Local Foods Meet Global Foodways by Benjamin N Lawrance Carolyn de la Peña

Author:Benjamin N Lawrance, Carolyn de la Peña [Benjamin N Lawrance, Carolyn de la Peña]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415829953
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2012-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

MIXED PULQUE AND THE (RE)PRODUCTION OF SIN

The informes described mixed pulque as both a spiritual and temporal threat. Diego de la Cadena, a professor of theology at the Royal University, opened his report by declaring that the prohibition “will be of the best service to both Majesties: to Our Lord God, because of the very serious inconveniences, that occur in the Moral [realm]; and to the Catholic Majesty of Our Lord and King (may God protect him) because of the excessive and inevitable harms caused by [pulque] in the Political.”42 Most of the informes—all but three—were written by members of New Spain’s clergy and therefore concern themselves primarily with the former. These reports constitute a laundry list of the Indians’ greater and lesser sins, seemingly drawn less from personal experience or empirical evidence than from biblical references and other religious commentary—Saints Ambrose and Augustine figure prominently. Claims of renewed indigenous idolatry and sacrifice demonstrated, in the words of the Dominican friar Juan del Castillo, that alcohol “undoes the rustic and simple ways that the Indians had quickly adopted after their conquest and conversion.”43 Assertions of religious backsliding were articulated alongside other, somewhat contradictory claims that the indigenous population had in fact never abandoned its ancient religion. In his account of the uprising, for example, Sigüenza declared that “even today [the Indians have] not forgotten their ancient superstitions,” and added parenthetically that “their most important deity” continued to be “the God of War.”44

In either form, incomplete or imperfect conversion served as a powerful rhetorical device with which to attack pulque, while at the same time privileging the administrative perspective of the clergy responsible for these reports. Perhaps the most powerful argument against the pulque prohibition was the revenue that the sale of the pulque asiento (contract) provided the government. Many ecclesiastical authors sought to preempt this financial drawback by flatly asserting that the salvation of even a single soul was worth more than the hundreds of thousands of pesos gained by selling pulque permits. A wide variety of historical examples were given to demonstrate the Spanish crown’s historical interest in evangelization over economics, including Philip II’s costly invasion of Flanders and Philip IV’s failed attempt to hold onto Portugal in 1640.45

But the reports did not limit their focus to the spiritual alone. Indeed, despite de la Cadena’s analytical attempt to keep them separate, the temporal and spiritual worlds in many ways overlap—homicide can simultaneously constitute a mortal sin and a threat to political stability. Most important here were the “intimate” sins thought to take place in Mexico City’s numerous pulquerías.46 Critics frequently referred to the pulquería as a point of encounter where the city’s many races were brought together by the pernicious drink. According to the minister of San Pablo parish, Bernabé Núñez de Paez, “with this Drink the Indians have built a friendship with the blacks and mulattos, who had always been their enemies; and with one another (unos y otros) they form a most perverse Plebe.”47 The composition of

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