Alcoholic Beverages

Long before the Conquest, peoples of the Americas produced and consumed fermented beverages. These drinks became integral to the fabric of life, and withstood efforts to eliminate or replace them after the arrival of the Europeans. Some are still consumed today.

TRADITIONAL BEVERAGES

Chicha is a generic name for beverages made from grains or fruits. Chicha can be nonalcoholic, such as chicha de quinoa, which is simply a quinoa broth. But it is the fermented beverage that has had the most influence on Latin American history. Plantains, algarroba, palms, berries, cassava, sweet potatoes, and maize have been commonly used. The chicha from the Andean region is best known. To produce it, maize kernels were moistened, a diastase (often the saliva of women who chewed the kernels) and water added, and then the mixture was cooked. (Masato, or the common manioc beer of the Amazon region, was made in essentially the same way.) Malting (letting grains germinate after soaking), akin to the European method of beer making, was another method of fermentation. The alcoholic content of chicha varied from 2 to 12 percent, depending on the type of maize and the fermentation process. Twentieth-century Peruvian cookbooks present standard recipes for some of the more traditional chichas.

Pulque was the Nahuatl octli, the "honey water" common to the cultures of central Mexico. Pulque was also a ritual drink, associated with certain gods and ceremonial practices. As with chicha, the process of pulque production was simple. The stem of the maguey plant was cut, allowing the juice (aguamiel) to collect in the cavity of the plant. Traditionally this was extracted from the plant with a long tube, and placed in wooden or leather containers. The addition of already prepared pulque initiated the fermentation process, which could last from a week to a month. Variants of pulque (pulque curado) might include nuts, fruits, and herbs as sweeteners and flavorings. Frances Calderón De La Barca, perhaps Mexico's most famous nineteenth-century observer, wrote: "It is said to be the most wholesome drink in the world, and remarkably agreeable when one has overcome the first shock occasioned by its rancid odor." With distillation (a process introduced after 1492), the juice of the maguey also produced mescal and tequila, beverages that became increasingly popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the twenty-first century, tequila enjoys worldwide acclaim.

Chicha and pulque survived the Conquest and competition from imported beverages. They were admirably suited to the geography and culture of the Andes and Mexico. Ingredients were readily available and production was simple. This popularity was also due to their ceremonial use, as offerings to the gods to insure good harvests and to provide strength during battle. They were believed to have a range of magical and relating qualities that insured the continuation of the community and the culture. They were also valued for medicinal purposes, useful in combating infection and disease. The nutritional quality of chicha and pulque has been disputed since the sixteenth century, but modern nutritional analysis has demonstrated that both could, depending on ingredients used and the manner of preparation, contain significant amounts of protein, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin C, calcium, and iron, in addition to other nutrients.

BEER

Europeans introduced their own beer—made from barley—soon after the Conquest, receiving licenses to manufacture it in Mexico as early as 1544. Despite early protection from the crown and efforts to limit consumption of Indian beverages, European beers made slow inroads in Latin America until the late nineteenth century, when a new wave of European immigration prompted changes in alcoholic consumption patterns. Regions receiving the largest numbers of immigrants experienced the most profound changes, but throughout Latin America, even those areas with dense indigenous populations, beer gradually became more popular. In Mexico in the twentieth century, the local and regional characteristics of beer have given way to uniform taste and quality as the three giant producers, La Cervecería Cuauhtémoc, Cervercería Moctezuma, and Cervecería Modelo, have dominated the industry. In Brazil, where beer has almost achieved the status of a national drink, the same process of centralization of production and distribution has occurred with the giant breweries of Brahma, Antártica, and Kaiser.

WINE

Wine was the staple drink of the Spanish diet in the sixteenth century, and the preference for wine was carried to the New World. Despite the centrality of wine in the Iberian diet, however, it did not become the universal drink of Latin America. In Mexico, the production of wine had a sporadic history, as mercantilist legislation attempted to prevent its production. Disruptions in trade and the need for wine for religious and medicinal purposes led to occasional permission to grow grapes for wine, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that the industry developed in earnest. And it was only after World War II that Mexico developed a wine industry comparable to that of Peru, Chile, and Argentina. Peru, the center of Spanish civilization in South America, supported a flourishing wine industry in its coastal valleys. It hoped to maintain a monopoly of production and supply, but distribution problems led to the development of vineyards in other countries. Eventually, Chile, Argentina, and southern Brazil emerged as important producers. Wine, especially among the immigrant populations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, became common in the diet. Since the 1960s, wine production both for domestic consumption and for export has increased. Chile became an important wine exporter in the mid 1990s, followed by Argentina in the early twenty-first century. Chile has a climate and soil suitable for both red and white wine varieties, and its area devoted to cultivation has doubled. Since 2003 the volume of Argentine wine exports has increased twofold, and its value has tripled. Argentina is the fifth largest wine producer in the world, and is known for its trademark Malbec.

