Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Emilio Kour is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Katz Center for Mexican Studies at the University of Chicago.

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A Pueblo Divided

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables...........................................ixAcknowledgments............................................................xiIntroduction...............................................................11. The Culture and Commerce of Mexico's Vanilla............................52. The Tecolutla River Basin...............................................343. The Vanilla Economy.....................................................804. The End of Communal Landholding.........................................1075. The Experience of Condueazgo...........................................1576. Division and Rebellion..................................................187Epilogue...................................................................281Appendix: Mexican, U.S., and French Vanilla Trade Data.....................287Notes......................................................................301Bibliography...............................................................351Index......................................................................373

Chapter One

Throughout the nineteenth century, and indeed for a good part of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the history of Papantla was inseparable from the history of its vanilla economy. To understand Papantla's past, one must understand vanilla. These pages trace the unexpected and somewhat fortuitous emergence of vanilla as a valuable spice of international commerce, showing how Papantla's vanilla economy acquired the characteristics that would define it in the nineteenth century. As will be seen, an historical examination of the economic botany, utilization, and commercial development of vanilla reveals the raison d'tre not only of aspects of production as diverse and fundamental as ownership of the crop, division of labor, capital inputs, scale of cultivation, timing of the harvest, and credit and purchasing mechanisms, but also of the geography of production-within and outside Mexico-and the structure of export markets.

While ordinarily this information might be obtained by recourse to previous scholarship, the case of vanilla presents special difficulties. For one, precious little is known about the historical development of Mexico's vanilla industry. Remarkably, even though until at least the 1850s virtually all of the vanilla ever consumed in Europe and the United States came from Mexico, Alexander von Humboldt was the first to report any details about its cultivation, preparation, and commerce. Its earlier history remains obscure. Witness the Abb Raynal's rambling Histoire philosophique et politique des tablissemens et du commerce des europens dans les deux Indes, which managed only to deplore the dearth of information about the vanilla economy of New Spain, flatly stating, "We are equally ignorant how many different species there are of it [vanilla]; which are the most valuable; what is the soil which suits them best; how they are cultivated; and in what manner they are propagated." As Humboldt pointed out, Raynal was not able even to name the districts where vanilla was produced, indicating only that it "grows in the inaccessible mountains of New Spain." One hundred years after Mexico achieved independence from Spain (1821), the literature on the Mexican vanilla business had outgrown Humboldt's Ensayo only slightly. Even though the international vanilla economy changed profoundly between 1820 and 1920, only three slim grower's manuals-by Rossignon (1859), Fontecilla (1861), and Lpez y Parra (1900)-date back to this period. Each described planting and curing techniques, but for the most part disregarded the social organization of the industry. Likewise, the natural and horticultural histories of vanilla have received scant attention. Although the notably complex economic botany of vanilla has undergone significant historical transformations, popular writings have tended to reduce it to a simple series of exotic vignettes; not surprisingly, various aspects of its development remain the subject of long-standing confusion. In sum, there is little to rely on by way of previous studies.

Out of necessity, therefore, a fresh effort has to be made here to map out and integrate the intricate botanic and economic histories of vanilla. This chapter is devoted to that task. It examines the production and reproduction of vanilla, its uses and markets, and its transformation from fruit to spice. The ensuing panorama will make it possible to understand the historical development of Papantla's rural economy.

Out of the Wilderness: Production and Reproduction

The spice commonly known as "vanilla" is the cured and fermented fruit of a tropical orchid native to the Americas. The "vanilla" used commercially is a flavoring extract made by combining glycerin, sugar, and alcohol with chopped or ground processed vanilla. In Spanish and in English the word refers both to the plant and to the fruit. In French, however, vanillier is the name of the plant and vanille is reserved for the fruit. As will be seen, this is a useful distinction, setting apart the agricultural and the processing stages of vanilla production.

There is not just one kind of vanilla plant, but many. Numerous species of the genus Vanilla (Orchidace family) are known to botanists, but according to a prominent student of the genus "only three ... (V. planifolia Andrews, V. pompona Schiede and V. tahitiensis J. W. Moore) are of commercial importance as sources of vanilla." In the process of curing, all three species develop vanillin, "the substance chiefly responsible for the peculiar fragrance and flavor of the vanilla bean." However, the planifolia produces by far the best vanilla for flavoring, and this has long been recognized. As such, merchants always preferred and sought out V. planifolia, and the modern vanilla trade has concentrated almost exclusively on this species. Yet before the late nineteenth century, when commercial standards were at last successfully enforced, it was quite common to sell other kinds, especially V. pompona, mixed in with and disguised as the legitimate sort, V. planifolia. Much of the early botanical research on vanilla in Europe was sparked by the desire to describe and classify the coveted "true vanilla of commerce," then synonymous with "the true Mexican vanilla of commerce," eventually labeled Vanilla planifolia.

