Colouring history in Puerto Vallarta

 

One of the not very useful facts that I know from my studies of Mexican history is that in 1582 cochineal was being produced in Chilapa in the mountains of Guerrero, and a few years later in Huamuxtitlán, Olinalá, Tlapa and Ahuacuotzingo. The little insect Dactylopius coccus was used to produce a dye much in demand in the textile workshops of Mexico City.

 

But while I had read about cochineal I had never seen it, and had no idea how the dye was made nor what colours it produced, until Jan and I paid our annual visit to a shop called Casa Oaxaca in Puerto Vallarta. The shop is the retail outlet of a cooperative of Indigenous textile workers in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, a drive of more than 1,300 kilometres so Google informs me.

 

In front of a loom were several baskets each containing different dyeing materials. There was indigo from plants of the Indigofera genus, pods of a shrub called huizache (Vachellia farnesiana) whose seeds produce blacks and greys; a mineral used to break down the lanolin of wool so that dyes can be absorbed.

 

And there was a basket of a shiny material that I took to be small stones, but was in fact the dried bodies of the cochinilla insect. It feeds on the sap of prickly pears, in three months growing to about one centimetre. These are voracious little creatures as our son Chris told me later: they ate the prickly pear in his garden in San Vicente in no time at all. But the textile workers of Teotitlán love them: they infect prickly pears with a male and female and wait for them to multiply and suck the plant dry.

 

The young man who served us gave me a demonstration. He crushed some cochineal in his hand, applied a few drops of lime juice; a red stain appeared on his hand. Then he added a little ground chalk to produce a different shade; next slaked lime for another shade. With judicious application of a variety of alkaloids, a range of reds can be produced. So here the historian who knew about the cultivation of cochineal almost 500 years ago was given a beginners class in how it is used to produce goods for tourists today.

 

These insects little have other uses. They are edible, but apparently have no great flavour. They can be used as a food colouring, and are added to mezcal.