CONSUMPTION AND ITS CONTROL

The introduction of distilled beverages had a profound impact on drinking habits in Latin America. High-alcohol spirits were substituted for low-alcohol traditional beverages and the more expensive European wines and beers. References to drinking habits from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries suggest widespread indulgence, at least compared with what was deemed socially acceptable. Grape brandy, first imported from Spain, then produced at the successful vineyards established in Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico, provided spirits for increasingly enthusiastic consumers. It did not, however, equal the popularity of aguardiente, known generally as cachaça or aguardente in Brazil, a spirit made from distilling the juice of sugarcane. The addition of citrus and other flavorings to the beverage helped create variety. Sugar, wherever it was grown in Latin America, was the basis for alcohol production. In the case of the Caribbean, sugar—and its products of molasses and rum—became one of the foundations of trade patterns linking New England, Europe, West Africa, and Latin America. The Spanish islands (and Venezuela) soon became known for light, dry rums, while the English islands produced heavier, darker rums.

Drinks made from these spirits have entered the global cocktail lexicon, and taken their place among martinis and manhattans as popular beverages. Two of the most favored are daiquiris, a drink of Caribbean origin, made from rum, fruit juice, and sugar, and margaritas, made from tequila, lemon or lime juice, sugar, and salt. A rival in taste if not in popularity is the pisco sour, a Peruvian concoction of pisco (a grape brandy), citrus juice, and sugar. Brazilian cocktails have not yet achieved the international reputation of margaritas, daiquiris, and pisco sours, but caipirinhas and batidas, made from Aguardiente, fruit juice, and sugar, are worthy contenders.

Widespread use (and concern about abuse) of alcoholic beverages in colonial society led to attempts to regulate their production, distribution, and consumption. As early as 1529, the Spanish crown considered banning the production of pulque, the prelude to a succession of laws that sought to limit or ban certain types of alcoholic beverages. In some cases the crown's economic motive was clear; in other cases it was hidden behind laments over the moral decay of society. By the eighteenth century, cane brandy had come under as much attack as the local beverages of chicha and pulque. It was the "demon rum" of the colonies that was blamed for most social problems. Excessive drinking disrupted family life, slowed economic production, and caused a range of medical problems. Indians and mestizos drank the most, but Spaniards as well consumed excessive amounts of cheap cane brandy.

In Mexico, chinquirito, a type of cane brandy, was widely consumed, though it was only one of a dozen or so "prohibited beverages." Extremists argued that high mortality rates in the Indian population were largely due to excessive consumption of chinquirito. Compared with this noxious drink, some officials thought that the traditional pulque was "innocent, healthful, medicinal, and necessary." Produced in small stills throughout central Mexico, chinquirito prompted a century-long effort to curtail its production, distribution, and consumption. The trade in chinquirito had reached a level that negatively affected the wine and brandy producers of Andalusia. As fewer wines and spirits were transported across the Atlantic, taxes shrank and the maritime capacity of Spain was reduced.

At stake in the regulatory effort was control over a vast economic activity. In Mexico City alone there were over 1,500 shops, known by many different names, selling alcoholic beverages. The potential for taxing and licensing income was substantial. One eighteenth-century solution was to centralize control through the awarding of monopolies for production and distribution. Here the administrative history of spirits finds comparison with that of tobacco, meat, and other colonial products. In Colombia, this included the regulation of anise, which was the most popular local flavoring for aguardiente. As with other monopolistic efforts, success was often elusive. The availability of ingredients and the simple, inexpensive technology required for production undermined the most thorough legislation. Moreover, because local taverns provided income and were important public spaces for Latin America's nonelites, Mexicans resisted colonial officials' attempts at regulation.

The political explanation for the control of alcoholic beverages invariably pointed to the social and health problems related to drinking, even though medical thought continued to argue in the late eighteenth century that alcohol was important for health, especially in hot regions. One important issue, from the sixteenth through the twentieth century, was excessive drinking among Indians, blacks, and castas.

Alcoholic consumption among Indians before the Conquest was associated with religious ceremonies; the availability and distribution of alcoholic beverages was controlled by politics and custom. After the Conquest, drinking became more widespread, leading to accusations by Europeans that drunkenness was extensive among Indians. By the late eighteenth century, there were carefully articulated theories explaining Indian susceptibility to alcohol due to natural temperament, though consumption was at times regulated in Indian communities by social and religious customs that curtailed widespread alcoholic abuse.

