Alcohol in Latin America: A Social and Cultural History

Chapter Seven: Pulqueros, Cerveceros, and Mezcaleros: Small Alcohol Producers and Popular Resistance to Mexico’s Anti-Alcohol Campaigns, 1910–1940

161 chapter seven Pulqueros, Cerveceros, and Mezcaleros Small Alcohol Producers and Popular Resistance to Mexico’s Anti-Alcohol Campaigns, 1910–1940 Gretchen Pierce In May 1922, M. Luna y Menocal and José María Montaño, president and secretary, respectively, of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria Magueyera (Union of Maguey Industry Workers), wrote to President Álvaro Obregón, complaining about the Clausura Dominical, a mandatory closing of businesses on Sundays in Mexico City. The city’s town council had taken this measure to prevent employees from being overworked and to contribute to the nation’s anti-alcohol campaign, which aimed to keep workers, who they believed to be most susceptible to the vice of alcoholism , from spending their day off drinking. This forced closure negatively affected eateries, pulquerías, and their employees, Luna y Menocal and Montaño claimed, because pulque is a beverage that needs to be consumed quickly or it will go bad. But the closure harmed more than just the sellers of the beverage; they estimated hundreds of thousands of other families involved in the trade “without capital [and] that needed to work” would be hurt as well. They did not necessarily disapprove of the antialcohol campaign. In fact, they reasserted that pulque had less alcohol per volume than other drinks, even beer, and thus the government should support it to help promote sobriety. However, they did question revolutionary leaders’ intent, arguing that forcing businesses to close one day per week and thus reducing their sales, was doing anything but helping workers.1 162 • Gretchen Pierce More than a decade later, in March 1938, and eighty miles away, in Jojutla, Morelos, Engracia Posas wrote to President Lázaro Cárdenas with similar concerns. She occasionally sold pulque and said she did so in a law-abiding manner, paying her taxes on time and making sure that her customers took the beverage home so as to avoid disorder. However, in the prior month, the governor had forbidden the sale of all alcoholic beverages in the state, and therefore she had to shut down her operations. Dismayed , she explained that she was a poor, single mother and needed the small but regular source of income. She asked that the president, who admittedly had “bigger things to deal with,” find it in his heart to help her reopen her business and “better her life.”2 These two stories reveal several issues about Mexico’s anti-alcohol campaigns . First, leaders from town councilmen to presidents during the Revolution of 1910–1940 perceived alcoholism to be a problem, especially among the working class. In carrying out anti-alcohol campaigns over this thirty-year period, they tried various solutions, such as raising taxes on alcoholic beverages, requiring drinking establishments to close on certain days or times, and even occasionally prohibiting the consumption of all intoxicants. Second, in spite of the government’s attempt at moralizing and uplifting workers, temperance-related policies negatively impacted poor pulqueros, cerveceros, and mezcaleros (producers of pulque, beer, and mezcal, a distilled beverage similar in composition to tequila), as well as other employees of the alcohol industry. This was especially true for women, many of whom had been made widows during revolutionary fighting and now had to support families on their own. Third, these small entrepreneurs and laborers should not be considered immoral or recalcitrant for refusing to stop producing or selling alcohol. Often, it was the only decent way for them to make a living. Many supplicants explained this using gendered language, emphasizing that they were trying merely to fulfill their duties as good mothers and fathers. Fourth, their claims demonstrated that they were not passive members of society. Rather, they actively took part in the state-building process by resisting unpopular measures and demanding that the revolutionary government live up to its name and truly pursue measures that would help the working class. This chapter focuses on the hundreds of thousands of small pulque, beer, and mezcal producers, transporters, and sellers, men and women, in Mexico from 1910 to 1940. Pulque was produced mainly in the central part of the country, especially the states of Hidalgo, México, Puebla, and Tlaxcala. Since the nineteenth century, wealthy landowners with ties to the pre-revolutionary regime dominated this industry,3 as Áurea Toxqui Pulqueros, Cerveceros, and Mezcaleros • 163 demonstrates in chapter 5. It was not these men and women, though, who were responsible for the...