From Illegal to Industrial? The Uneven Geographies of Agave Spirits in Sonora and Beyond

In grocery and liquor stores, bars and restaurants, U.S. consumers can now find a dazzling array of agave-based spirits—tequila, mezcal, and even the occasional bottle of the less familiar bacanora from Sonora. Bon Appetit magazine calls bacanora “the agave spirit we’ve always wanted,” advising readers, “don’t think, just buy” (Goldberg 2015).

The bottles of mezcal lining the shelf of your local Safeway—one in Tucson now carries five of the roughly 120 brands¹ available in the U.S.—are one expression of a “[hu]man-agave symbiosis” that spans millennia (Gentry 1982, 3). Specifically, they embody a subset of this symbiosis that has been undertaken for just over four centuries: converting carbohydrates stored in the stem of the succulent plant into sugars, fermenting those sugars into ethanol, and distilling the result into a concentrated spirit.

The bottles on the shelf may say something of their origin—of the plants used, how and where they were grown, by whom they were harvested, and how they were transformed into spirits. They may evoke haciendas and plantations, or humble villages. Then again, they may guard their secrets closely.

As a subset of the broader human-agave relationship, this article refers to the widely varied relations and practices through which this liquor is produced and consumed as components of the mezcal spirit complex.²

The mezcal spirit complex encompasses, firstly, the life cycle and ecology of the agave plants on which it is based. This includes the reproductive strategies of the plant, modified in various ways by human intervention, along with its population dynamics in cultivated and wild settings (and in settings that blur the line between the two). In order to produce mezcal spirits, these plants must be alienated from their ecological context. How living plants are transformed into a raw material—whether harvested in the wild by an individual, or by a crew of workers on a plantation—constitutes the second dimension of the complex. Third, the ways in which agave is transformed into spirits constitute another important variable. Each aspect of this process varies both in its technical aspects—how the agave is cooked, fermented, and distilled—as well as in its social organization. Production may be a family affair, or an industrial process overseen by technocratic managers. Fourth, the relationship between cultivation of agave and production of mezcal liquor is also highly variable—these processes may be integrated into one enterprise or mediated through a market. Once distilled, the way mezcal moves from producer to consumer and the meaning derived from its consumption encompass a fifth dimension of the complex.

At each of these stages, the mezcal spirit complex articulates with broader political-economic processes. Production of mezcal may expand or contract in response to demand from growing urban populations, efforts to promote export-led economic growth, or the livelihood strategies of a precarious rural population. All of this takes place in relationship to the Mexican state, which has variously prohibited, promoted, and otherwise shaped the trajectories of the mezcal spirit complex.

Our guiding question is, what are the characteristics of the mezcal spirit complex in Sonora? And, in what ways does the Sonoran regional variation of this complex articulate with those operating in other regions of Mexico? This paper does not intend to provide a comprehensive overview of every aspect of the mezcal spirit complex. Instead, our aim is to highlight broad shifts in the relations that constitute this complex and the uneven geographies that result from these shifts.

Our principal argument is that the mezcal spirit complex is currently dominated by a formation that perpetuates social inequality and environmental degradation. As the mezcal industry expands in Sonora, these features may be replicated, but important differences in context suggest the possibility of different patterns and outcomes than those seen elsewhere.

The article proceeds as follows: In the next section, we begin with a description of agave and mezcal nomenclature that provides an important foundation for the following discussion. In sections three, four, and five, we narrate one version...