Permaculture and Mezcal in Oaxaca, Mexico

A few years ago I was leading a group of travelers to the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca on a mezcal educational excursion. Mezcal is the agave based spirit produced in Mexico dating back to anywhere between the 1500s to over 2,000 years ago, depending upon to which theory of the history of distillation one subscribes. In the course of visiting a number of small, artisanal distilleries, or palenques as they're known, we attended a co-operative in the village of San Baltazar Chichicapam ("Chichicapam"). There were about a dozen men, women and children pitching agave hearts known as piñas into an in-ground oven on top of and around a mound of rocks, below which were flaming logs. They were members of the indigenous Zapotec ethnolinguistic group mezcal artisanal. They working feverishly. My clients were intrigued. Some began photographing, while others offered to assist the workers. My clients asked me a plethora of questions about what they were witnessing. I explained how the co-op worked. One exclaimed "this is a classic example of permaculture."

I had heard of the word permaculture and had a rough idea of what the term connoted. I was curious to learn more, so after the conclusion of the mezcal tour I went home and looked up the word online. I found definitions, and more detailed explanations some of which placed the term in historical context. Sustainability was one of the recurring themes. I had already been writing about mezcal and sustainability for quite a while.

Over the ensuing days I began to consider that indeed what my clients had witnessed was what permaculture was all about. I still did not grasp the difficulty in arriving at a single definition. This became more difficult within the context of agave and mezcal production and the implications for the broader community; that is, the culture. But what I was able to glean from my cursory review of the literature was that not only were these particular villagers practicing permaculture, but that the industry sustainability about which I had been writing was actually part and parcel of the concept.

Over the subsequent months I struggled with three issues: better understanding the various permutations of permaculture; selecting case studies of mezcal production and permaculture for a proposed book project; and trying to convince an American photographer friend who had been shooting all aspects of mezcal production for about 20 years, that it would be in his best interest to participate in the endeavor. The undertaking stalled. However since then, that is periodically over the past three years, I have not only continued to ponder permaculture within the context of mezcal production, but have come across aspects of their connection which I had not previously considered, certainly to a sufficient extent. One such dimension is the importance of anyone associated with the industry being cognizant of the possible adverse sequelae of not addressing water issues. The "mezcal boom" might not be all good for everyone for all time. Solutions fall more within the purview of applied anthropology, rather than how I have conducted my academic endeavors over the past few decades. My approach has been more to observe, understand and teach; rather than to observe, assess and improve. I suppose it's because I am a product of 1970s social anthropology, trained to be more than anything else an ivory tower academic.

This article, perhaps a pilot project of sorts, works towards an all-encompassing definition of permaculture using the Chichicapam co-operative as a foundation for understanding the term within the mezcal industry. It touches upon other aspects of mezcal production taken from other palenques which could form the basis for additional case studies. These illustrate indicia of permaculture not necessarily evident in Chichicapam. The article only tangentially touches upon what I consider the main danger the industry faces, that is water, in terms of maintaining sustainability and advancing permaculture tenets.

Three final caveats are:

(1) Many aspects of agave growth and its use for making mezcal as well as other products, and industry sustainability, are not included in this article, primarily because I have written about them elsewhere. Some, however, are included, but only to the extent that they relate to the Chichicapam case study.

(2) This is not a primer on mezcal production, so the reader interested in just permaculture who has little if any knowledge of Mexico and mezcal, may be at a disadvantage. However, interspersed throughout the study are some of the basics of how agave is employed to produce the spirit, the use of waste product, and of course the interaction between humans and their physical environment. The corollary is that it is hoped that mezcal aficionados will gain a better understanding of the concept of permaculture and how it intersects with mezcal production.

(3) No footnotes or references are included, specifically for the portions regarding coming to grips with defining permaculture, although several sources have been consulted. It is my synthesis of the literature, for better or worse.

I will examine the workings of the Chichicapam co-op palenque, then put together a workable definition of permaculture which can be applied to the particular distillery, and finally go back to the palenque and examine its workings within the context of how I perceive the interplay between artisanal mezcal production on the one hand, and sustainable agriculture and permanent culture on the other.

