MOLE PRIETO DE CUITLACOCHE SECO
BLACK MOLE OF DRIED CUITLACOCHE
MARÍA LUISA MENDEZ, TETLA, TLAXCALA
[SERVES 6 TO 8]
It was one of those stormy nights here in San Pancho when the lights go out just as I prepare to type and the telephone works in fits and starts. To my surprise the telephone did ring, and I noted the urgency in the voice of my great friend and accomplished cook and teacher, María Dolores Torres Yzabal. I knew it meant a culinary surprise of some sort. Her daughter Miranda had called her to say that her secretary, Luisa, had returned from her Tierra, Tetla, in the State of Tlaxcala, with some very special mole made of dried cuitlacoche, or hongo de maíz as they refer to it there (so as not to confuse it with the bird of the same name). Miranda said that her mother must try it because it had an extraordinary aroma and great taste and, she added, “Please call Diana and tell her about it.”
Almost six months had gone by, because we had to wait until the corn and its fungus, cuitlacoche, had dried out completely in the fields. This happened at the beginning of November, when we received a call from Luisa’s mother inviting us to come and try this extraordinary dish at her home a few kilometers beyond Apizaco.
We were anxious to collect some of the dried cuitlacoche ourselves, so first we went into the milpa (cornfield). The dried leaves were rustling in the breeze, and the sad and drooping cornstalks were surrounded and enlivened by yellow, pink, and purple flowers that flourish after the rains in this most colorful time of the year.
We were not very successful since it was hard to distinguish at first between the dried, blackish corn tassles and the shriveled and disintegrating fungus. However, we were relieved to find that Doña María Luisa, anticipating our visit, had already set aside a supply of it. She had also saved some from the year before, but that was crawling with weevils (gorgojos)—all the more protein, I thought—because, according to local lore, the corn was planted when the moon was new and as a result the corn and fungus would most certainly be attacked by the insects. Now, had the corn been planted when the moon was fuller, this would not have occurred, she explained.
Doña María Luisa showed us how to prepare these sad-looking remnants of what was once a delicious, juicy fungus and convert them into a unique and delicious mole.
She carefully removed the corncob from its sheath of dried husks and separated the already crumbling, fibrous mass encasing a fine, black powder.
By then the meat was cooked, so she began to prepare the sauce for the mole. As far as she knew, it was prepared only in the villages of that area and just at the time of the pisca, when the dried corncobs are harvested and stored for the year ahead. It was, in my opinion, a regional recipe par excellence! The preferred meat, or rather bones, for this dish is the spinal column of the pig, espinazo, and although the spine contains very little meat, it’s delicious—and besides, the bones give flavor and density to the sauce.
A simple brazier filled with charcoal (wood would enhance the flavor of the dish) was set alight, and as the fire began to glow the cooking began in an earthenware cazuela. A delicate aroma of cuitlacoche was soon wafting around us while we hungrily watched as these simple ingredients, blended and simmered together, were converted into a unique and delicious culinary surprise.
THE MEAT
2-1/2 pounds (1.125 kilograms) pork neck bones or country-style spareribs or 1 large chicken
1/2 medium white onion
1 large garlic clove, peeled
Salt to taste
THE MOLE
4 large guajillo chiles
4 light brown chipotle chiles or 6 mulberry-colored moras
1-1/2 cups (375 milliliters) water
1 large garlic clove, peeled
1 heaped tablespoon chopped white onion
1-1/2-inch (about 3.75-centimeter) cinnamon stick
2 cloves
1-1/3 cups (333 milliliters) dried cuitlacoche (corn fungus; see note above)
2 tablespoons pork lard, melted
3/4 cup (188 milliliters) masa for tortillas (page 440)
2 small bay leaves
Cover the meat with water, add the onion, garlic, and salt, and cook over medium heat until tender—about 40 minutes, depending on the quality of the meat. Drain, reserving the broth.
Meanwhile, tear the chiles into pieces without removing the veins and seeds. Rinse and transfer to a blender with the seeds still attached to them. Add 1 cup (250 milliliters) of the water along with the garlic, onion, cinnamon, cloves, and dried fungus and blend until smooth.
Heat the lard in a cazuela or fireproof casserole, preferably over a charcoal or wood fire. Add the sauce through a fine strainer, pressing the debris down well to extract as much of the sauce as possible. Stir well.