The concern over Indian drinking intensified in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From Mexico to Bolivia, Indian drinking was equated with character and genetic weaknesses. Alcoholism among Indians was referred to as a grave national problem, and began to call forth the efforts of political reformers and educators. It was said to weaken countries economically, physically, and morally. More progressive interpretations, evident by the end of the nineteenth century, saw Indian alcoholism as another attempt by ruling groups to enslave the Indian. Education promised hope for eradicating alcoholism, and the new schools of revolutionary Mexico in the 1920s initiated campaigns to combat drinking, emphasizing the detrimental effects of excessive pulque consumption. When this did not work, reformers considered enacting plans similar to the Volstead Act, which ushered in prohibition in the United States. Nevertheless, consumption of fermented and distilled beverages continued, often to an extent that troubled the national conscience.

Employers throughout the Americas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were concerned about alcohol and drinking. For them, drinking was an obstacle to securing a dependable labor force: Workers failed to show up to their posts on Mondays, instead taking the day off in what became known as the San Lunes holiday, or they left their posts early at the end of the week to drink. The physical and psychological dependency on chicha and pulque, as well as on the new beverages introduced after 1492 has been singled out as the cause of everything from crime to malnutrition.

Pre-Conquest alcoholic beverages retained their cultural significance into the twentieth century. Methods of preparation and rituals of consumption remained intact following the introduction of European beers and wines, though cheap, distilled beverages, especially cane brandy, have provided a popular alternative to the traditional beverages since the early sixteenth century.

See alsoAguardiente de Pisco; Cuisines; Wine Industry.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Introductions to the history of pulque and chicha can be found in Oswaldo Gonçalvez De Lima, El maguey y el pulque en los códices mexicanos (1956); Mario C. Vázquez, "La chicha en los paises andinos," América Indígena 27 (1967): 265-282; A. Paredes, "Social Control of Drinking Among the Aztec Indians of Meso-America," in Journal of Studies on Alcohol 36, no. 9 (1975): 1139-1153; and C. Morris, "Maize Beer in the Economics, Politics, and Religion of the Inca Empire," in Fermented Food Beverages in Nutrition, edited by Clifford F. Gastineau, William J. Darby, and Thomas B. Turner (1979), pp. 21-35. Gilma Lucia Mora De Tovar provides a thorough institutional history of cane brandy in Aguardiente y conflictos sociales en la Nueva Granada durante el siglo XVIII (1988). For comparisons with Mexico, see Gilma Lucia Mora De Tovar, El aguardiente de cana en México, 1724–1810 (1974). The social history of drinking is presented in William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (1979); Michael C. Scardaville, "Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform in Late Colonial Mexico City," in The Hispanic American Historical Review 60, no. 4 (1980): 643-671; and John C. Super, Food, Conquest, and Colonization in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America (1988).

Additional Bibliography

Chalhoub, Sidney. Trabalho, lar e botequim: O cotidiano dos trabalhadores no Rio de Janeiro da belle époque. 2nd Edition. Campinas, Brazil: Editora da Unicamp, 2001.

Curto, José C. Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and Its Hinterland, c. 1550–1830. Boston: Brill, 2004.

Godoy, Augusto, Teófilo Herrera, and Miguel Ulloa. Más allá del pulque y el tepache: Las bebidas alcohólicas no destiladas indígenas de México. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, 2003.

Llano Restrepo, María Clara, and Marcela Campuzano Cifuentes. La chicha, una bebida fermentada a través de la historia. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología, 1994.

Moncaut, Carlos Antonio. Pulperias, esquinas y almacenes de la campana bonaerense: Historia y tradición. City Bell, Argentina: Editorial El Aljibe, 1999–2000.

Orlove, Benjamin, and Ella Schmidt. "Swallowing Their Pride: Indigenous and Industrial Beer in Peru and Bolivia (in Symposium on Food and Cuisine)." Theory and Society 24, no. 2 (April 1995): 271-298.

Pardo, Oriana, and José Luis Pizarro T. La chicha en el Chile precolombino. Santiago: Editorial Mare Nostrum, 2005.

Ramírez Rancaño, Mario. Ignacio Torres Adalid y la industria pulquera. México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2000.

Rodríguez Ostria, Gustavo, and Humberto Solares Serrano. Sociedad oligárquica, chicha y cultura popular: Ensayo histórico sobre la identidad regional. Cochabamba, Bolivia: Editorial Serrano, 1990.

Venâncio, Renato Pinto, Henrique Carneiro, and Andréa Lisly Gonçalves. Alcohol e drogas na história do Brasil. São Paulo: Alameda, 2005.

Viqueira Albán, Juan Pedro. Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico. Translated by Sonya Lipsett-Rivera and Sergio Rivera Ayala. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1999.

                                          John C. Super