(Opposite) Master mescaleros from the village of Acateyahualco in Guerrero, Mexico. Note the histogram showing the size structure of the Agave cupreata population taped on the wall behind them.
Acateyahualco (N17°46´11´´, W99°1´34´´), Municipality of Chilapa, Guerrero, Mexico, 2007–2013
Rural communities in the dry regions of Mexico harvest the leaf bases of several species of agave (Asparagaceae) plants to make mescal, a fermented, distilled, strongly alcoholic beverage. The beverage is traditionally served at religious celebrations, weddings, and other cultural events throughout the country, and large quantities are produced and sold each year. Harvesting commercial quantities of wild agave from tropical dry forests to make mescal might seem counterproductive since every species of agave used to make mescal flowers and fruits only once, then dies.1 To ensure that the leaf bases accumulate the highest concentration of sugar for fermentation, the harvesters chop off the flower stalk before it has a chance to develop. The leaf bases will be saturated with sugar when they are dug up, but the plant never has a chance to make seeds or to regenerate itself in the forest. If all the flowering agaves in a given area were harvested each year to make mescal, before long the population in that area would disappear. Further threatening the crop, tropical dry forests are the most endangered forest ecosystems in Mexico, even more at risk than tropical rain forests.2 Once all of their agaves have been harvested, communities will have little incentive to maintain the forest instead of converting it to a cornfield or a cattle pasture.
The international market for mescal has grown rapidly during the past decade, and the commercial success of tequila, which is also made from agave, has prompted several large distilleries to start producing their own mescal.3 In contrast to community-level modes of mescal production that are based on the harvest of wild agave in dry forests, large-scale commercial efforts are focused on the establishment of extensive agave plantations. To fortify their control over the mescal market, the large distilleries have lobbied the Mexican government to restrict community production of mescal by claiming that wild populations of agave are being dangerously overexploited.
I made my first trip Chilapa, Guerrero, in 2006 at the invitation of a Mexican colleague to visit a few mescalero communities and assess the regeneration status of local agave populations. What I found, which did not surprise me, was that the communities were well aware of how to harvest their wild agave species, known locally as maguey papalote,4 without overexploiting it. A select number of adult plants were left unharvested each year and allowed to set seed. The seeds were collected, dried, and then broadcast throughout the harvest area. When I walked through a tract of dry forest being exploited for mescal by the community of Acateyahualco, I saw hundreds of thousands of agave seedlings growing in the rocky soil. Rather than posing a threat to an endangered forest ecosystem or causing the depletion of wild stocks of an important resource, the small-scale production of mescal by communities provides a powerful lever for conservation.
Prohibiting communities from continuing to produce mescal locally would be a cultural and economic disaster. Culturally, mescal is a fundamental component of many aspects of Mexican life. Economically, it provides local communities with an important source of income. And from an ecological standpoint, it would remove the only incentive that most rural communities have to conserve the few remaining tracts of dry forest on their land. Fascinated by what I saw in Acateyahualco, I started a long-term project in 2007 to document how the local communities were managing their agave.
Our first meeting at Acateyahualco, called so we could explain what we were doing and ask for assistance from the community, was attended by everyone in town. The room was filled with men in huaraches and cowboy hats, women with long braids and beautiful, embroidered blouses, and a few babies. Several dogs wandered in and out. On a bench in front sat three wizened, older gentlemen with gray hair and scraggly yet distinguished beards; all wore well-washed, long-sleeved dress shirts with the top button buttoned. I did not need to be told that these were the elder mescaleros of the community, men who had been making mescal from the wild agave plants growing in local forests for forty or fifty years. This is what traditional knowledge looks like, and these were the three men we needed to convince of the utility of resource inventories, quantitative data, and histograms.
We gave our presentation, and everyone listened intently. At the end we had a lot of questions—from both the men and the women—and good discussions. The three elders sitting up front would periodically put their heads together and whisper to one another. By the end of the meeting, the villagers agreed that it would be more useful to find out exactly how many agave plants there were in the forest and what size they were than continue harvesting the resource based on a general impression that there were “still a lot of agaves out there.” We agreed to show them how to inventory the resource and produce a management plan if they would agree to collect the data and do the periodic monitoring. Hands were shaken, after which a wheelbarrow containing several cases of half-liter bottles of Coca-Cola and packets of cookies was rolled into the room. Little plastic cups were also passed around for the obligatory copita (or two) of Acateyahualco’s finest mescal to toast the new collaboration.