Put the masa into a blender, add 1/2 cup (125 milliliters) water, and blend until smooth. Add to the sauce and stir well. Cook over moderate heat for about 15 minutes, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to prevent sticking.
When it is well seasoned, add the meat and about 2 cups (500 milliliters) of the meat broth, stir well, and cook over fairly high heat until the mole thickens a little. Add salt to taste and the bay leaves and cook for 5 more minutes.
The sauce for this mole should not be too thick but lightly cover the back of a wooden spoon. Serve the mole accompanied only by corn tortillas.
AHUAUTLE—A PRE-HISPANIC FOOD AS IT IS PREPARED TODAY
Ahuautle, the microscopic eggs of the Ephydra hians species of aquatic flies from the Corixidae and Notonectidae families that abound in the lakes of the valley of Mexico, have provided free and highly nutritious food for the indigenous people of the area for centuries. They still do today and, moreover, provide a valuable commodity for barter or sale in the local markets as well as the large Mexico City markets like La Merced.
Some years ago I was urged by an archaeologist surveying the area around Chimalhuacán—a village near Lake Texcoco, or what remains of the lake, which diminishes yearly with uncontrolled pollution—to go and record some of the present-day preparations and uses of these remarkable foods. Ahuautle was first called the “caviar of Mexico” by the Spaniards, and rightly so because of its delicate flavor, the meticulous care with which it is harvested and prepared, and, thus, its high price. These aquatic flies lay their eggs on the sedge grasses or on rushes that are fast disappearing now. Strands of these grasses, polotes, are knotted and then secured in the shallow water.
I was put in touch with a family living in Chimalhuacán whose forebears for generations have supported their families on the different foods that the lake produces: charales (little fish), edible insects, frogs, ajolotes (Ambystoma trigrinum), various migrant fowl (now illegal), and espirulina, an algae that forms on the water. After the winter frosts, whole families go out to collect tequesquite (chloride and sodium carbonate), a salt that forms a thin gray crust over the soil around these lake areas. Tequesquite was used as salt in pre-Columbian times and still is, as a raising and softening agent for beans, corn, tamales, etc. (see page 213). The preparation of these foods has undoubtedly undergone modifications over the centuries, especially with the introduction of ingredients from the Old World: onion, garlic, and cilantro, the last used in abundance in the recipes given to me.
The Escalante family and their eleven children, living in miserable conditions, have a wealth of information about the life and activities, past and present, of the area around Chimalhuacán. The lake area is now densely populated and highly contaminated with garbage and untreated sewage, which threatens the very existence of the remaining small bodies of water and the wealth of foods that they still—amazingly—produce.
Sr. Escalante offered to go on a brief fishing trip with the photographer who had accompanied me, but this was delayed while his energetic wife whisked out of the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron. She hurriedly and roughly mended a disintegrating net hanging from the rectangular frame of his gear, the end of which was a patchwork of old rags—these too had to be sewn together. To excuse its condition, they said that a new, good-looking net would immediately be stolen!
About two hours later the men returned with a bucket half full of two types of aquatic flies, moscas de pájaro and cuatecones or pintos, the latter distinguished by their lighter color and longer, slimmer bodies. They had also uprooted some of the grasses covered with the small, grayish eggs of the flies, the ahuautle. The grasses were laid out very carefully on a cloth in the sun for the eggs to dry. It took one hour, the grasses turned once very carefully. During the hour they anxiously watched the fleeting clouds, praying that the threatening storm would not break or the ahuautle would chiquear (an unusual use of the word, here meaning to hatch out).
Shooing off the hens who were eyeing our lunch greedily, Sra. Gloria and one of her daughters began to rub the grasses very gently between their hands so that the eggs were separated from their host and fell onto the cloth below. Then the tedious job began of picking out from the eggs any stray piece of grass, followed by rolling their palms over the eggs with a circular motion so that any particles of dust would be loosened and fall through the cloth and onto the ground below. This slow process required great patience and throughout the handling of the ahuautle, we were told, an even temper. Any show of impatience and speed would again cause the eggs to hatch out.