It was in Mexico that the conquering Spaniards first came in contact with vanilla and learned its various local uses, and vanilla from the Viceroyalty of New Spain was, for the most part, all that could be had anywhere in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century. This largely uncontested monopoly within the Americas is remarkable, considering that V. planifolia is indigenous not only to Mesoamerica but also to a good part of South America and perhaps the Caribbean. V. planifolia is a climbing green vine whose aerial roots cling to neighboring trees for support; it is not, however, a parasitic plant, but rather an epiphyte. The supporting trees and shrubs shelter the vine from unfiltered sunlight and strong winds, which can impair growth or damage the delicate shoots, flowers, and fruits. The vine's leaves are thick and succulent, oblong-elliptic in shape, and it produces small yellowish flowers (orchids) in bunches, often numerous. It grows well in warm, humid climates where rain is abundant, provided that the distribution of precipitation is seasonal, so that flowering can take place during the relatively drier months. The soil in which it grows requires high levels of superficial moisture, and it must also be light, porous, and well drained, since the vine's underground roots are shallow and rot easily. In the words of a Totonac vanilla grower from Tajn, near Papantla, Veracruz, "The soil must have a great deal of `juice,' because the roots are on the surface." Thus, low hillside forests rich in mulch are a common location, since the slopes aid the drainage and protect against the winds.

V. planifolia normally flowers only once a year; in Mexico this usually happens during April and May. The blooms live only for a day. Fruit develops only if fertilization of the fleeting flower succeeds. Due to their anatomy, however, this orchid, like most, is incapable of direct self-pollination. The structure of its pistil (female organs) prevents it. For fertilization to take place, the pollen must attach to the inner tissue of the stigma, which is connected to the ovary of the flower. In V. planifolia, however, the stigma develops a flap-like membrane over its mouth; this membrane (rostellum) covers the stigma's cavity and prevents the pollen held in the anther, directly above, from reaching the surface where it would germinate. In the words of the botanist whose discovery this was,

The flower of Vanilla has this peculiarity-that the retinaculum is highly developed, so that this organ forms a curtain suspended before and above the stigmatic surface, thus separating it completely from the anther, which in its turn encloses in two cavities, naturally shut, the pulverulent masses of pollen. From this structure it results, that all approximation of the sexes in this orchideous plant is naturally impossible. The fructification of vanilla therefore depends on the participation of an external agent in the pollination process. In the regions where V. planifolia is indigenous, bees and other insects seem to have performed this role exclusively well into the nineteenth century. If one considers that at least until the 1850s these regions were the only source of vanilla for commerce, the importance of these agents becomes evident. Yet precious little is known in detail about the natural pollination of V. planifolia. The French colonial botanist Arthur Delteil-an early expert on the systematic cultivation of vanilla-wrote that in Mexico small bees of the genus Melipone carried out fertilization while "collecting from the flower pollen and sugars used in the elaboration of their honey." Hummingbirds, he added, performed the same task. Although Delteil did describe these bees, it does not seem that he ever observed them, and his sources are not known. Nevertheless, his claim was supported by Charles Darwin's broad research on cross and self-fertilization, including his studies on the role of insects in the fertilization of orchids. Darwin noted that "much nectar [is] secreted from the bases of the flower-peduncles of Vanilla," and that insects were drawn to it. Some decades later, a Mexican writer asserted that "the natural fertilization of the flowers of this orchid takes place and has taken place for many centuries, perhaps thanks to various species of bees and some other insects," adding that "it is also probable that hummingbirds, so common in our vanilla producing regions, are agents of fertilization for these flowers." However, these remarks have no empirical value since they are clearly borrowed from Delteil.

Evidently, some kind of insect fertilization must have routinely occurred, but no direct observation of it in Mexico is recorded. Because this delicate operation was a crucial step in the natural and economic cycle of vanilla, botanists nonetheless sought to clarify it, resorting to educated speculations. In 1896 a prominent student of vanilla reasoned:

As regards V. planifolia it may be said that the flowers are fragrant, and that they secrete a large amount of honey at the bottom of the tube, which would naturally attract insects. The front lobe of the lip is reflexed and somewhat rough, and thus would afford a lighting place for the insect, which would then crawl into the tube to suck the honey. A small bee would easily get the front part of its body past the anther, because the appendages of the crest are all deflexed towards the base, but on retreating these would present an obstacle, and in order to pass them the bee would have to elevate its body, and thus would press against the incumbent anther and dislodge the pollinia. In what way these become attached to the insect in this case is perhaps not known, but it may be safely assumed that they do become so attached and are carried away. On retreating from the flower the bee would also lift up the flap-like rostellum which protects the stigma, and thus any pollen would inevitably be deposited on the latter and fertilize the flower.