Although the basic concept is the same, counting and measuring agave plants is quite different from doing an inventory of trees. We do not measure diameter, or diameter growth, or merchantable height, or even canopy cover. Rather, we count the plants and put them in size classes, and then observe the rate at which they die or move into the next size class. The procedure is easy, but it is important to select size classes that everyone counting can recognize. After discussions with the community, we divided the agaves into five size classes—seedlings, three juvenile classes, and adults—and made a sixth class for harvested individuals. Seedlings were tiny plants with fewer than five leaves, while the juvenile classes were based on height. To make things as easy as possible in the field, we separated the juvenile classes so that they could be measured by the mescaleros using their leg as a ruler—class I juveniles were no higher than the ankle, class II juveniles came up to the knee, and class III juveniles came up to the waist. Plants classified as adults displayed the first signs of an inflorescence, and the final class, harvested, was reserved for individuals whose inflorescence had been cut and the leaf bases, or piña, extracted.
The system worked perfectly, and in spite of the obvious height differences among villagers, all the agaves were assigned to the appropriate size class. The only field equipment needed was a compass, a twenty-meter-long rope, and a clipboard for recording the data. It took a couple of days to persuade the field crews to leave their rifles behind during the agave inventory. I think they finally stopped bringing their guns because we were making too much noise and scaring off the animals.
One of the older mescaleros from Acateyahualco joined a field crew a couple of days after the inventory started. Dressed in a classic, sweat-stained sombrero, a dusty pair of huaraches, and old khaki pants cinched high above the waist, and wielding a large machete, this man had been harvesting agave and making mescal most of his life. Counting agave plants, however, had never been part of the process. But after our meetings and discussions in the evenings with people who had been out in the forest all day collecting data, he felt that running transects was probably something that he should know how to do.
Experienced mescal producers in Acateyahualco gauge the quality of their product by pouring the newly distilled mescal into a calabash (gourd) cup and examining the density of bubbles that form on the surface.5 I asked whether the density was a measure of alcohol content and was told that it was not, but more bubbles indicated a more flavorful mescal. I was also told that commercially produced mescal, made from agaves grown on plantations, produces no bubbles. Despite repeated inquiries, I was unable able to find out why wild agave produces a bubblier mescal than plantation stock.
During the original meetings at Acateyahualco, I suggested that a five-year monitoring cycle would be sufficient for the villagers to detect changes in the size structure and regeneration rate of the agave population. After conducting the first inventory, the community could then wait five years before having to repeat the fieldwork. Since it had taken five crews eight days to collect the first set of data, and the villagers all had a lot of important things to do besides running transects, I figured that this would make the program a bit more manageable. But the community did not want to wait. They argued that much could happen in five years, that they were fully committed to the idea of sustainably managing the agave on their land, and that they were going to repeat the dry forest inventory every year. I was overwhelmed by their commitment, but I suggested that if they found the task too difficult or time consuming, one inventory every couple of years would provide enough data to assess the impact of their agave harvesting. We had a final little plastic cup of mescal, and toasted one another—and I left for five years.
I returned to Acateyahualco in May 2013 to see how things were going. The walls of the meeting room were covered with dozens of multicolored graphs and histograms showing the number of agave individuals in each of the six size classes, and once again, everyone in the village was there. The village head convened the meeting, after which selected leaders of the mescal group presented the results of the agave project. They had, in fact, repeated the inventory of the agave populations every year for five years. What had taken the field crews eight days to do the first time, they were now able to complete in one day. They were becoming faster and more efficient in the way they collected these data, with the same teams working the same areas each year. All the original tally sheets were neatly clipped into folders marked with the year.
They went through the histograms showing the inventory results year by year. The community had continued to commercially exploit agave in the dry forest each year, and the number of agave adults harvested had increased slightly over the five-year period. The number of individuals in the juvenile classes bounced around considerably from year to year, but the smaller classes seemed to be getting larger. The final histogram showed the number of harvestable adults in the population for each of the five years. Although this figure also fluctuated a bit, the overall trend across the five data points was flat. The number of adult agave plants growing in the dry forests at Acateyahualco had remained essentially constant through five years of commercial resource exploitation—and the mescal team had quantified this through their inventories. So much for the allegation that the community was overexploiting its wild agave. This time, I was the one who asked that the little plastic cups of mescal be passed around, and I offered a heartfelt toast to the diligence and deep sense of stewardship of the mescal producers in Acateyahualco. I was, and still am, very impressed by what they were able to accomplish.
The situation in Guerrero worsened after my final trip. Drug violence escalated, the teachers went on strike in response to proposed educational reforms, and the central government, as part of its National Crusade Against Hunger, sent the army into rural villages to prepare food.6 Currently, there are roadblocks on many roads, and trucks loaded with soldiers in riot gear circulate around the state. Heavily armed masked men loyal to a local drug gang have taken over Chilapa, and in September 2014 forty-three students were killed outside Iguala. Successful examples of community-based resource management lose their newsworthiness when all this is going on. The community of Acateyahualco has been exploiting the wild agave plants in their dry forests to produce mescal for several decades. They have controlled the rate at which adult plants are harvested each year to ensure that local populations continue to regenerate, and they have conducted systematic inventories and annual monitoring surveys to quantify the sustainability of their harvest activities. Five years of data have shown that the traditional method of producing mescal in Acateyahualco is, in fact, sustainable. This should be front page news.