The metate was brought out into the patio, where the earth had been trodden flat and bare by so many feet, and only a few nopal cactus and surprisingly some exuberantly fruiting fig trees survived the harsh conditions. The mano, muller, had been broken that morning so another daughter was dispatched to borrow one from the neighbor . . . all this took time, and everyone, it seemed, had time on his hands. The workers were far outnumbered by the spectators.
The ahuautle, now dried and cleaned, was crushed—one roll of the muller, no more—and mixed to a thick paste with water. As the oil was heating in a large skillet on the kitchen stove, the paste was mixed into beaten eggs until smooth. The leisurely pace now quickened. Someone was dispatched for tortillas, and a sauce of pasilla chile was hurriedly made in the molcajete. Large spoonfuls of the mixture were dropped and flattened out in the hot oil. Suddenly the mixture seemed to come to life, thickening and crinkling up around the edges of what were now “tortas,” large fritters.
They were not, I must admit, appetizing to the eye, but the delicious aroma that permeated the air heralded the delicious flavor of the ahuautle, which was not in any way diminished in its tortilla wrapping and topped by some of the pasilla sauce.
It was indeed a caviar!
The ahuautle has a slightly grainy texture and flavor reminiscent of a fine fish roe, and like roe it is highly nutritive. In her book Los insectos como fuente de proteínas en el futuro, Dra. Julieta Ramos Elorduy de Conconi lists ahuautle as one of the indigenous foods of Mexico that contain a high percentage of nutritious elements.
Apart from eating it in tortitas, ahuautle can be prepared in albóndigas or added to a Lenten dish of romeritos. When in short supply for a more substantial dish, a thick paste can be smeared onto the uncooked side of a gordita of masa and then browned on the comal. The rest of what we prepared that day was reserved and later put into a green sauce with nopalitos.
While ahuautle is more abundant during the rainy season, it can be stored year-round, and naturally the price rises considerably (in July of several years ago it cost one hundred new pesos for un cuartillo, the equivalent of four oval sardine cans).
It is interesting to note that the eggs of the cuatecón, or pinto variety of the fly—the fly itself is cooked in tamales—are larger, a slightly different color, and are considered to have a better flavor.
JUMILES—A VISIT TO ZACUALPAN, STATE OF MEXICO
I had made a casual remark to a friend who lived in Metepec that the year before I had eaten some jumiles (small, triangular brown beetles, Atizies taxcoensis, vulgarly called “bedbugs of the mountains”) in Cuautla, Morelos. I had always wanted to go back and see how they were caught and used—other than in the notorious local tacos of live jumiles, where the more fleet-footed ones have to be swept back into the mouth and firmly crunched to prevent them from escaping. Virginia, who was as fascinated as I am with the curiosities and delicacies of indigenous Mexico, told me that Taxco, in the state of Guerrero, holds a yearly Fería de Jumil in November. If I couldn’t make it, I could accompany her later on a trip to Zacualpan in the southern part of the state, where she goes regularly to donate books to the more remote schools. There jumiles provide the gastronomic highlight of the year. We fixed a date, and she called ahead to make sure we could occupy the hotel owner’s suite of rooms, since the plumbing in the other guest rooms was, to say the least, unpredictable. At the same time, she alerted some of her traditional cook friends that we were coming.
The drive took us just over two hours at a brisk lick. We set out along the small toll road that first skirts the lower slopes of the extinct volcano, El Nevado de Toluca, which dominates the vast plains around Toluca and the base of the Lerma River. Several kilometers before Ixtapan de la Sal, the road narrowed. Farther on, beyond the town, it began to wind down alongside the sheer rock face of the canyon and crosses deep ravines, where the only patches of color among the dry, brittle bushes and undergrowth were remnants of lingering autumn flowers, so brilliant just a few weeks before.
After curving and undulating through the foothills, the road finally levels out and enters a broad plain, watered by small streams fed from springs in the surrounding mountain range. The landscape was dotted with a few rancherías, small groups of houses, with their accompanying corn patches—by then almost bare, except for the yellowing stalks, which were rustling in the breeze.
Massive, smooth, gray stone boulders stuck out of the ground like huge phallic symbols as we entered the valley, and the land beyond was scattered with sharp, conical peaks. Off in the far distance, wrapped around a steep rise in the land was Zacualpan, a small, isolated mining town almost on the Guerrero border. It was founded as early as 1528 by the Spaniards, the very first Real de Minas in the whole of the New World. Gold and silver, among other metals, have been mined there throughout the centuries, and the town had suffered the fluctuations of fortune just like any other mining area.