Regardless of what the exact procedure might have been, it is surely right that these agents not only enabled self-pollination to take place, but also, by taking pollen from one flower to the next, carried out cross-pollination. This fact illuminates an essential aspect of the natural and early economic history of the vanilla plant, namely, that it was able to reproduce itself in the wild. Cross-pollinated flowers bear seeds from which new plants can in turn grow; self-pollination, on the other hand, engenders sterile seeds. The insects that so puzzled the minds of generations of botanists and would-be entrepreneurs were, in fact, the key element in understanding not only the production of the precious fruit but the entire life cycle of the species as well.

Until sometime in the eighteenth century, the vanilla plant was not cultivated or cultured to any significant extent. Its growth, health, or reproduction were not generally the result of deliberate human intervention, which is to say that the plant did not habitually obtain any improvements from labor. The original vanilla economy seems to have operated exclusively on an extractive basis; that is, it did not include a horticultural cycle. Vanilla vines grew wild in forests and water meadows where ecological conditions were suitable for their development and propagation. Native gatherers simply searched for ripe fruits to pick, selling them for silver coins with which to supplement their subsistence economies. Annually, some would trek to known spots to pick fruit from scattered vines, while others roamed nearby hills and streams hoping to find wayward clusters. The sum total of their haphazard findings constituted the season's harvest.

The early geography of vanilla collection is not precisely known; there are only brief colonial references to vanilla-picking in parts of Tabasco, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Campeche, Soconusco, and Guatemala. "This fruit grows wild in the hills and is not owned or cared for by anyone," reads a 1744 document from Papantla, Veracruz, "for which reason those who trade it are mostly Indians who go out after it and they cut it." In the 1770s the Veracruz-born Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero, exiled in Bologna, observed in his Storia Antica del Messico simply that "the vanilla, which the Mexicans call tlilxochitl and is so well known and much used in Europe, grows without culture in the tierras calientes." The scant specialized historiography is equally laconic. "In the beginning," states the first treatise on Mexican vanilla, "one harvested only what was produced spontaneously in the forests."

Nonetheless, it is possible to discern a chronological pattern. Vanilla was used almost exclusively to flavor a drink made with cacao beans (chocolate). During the sixteenth century, the regular consumption of this beverage was customary only in southern and central New Spain, Chiapas, Soconusco, and Guatemala; although the cacao drink was already known in Spain, there it was still largely an unusual and exotic product. Thus, the demand for vanilla was modest and overwhelmingly internal, and its exportation remained commercially insignificant. Under these conditions, the vigorous cacao trade originating in Soconusco and Guatemala-organized around elaborate networks and routes predominantly of pre-Hispanic origin-functioned also as the principal conduit for and the driving force behind the collection and commercialization of wild vanilla for the entire zone of chocolate consumption. Although in all likelihood some vanilla was concurrently extracted from zones unrelated to the production of cacao-for example, Totonacapan-it is fair to say that at this early stage the crop's commercial structure and geography were essentially ancillary to those of cacao.

As long as the geographical distribution of the markets for the spice did not extend beyond Mesoamerica, the main cacao-producing regions remained as well the most dynamic sources of wild vanilla. However, in the course of the seventeenth century the exportation of vanilla to Spain-and through it to other European nations-became a lucrative economic activity. These new and expansive markets provided the impetus for the emergence and articulation of vanilla economies in regions better positioned to take advantage of an export trade obligatorily channeled through the port of Veracruz. Thus, by the eighteenth century, Misantla, Colipa, northeastern Oaxaca, southern Veracruz and-to a much lesser extent-Papantla begin to appear as the preeminent sources of wild vanilla, now destined mainly for export. Since vanilla was indigenous to these places as well, increasing the output initially required only the intensification of gathering forays. Mule packs linked these producing regions to Veracruz, and through them farflung trading networks were established, gradually forging a strong vanilla business geographically and operationally independent from cacao.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from A Pueblo Dividedby Emilio Kour Copyright © 2004 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission.
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