunkenness. By today’s standards, drunkenness is often considered as something negative because it inhibits productivity, but for some of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, drunkenness was interpreted as being possessed by a god.
Raúl Guerrero:
Pulque was also a ritual. It was a part of a belief system. Mayahuel was the goddess of maguey. And her husband, Tēzcatzontēcatl was the god of pulque. And the god Tepozeco was the god of fermentation, who invented the process of converting sugar into alcohol.
So pulque was deep within a religious belief system. And it was not for everyone at that time. It was for elders, warriors and nobles. In many cases, young people were forbidden to drink, much less to get drunk, except for certain occasions.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
After the Spanish conquest, many of these customs, everything that was sacred, began to be prohibited.
Raúl Guerrero:
The Spanish noticed that pulque was sacred to the communities and was used for rituals, they prohibited and punished those who consumed it, claiming that the alcohol in pulque altered consciousness tremendously. But in reality, they wanted to control the population.
And instead of pulque, they promoted the consumption of wine. Well, first off, the Mexicans did not like wine. And second, it’s incredibly difficult for people to simply abandon beliefs and form new habits. So the Spanish started realizing that they could control the Indigenous people with alcoholism. There were rebellions because people were not allowed to drink pulque. So all of a sudden, the colonizers change their minds and re-incorporate pulque. And they also realize that pulque can create big business because there is a lot of demand.
If you think about it, the working class always had pulque as a nutritional element. At this point in the 19th and 20th centuries, Mexico was industrializing, and farm laborers, miners, factory workers relied on pulque for the calories and nutrients necessary to endure the work day.
So we see this major shift yet again of pulque becoming re-integrated into society. But along with that comes a rejection of alcoholism and the belief that people become brutalized by drinking pulque. This is where pulque, which had gone from sacred to profane, was now becoming cursed.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
Between the 1700s and the 1900s, we started to see a massive increase in pulque production which resulted in a tremendous amount of taxes paid to the Crown, to the Republic, and to the wealthiest classes in Mexico.
However, soon after the Mexican Revolution, the haciendas which had become wealthy by producing pulque, stopped making it.
Raúl Guerrero:
The Mexican Revolution occurred in the early 1900s. The rich owned the production of pulque. They owned the haciendas, and they owned the lives of the people who worked on the haciendas. This was also happening with sugar and rice plantations – the rich families exploited and enslaved their workers at that time.
Uprisings began to appear in Yucatán, in Oaxaca, and in many other surrounding regions. Mexico lived in a very harsh political condition. There were landless people, enslaved people, and countless lives lost due to military repression. And this was the spark that ignited the revolution. People no longer want to live like this. And caudillos like Emiliano Zapata or Francisco Villa emerged.
Here in Hidalgo, pulque continued to be consumed despite the revolutionary outbreak. It was consumed by both the townspeople and the revolutionaries. It became essential for everyone. But that also meant that the rich got richer even during this time of chaos.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
The radical redistribution of land came with the Mexican Revolution. Monopolies were destroyed, and while some of the elite were able to keep their homes, they usually could not keep the rest of the land of the haciendas. The lands were distributed left and right and producers were free to plant whatever they wanted resulting in changing land-use and economies.
During the beginning of the twentieth century Mexico received a new wave of Spanish immigrants.
Raúl Guerrero:
Many Spaniards were expelled by hunger in Spain and arrived in Mexico to forge large industries, one of them being the brewing industry. Grupo Modelo saw massive growth but it was all Spaniards helping fellow Spaniards. They would arrive from Spain with nothing, but they would support each other and share their businesses.
So now we’re turning from pulque production to beer production. And in the cities, we begin to see bottled beer. This is advertised as a pure, clean and healthy product because at the time beer was sold as medicine. I have an advertisement that even recommends beer for children. Ultimately, beer wanted to gain ground in the market over its great enemy, pulque.
Here we saw the emergence of campaigns that tried to quote-unquote modernize Mexico. They called for indigenous people to stop speaking their native languages, to stop dressing in their native clothes, and to stop drinking their native drink. But believe me those campaigns did not work at all. Pulque continued to be consumed until the 1960s and 70s. But soon production stopped because the demand fell and the price plummeted. The price of one liter of pulque stayed the same from the 1940s to the 1970s, while the cost of transportation, diesel, and everything else kept rising. Producers couldn’t keep up and so they gradually abandoned the production of pulque.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
At this point, the campaign came to take effect. The Mexico that was struggling to modernize rejected the “older, rural, Mexico.” And the pulque fell into oblivion.