As we drove up the steep, cobbled streets, it was rather like taking a step back into the past. The houses along these streets or those huddled on the sharp inclines around the center had retained much of their traditional architectural features, with the wide eaves of their tiled roofs hanging protectively over the sidewalks.
When we arrived, the center was crowded with people and their trucks from the countryside around, but they quickly dispersed as soon as the mayor had finished his informe, an account of the municipality’s work that past year. I had the strange feeling that I was on a film set: the small plaza seemed overwhelmed by the buildings around, the closeness of the large church, the bandstand, the squat hotel that occupied one whole side of the square, the market stalls, and the row of stores and houses set up on a higher level. They dwarfed the sixteenth-century architectural gem, the town hall, which was tucked away in a side street.
Only a few people remained, sitting or kneeling on the ground with their modest piles of produce for sale in front of them—fat-shelled peanuts, corn, and a great variety of beans: large fawn ones called gordos (fat ones) and purply mottled ones, criollos, a local variety, and what’s more, nuevos, newly harvested and dried, which would ensure that the skins would not be tough. There were also a few bright red tubers known as papas de agua (Sagittaria macrophylla), or water potatoes—rather misleading, since they are not grown in water. Inside they were white fleshed and tasted somewhat akin to jicama. There were the usual tropical fruits trucked in from the hot country: pineapples, bananas, guavas, and small lengths of sugarcane for the Christmas piñatas. All this bounty but no jumiles. “Those who bring them down from the hills don’t come until Saturday.” It was the usual story!
Jumiles are collected from the dead leaves of small oak trees and around their base by people living up on the slopes of the sierra. They’re hurriedly carried to market before they die—and have an even stronger smell. Since they appear for only three months, November through January, they are considered a seasonal delicacy (and probably an aphrodisiac) and provide a free source of protein as well as healthy omega-3 oil for the indigenous people.
Of course, we need not have worried. As we entered the portal of the hotel, a neatly dressed, round-faced little woman assured us that she had laid in a supply and, what’s more, had some of the local bean tamales for us to try on the orders of El Capitán, the owner of the hotel. (I was amazed. I didn’t think managers like her still existed in provincial Mexico. In my experience, you are met at the receptionist’s desk by some gum-chewing young person who is more intent on watching the soap opera on television than attending to a would-be client.)
The friends who were to give us recipes were teachers at the exemplary local secondary school. It was the day of their Christmas party, and they were feverishly making last-minute purchases and arrangements for the meal. Since they were so busy, we sought out the part-time cook at the hotel, who turned out to be a great source of information. Born and brought up in a remote village down the valley, she was an enthusiastic cook. She preferred to eat her jumiles toasted whole, sprinkled with lime juice and salt, and wrapped up inside a tortilla. She also makes a sauce of them, toasted whole and mixed with finely chopped onion, chile manzano, and lime juice, to be eaten with cooked beans or, again, in tacos.
At that point one of the teachers arrived and gave her version of a sauce: grind together the uncooked jumiles with either raw tomato or tomate verde and fresh serrano chile. No onion or garlic is allowed in the sauce, for that would detract from their flavor! For me nothing could have detracted from or cover that flavor—it was so pungent and lingered in the mouth. We were then whisked off—the pace of our visit had quickened—to another teacher/sister-in-law, who immediately started cooking several dishes (see recipes in the chapter on the state of Mexico).
We were starving by the time we arrived for the party at the engineer’s house by the old mine and made light work of the delicious chorizos grilled over charcoal and even the rich, fatty chicharrón, the pride of the local butcher who made them (husband of our teacher friend) and who was well away in his cups before we sat down to eat.
Some of the group watched intently as we were served the local delicacy, pork cooked in a sauce of jumiles. I took one bite. I thought of the delicious sauce of wasp grubs in their comb and of flying ants that tasted like hazelnuts on the coast of Oaxaca—and decided that I really could live without another taste of jumiles. My sentiments must have escaped our hosts, who presented us with some of the live beetles to take home.
As we turned out the light that night, we heard what we thought was a mouse scratching to get in, but when I turned the beam of my flashlight in the direction of the noise, there they were, a hundred frantic little jumiles, struggling to get out of their plastic bags.