Mezcal Production at the Co-operative in San Baltazar Chichicapam, Oaxaca

Fortunato Hernández, wife Victoria Martínez, their daughter Estela and son-in-law Pedro are tossing píñas onto a mound of hot rocks built atop blazing tree trunks, all in the pit-in-the-ground oven. The family is working at the co-op palenque in Chichicapam owned by Angélica García. Member participants pay her in mezcal for use of the distillery. By all outward appearances and in terms of how the palenque functions, this is a communal effort and does indeed represent permaculture at its best. I doubt if anyone using the facility has heard of permaculture. No matter, since neither did cultures practicing it thousands of years prior to when the term was coined, or perhaps even contemplated.

The rocks being employed by Fortunato and his family have already been covered with wet fiber known as bagazo, discard from the distillation process now being used to insulate the piñas from direct contact with the stones. The family is being assisted by four hired day laborers. Others at the palenque are also pitching in as needed, although their primary tasks are attending to their own mezcal production operations at the distillery.

Inside the covered portion of the palenque Alfonso Sánchez is working a horse, egging him on to pull a large limestone wheel known as a tahona over the batch of baked agave piñas he had cut with a machete into small more manageable pieces the day before. As a quantity of agave, locally known as maguey, is crushed, Alfonso loads it into a wheel barrow, pushes it up a wooden ramp and dumps it into a pine slat fermentation vat known as a tina. His wife has arrived with his hot lunch, though it's a little early since Alfonso must first finish the task at hand before the mid-afternoon heat makes it too grueling for the horse to continue beyond the customary five or so hours of work daily.

The wheel barrow is being shared with Lázaro Mendoza, yet another palenquero working with his own family and fellow villagers. They're using all three copper pot stills or alembics at the same time, in the process of doing a first distillation of Lázaro's fermented mash. The fruit of this labor, the first distillation, is not even known as mezcal, but rather shishe. There are four men working in this group, together engaged in different stages of the distillation process. One is pitching fully fermented fiber into the wheel barrow, another is filling buckets with the liquid; it is collectively known as tepache. They're loading up a still. Another is stoking the fire under a second still, while the fourth is replacing a full bucket of shishe from beneath the spigot with an empty receptacle.

The palenque is used by 10 - 15 families, all Chichicapam residents. It was built by Pablo García, Angélica's late husband. He died in a car accident eleven years ago. Prior to his death Angélica was a housewife raising the couple's four children. Angélica had been involved in mezcal production to the same extent as other wives in Chichicapam, and no more. She was thrust into the role of owner after her husband's passing. Quickly she began to receive assistance from her husband's palenquero friends, with whom she had of course already been acquainted. She readily garnered their respect, which remains solid to date. She no longer requires any assistance, having learned the ropes through sink or swim initiation.

Prior to the construction of the palenque, the tradition had been for the artisanal mezcal producers in Chichicapam who did not have their own facility, to rent from other owners. The producers had been paying the palenque owners 25 liters of mezcal for each tina of tepache filled. A tina should produce anywhere from 60 to 120 liters of mezcal, depending on the type of agave being processed, time of year harvested, the particular micro-climate in which it is grown and the skillset and knowledge of the palenquero. Accordingly each palenquero had been paying a consider percentage of the yield for the right to use the tools of the trade owned by others.

Pablo used savings and borrowed funds to build the co-op in 1996, as a means of reducing his own production costs, and just as importantly those of his villager friends. Initially he did not charge them for use of the palenque. He then began charging two liters per tina. The amount currently charged by Angélica is 7.5 liters, but it can vary depending on the quality of mezcal produced (taste, percentage alcohol, type of agave, etc.). Anyone can use her palenque. The "regulars" produce a fairly consistent product mezcal. With the others, there are sometimes quality issues, and accordingly it is with these producers more so than with the others that the amount charged sometimes increases.

The palenque consists of a sheltered area housing the three copper stills, ten tinas, the shallow pit used for horses to pull the tahona over the baked chopped sweet agave, and a storage room where both mezcal and readily removable parts of the still (i.e. copper) are locked inside to prevent theft. Outside there are a couple of acres of land where there are two ovens. One holds up to 15 tons of piñas, and the other up to 12. The larger one is currently not being used because it requires a lot of firewood.

The land surrounding the palenque is also used to temporarily store the spent bagazo, the mounds of firewood owned by different palenqueros waiting for their turn to bake their agave, the piñas, and often a horse waiting to be taken into the covered area to work. Angélica does not supply the beast of burden. If a palenquero does not own a horse he rents one for 150 - 200 pesos per day.