Raúl Guerrero:
But pulque has been in a good place for the last 10 years. We had to fight for that. We were from a generation that didn’t drink pulque because the older generation despised it. I was fortunate to come from a family where this deep culture of Mexico was highly valued. My grandfather Don Raúl Guerrero Guerrero wrote a book called “El pulque : religión, cultura, folklore” during the cultural blackout, with that struggle and that cry from the bottom of the well to say that pulque is a very important part of Mexican culture, and we cannot let it die.
And so I started to gather with more people my age, and we began a new generation of consuming pulque, appreciating it and understanding it. And we are even reviving the dignity of pre-Hispanic belief systems. We have generated a stewardship to the goddess Mayahuel to venerate her, to sing to her and to praise her.
We recognize all the values and virtues of a cultural production system around maguey and pulque because it's not just the drink, it's the entire system. We are recovering the value that it has had for centuries, and that it deserves to have despite the onslaught of modernity.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
We really are seeing a new life for pulque in Mexico today, which is amazing. I asked Raúl about how we know that we are consuming a well-made pulque.
Raúl Guerrero:
Within Mexico City there are approximately 50 pulquerías, which is very little compared to the 400 pulquerías it had in its heyday. But the first thing to consider is that a pulque should have a very solid consistency. It should be luminous so that when seen in the light, it reflects the colors that don't separate. And it should have a layer of foam in most cases, because the pulque is continuously fermenting.
The aguamiel, or mead, is added so that it keeps releasing carbon dioxide. So a good pulque will sound like it has soda water or mineral water added, but it’s just the sound of the carbon dioxide from the yeasts. It should be aromatic and pleasant-smelling because pulque can spoil just like milk can.
Unlike pulque, wine and beer both reach a point where they stop fermenting. With beer, you need to add carbon dioxide so that it doesn’t spoil. And with wine, if you were to continue fermenting it, it would become vinegar. But pulque doesn’t stop fermenting. In other words, it is a living drink. And with that, comes the difficulty of bottling it. There is no transnational industry that has taken over for pulque. It’s all still handmade and completely authentic.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
Pulque and mezcal share a lot of culture and tradition. Having all this knowledge about maguey-based alcoholic beverages has encouraged Raúl to innovate.
Raúl Guerrero:
Right now, I’m making mezcal from pulque-producing magueys, which is known as “mezcal de agave pulquero”. This is not something I invented and it has been around for a long time, but it hadn’t been produced for over 200 years, so then we took on the task of recovering the formula and we had to start making this distilled beverage again. It’s a similar process of removing the piña, cooking it, squeezing out and fermenting the liquid, and then we are left with this wonderful, high-quality alcohol.
Mexico is a territory with an immense amount of traditional drinks, and many of those are thankfully undergoing a revival nowadays. For example, we have raicilla from Jalisco, sotol from Durango and bacanora from Sonora. We really need to care for and preserve these varied and diverse drinks so that they are not lost once again.
Niki Nakazawa VO:
The continued survival of pulque speaks volumes to the resilience of both the agaves from which it is harvested and the people who for centuries have defended the tradition of making it. Here, when we drink pulque, we have the opportunity to connect to the deep history of these lands and to our ancestors.
Thanks so much to Raúl for taking the time to walk us through the history and significance of pulque. And to our voice actor, José.
¡Saludos desde las tierras del mezcal y hasta la próxima!
The Nectar Corridor is part of Whetstone Radio Collective.
Thank you to The Nectar Corridor team, producer Jackie Noack, associate producer Rosina Castillo, editors Andres Jimenez and Max Kotelchuck, and researcher Olivia Mayeda.
English translations by Jackie Noack, with editorial support from Carlynn Crosby and Emily Vizzo. Cover art by Alex Bowman. Thank you to Las Norteñitas de Oro for the use of our theme song, “Jinetes en el cielo.”
I’d also like to thank Whetstone founder Stephen Satterfield, Whetstone Radio Collective Head of Podcasts Celine Glasier, sound engineer Max Kotelchuck, associate producer Quentin Lebeau, production assistant Amalissa Uytingco and sound intern Simon Lavender.
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The Nectar Corridor is originally produced and recorded in Spanish. If you would like to listen to the original interview, you can search for El corredor del néctar wherever you get your podcasts.