In the ’70s in a remote hacienda in central Mexico I witnessed a macabre scene that is enacted every year. Beginning in the last week of October, hundreds of goats are primitively (but painlessly) slaughtered and butchered daily for three weeks with unerring efficiency and speed. Within the space of three hours the scene that passes before your eyes seems at times like some ritualistic dance of death, with roots reaching back into thirteenth-century Spain.
These matanzas, mass killings, were most certainly linked to the Mexican Mesta (the Mesta was a stockmen’s association established in Spain in 1273 to control and regulate the transhumant movement) created in Mexico by ordinances from Spain in 1537. This was a logical conclusion to the transhumance, when pastures in the central plateau were exhausted. They continued on a wide scale down through the centuries until recent years, when such large herds of goats are fast declining. Possibly only two significant matanzas are still in existence today, and time alone will tell just how long these will continue.
The impresarios were the patron and his wife, of predominantly Spanish background, who came from a small town in Oaxaca. Each year in spring they sent out compradores, buyers, to inspect and buy whole herds of goats for slaughter. In May, when the summer rains started and bought fresh pasture to the central plateau, the goats were driven slowly, grazing as they went, toward the hacienda where the slaughter would take place. At its best, pasture was sparse and water scarce, but the texture and strong flavor of the flesh and the amount of fat produced were all said to be improved when the goats were fed salt at intervals. They were also given no water to drink, deriving their only liquid from the juicy tissues of the succulents and cacti that abound in the semiarid landscape.
Each year the patron rented one of the few remaining haciendas designed especially for the matanzas. These provided the working space necessary for this specialized industry—for an industry it is—providing hides, bones, dried meat, and fat for tallow and soap, in great quantities. Each year he contracted through the mayordomo. Accounts differ as to how the mayordomo was appointed, but it is most probably an office handed down through families from generation to generation. At least this was the case with a woman I met whose father had been a mayordomo. She had always accompanied him to help during the matanzas, and when he relinquished the work she became the mayordoma, in charge of the women workers, while her husband became the mayordomo. He in turn contracted the matanceros, who killed and butchered the goats, and for the women who cooked and did the chores during their temporary encampment at the hacienda. They all came from Chilac, a village about ten miles from the hacienda. For generations the peasant farmers have left their fields at the end of the harvest and dedicated themselves to this work.
It was eleven o’clock in the morning when we drove into the courtyard of the hacienda. It was deserted except for a few children who stopped in their play to look at us with curiosity and some emaciated dogs scavenging for scraps of meat. A few late blooms on the jacarandas, the red berries on the pirule trees, and the grayish green of the tamarisks were the only patches of color to relieve the monotony of the dun-colored adobe walls. Through an opening in the wall at one side of the drive came four boys carrying a litter—a straw mat tied around two roughly hewn poles—piled with a slithering ochre-colored mass of goats’ stomachs. They were carrying them down to be washed in the small river that was rushing along the outer limit of the hacienda, serving as both bathhouse and laundry. We retraced their steps through the opening and found ourselves in an encampment, set up between the outer wall of the hacienda and the tall cornstalks of a neighboring field. There were lean-to shelters of dried palms and long grasses interwoven with thin, vertical wooden stakes. This was where the matanceros lived and ate during the matanza period. Looking around, it seemed to be an almost complete microcosm of village life that has hardly changed at all through the centuries.
The women had improvised their kitchens; on small fires set between large river stones they were preparing and serving the midday meal before the work began. Some of the women were kneeling on the ground, grinding the corn for tortillas in traditional fashion on metates, the rectangular, volcanic-rock grinding stones. Others were patting the dough between their hands and cooking the tortillas on the comal, a large, thin disk of unglazed earthenware.
There were beans simmering in large, earthenware pots, and in front of the seated men were small bowls of simple, local indigenous foods: very hot chile sauces, the long, thin red pods called guajes that contain an edible bean with a fiercely pungent flavor, and small, green olivelike berries cooked with tomatoes, garlic, and cilantro, called tempesquixtles (Bumelia laetevirens)—they have a very delicate perfumed flavor, and it is said that once you have eaten them you will always return to Tehuacán.
A young girl was sitting there braiding dried strips of palm for baskets, while in another part of the camp some old crones were more seriously at work singeing the fur off the goats’ feet from the previous day’s slaughter. Hundreds of these small, cloven feet, strung closely together in huge clusters, had been tied up in the trees around the camp to save them from the prowling dogs. There was even a small stand selling soft drinks, although many of the older men had brought along with them their own supply of aguardiente, a strong liquor made of fermented juice from sugarcane. A woman was seated on the ground with her children around her, selling small piles of peanuts, pumpkin seeds, chewing gum, and dried, roasted fava beans, a sight common to any street corner throughout Mexico.
Strung out over this scene and flapping overhead like a laundry line were the flattened stomachs and intestines of the goats from the previous day’s slaughter—part of the perquisites of the matanceros (butchers), along with the feet and ears. Under the shelters were the sleeping quarters of the men. The bare earth floors had been swept clean. Blankets, clothes, and rucksacks were neatly slung over lines or hung onto pegs stuck in the wall, while the petates (coarse woven straw mats used for practically everything in village life) for sleeping were rolled up and stacked to one side. To add to the scene, there was the incongruous sight of windpipes, still fresh and bloody, hanging up to dry.
We continued our tour of the main part of the hacienda. Off to the right of the entrance drive was a large corral, toril, where hundreds of goats were awaiting the day’s business. In the building to one side was a primitively equipped kitchen with long trestle tables where the rest of the workers ate their meals. And next to it another room, bare except for a double bed, chair, and night table where the patron and his wife, unheeding (or perhaps enjoying) the odor of the fried bones that were piled up in one corner, taking up at least half the space. Across the driveway was the office, dominated by huge scales, where the patron’s wife was weighing some of the “merchandise” and calculating the price with the help of an electronic pocket calculator.
Through the office window one could see a large, open patio area with an overhanging roof forming a shelter along the far side. At right angles to it was another building, and as we came in from the strong sunlight we could just make out through the eerie, smoky atmosphere men stirring big cauldrons of fat with long hand-hewn wooden paddles. From time to time they would dredge up some fried livers with a crude metal strainer and carry them out to cool off on straw mats in the patio.
Others were pressing crispy little bits of fat from the cauldrons in a stout wooden press until every drop of lard had been extracted and a solid block of chicharrón prensado was ready to be sent to the local markets.
The rendered lard was strained through a straw mat tied onto two rough pieces of wood and poured through a funnel into an inflated goat’s stomach. The stomach was tied securely at the top and thrown onto the bizarre-looking pile at one end of the room: hundreds of goats’ stomachs, taut with solidified fat and alive with hungry flies. It was a Goyaesque scene as the fritangueros (men who were frying) finished off their work from the previous day’s killing. There was a speck of light high up at the far end. It was a candle flickering in front of a replica of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Dangling from a rough iron peg at one side was an offering: the fried liver of the first goat slaughtered that year.
Just before one o’clock that afternoon, the goats were driven into the main patio, and they huddled together nervously as the matanceros, all clean and neatly dressed, filed in carrying their baskets, bottles of refreshments, and very small chairs that looked as though they belonged in the nursery. With hardly a word to each other, they stripped to their underwear and, hanging their belongings neatly on the pegs under the shelter at one end of the patio, began methodically to distribute huge baskets at intervals of a few meters, then spread out before them the indispensable petates.
Some of the men were sporting their favorite baseball caps with peaks turned jauntily towards the back, others wearing wildly decorated T-shirts, while some appeared to be wearing loincloths, and at least one man had on a natty pair of checked bermuda shorts. They all had long-bladed, fearsome-looking knives stuck in their belts.
In times gone by it was customary for the mayordomo to lead the men in singing a prayer of blessing every day before the killing began, but now it is usually sung once only, on the first day of the matanzas.
At a signal from the mayordomo—an immense, broad-shouldered, bandy-legged man dressed in white and wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat—groups of the men rushed forward and, each grabbing a goat, sometimes two, by the horns, dragged them toward the picadores, who were brandishing their long-bladed knives like dervishes. With one thrust at the goat’s throat they expertly hit the jugular. An occasional onlooker rushed forward with a bucket to catch the blood spouting out of the dying animal. Through a haze of dust, the incredible scene unfolded in uncanny silence, broken only by the scuffle of feet, some low-toned bleats, and a gush of urine from a terrified little goat as it hit the ground. The onlookers, a few smartly dressed businessmen from the nearby town, some peasant women with children in their arms, stood by silently and seemingly unmoved. One little girl started to cry and hid her face in her mother’s skirt. But to most it was just a routine daily occurrence during the weeks of the matanzas. It was all over in twenty minutes. Fifteen hundred goats, perhaps more, had been slaughtered. The mats were stained a brilliant red with the congealing blood, and there was a sickening smell of goat.
It was now the mayordomo’s business to see that the carcasses were distributed evenly among the groups of men—ranchitos, as they are called—and then began a frenzy of orderly butchering. The brawniest of the men slit the skins from neck to abdomen and, with their knives held between their teeth and steadying the carcass with their feet, ripped it off with one continuous motion. The heads came off next; the animals were cut open, the entrails scooped out, and the carcasses dismembered. After each hacking the cut pieces were thrown onto growing piles of haunches, ribs, shoulders, and stomachs; so quickly were they butchered that the haunches at the bottom of the pile were still quivering like fish taken from the water.
The men were now squatting or sitting on their little chairs. Their arms and legs grotesquely covered with blood, they wielded their knives with uncanny speed. Not one word was exchanged. The sound of hacking and the metallic ring of knives constantly being sharpened filled the patio. We could have been in some medieval marketplace.
They stripped the meat of the pelvic bones and spine, which were stacked ready to be sold for the local specialty, mole de cadera (a soupy stew of goat bones and chiles), and flown to aficionados all over Mexico. A young man was hacking off the horns on a small wooden block and throwing the heads into a tall basket from which a hundred eyes stared accusingly at us. The very small boys were cleaning out the ears with great care. The entrails were separated and the intestines carried on a litter over to two incongruously respectable young men from Mexico City who were carefully washing and skeining them as though they were of the finest silk. There were growing piles of brilliant red spleens, green bile ducts, and bloody vocal cords; even the unspent turds were collected in neat piles to go back to the fields. Nothing went to waste. By now some of the men were working under the shelter using the goat skins to keep the meat off the dirt floor, while others were using them as slings to carry bones to some other part of the patio. As the work progressed, tensions began to relax and the men started to chat, smoke, or take swigs of aguardiente, while the youngest boys giggled uncontrollably as they squirted each other with milk from the udders.
By now there was a steady stream of men coming and going through an archway at one end of the patio carrying the meat to another group of men (tasajeros), who would do the final stripping and sorting. They were sitting in a line under a tiled shelter, expertly and rapidly cutting every scrap of meat from the bones into long strips and carefully removing every ounce of fat. No sooner was there a pile of meat in front of them than it was carried off and thrown into a large concrete pit filled with strong brine. Three boys trampled it unceremoniously with their bare feet and, scooping it up in armfuls, slung it onto the waiting litter.
At this point we were in a walled area of about two acres, almost completely covered with straw mats on which the meat was spread out to dry in the hot November sun. There was a constant rhythm of movement as the men spread the fresh meat out to dry and systematically turned the partially dried meat from the previous day. Some of it had already dried out enough and was ready for packing. It was carried back under the shelter, where it was rolled into huge bales and wrapped into one of those indispensable petates. A lid of the same material was sewn on with a rough cord, and it was ready for the marketplace, where it would be sold as chito.
We returned to the main patio to find the matanceros carefully dressed up again, despite their blood-caked limbs, as though they were commuting some distance instead of just walking two hundred yards back to their camp. The patio was immaculate in its way, baskets stacked, petates rolled up, and the ground swept clean with the besoms that had been stowed back onto the roof where they belonged. One by one the leader of each group was called to the office to account for the number of goats butchered, and as soon as this was done they lined up, chatting and happy. These expert killers who had looked so tough a short time before relaxed and joked with us as they waited to leave through the large wooden entrance doors that had been closed as soon as the matanza began. They were guarded by the patron’s bodyguards, two tough, unsmiling men with guns on their hips who neither changed expression nor spoke as they frisked all the men, even lifting up their caps, to search for any scraps of concealed meat. One man was caught with a very small piece tucked under a sack he was carrying over his arm, but it was all taken in good humor and part of the day’s work. The next morning they would be up again at the crack of dawn, cleaning the hides, rendering the fat, and frying the bones.