Cochineal Farmers

            Amy Greenfield vividly describes the desires of European consumers to own clothing and other items that were dyed in brilliant red.  The textile industry was Europe’s primary industry at the time of Europe’s first contact with Central and South America.  There was much money to be made by selling luxury textiles to Europe’s wealthy consumers.  Greenfield describes the secrecy that was essential to the guilds that controlled the dyeing of textiles.  Cities like Lucca, Florence, and Venice prospered when their weavers and dyers were successful.  The fierce competition on the part of the textile guilds suggests that the number of producers may have been capable of a supply of textiles greater than the demand for these luxury goods.  Europe’s population did increase from 1492 to 1892, but it is doubtful that the number of wealthy people in relation to workers and other common people changed significantly during much of that period.  Before the industrial revolution we can imagine that textile workers competed with one another for customers.

            The farmers who raised cochineal insects in Oaxaca and nearby areas had been doing so for hundreds if not thousands of years.  Over a long period of time they bred cochineal insects to be twice the size of wild cochineal with a particularly vibrant and long lasting color.  The advantages produced by careful breeding came with a cost, for domesticated cochineal was not as hardy as wild cochineal.  Farmers had to carefully protect their insects from rainfall and cold weather before the insects could be removed from the nopal cactus where they lived and bred.  The farmers who raised these insects generally worked on their own small farms where they carefully and patiently tended their insects.  It was typical to have two or three harvests per year, and it took 70,000 insects to make a pound of cochineal.  After silver, cochineal became the most valuable commodity sent to Spain.

            When the Spanish first saw the large markets of Tenochtitlan they saw beautiful red fabrics, red painted feathers, pottery with red designs, and red as a cosmetic on people.  There was extensive commercial activity related to cochineal, and for the Indians who raised the insects cochineal was an important source of income.  The Aztec imperial institution collected large amounts of cochineal in tribute payments.  After the Spanish took control of Mexico they continued the collection of tribute based upon formulas worked out by the Aztec bureaucracy.  Despite the trade value of cochineal, the new Spanish rulers were generally not interested in cochineal.  Encomenderos were eager to gain wealth quickly.  It was unclear how long they would be able to hold on to their encomienda land.  As the population of Indians decreased because of the impact of disease, tribute payments seemed less valuable then ranching focused on Spanish crops or on new ventures to secure silver.  The Spanish men who went to Mexico were looking for respectability and status as well as wealth.  The cochineal model was a very small enterprise that required patience and investment in time, and it did not fit the model of large estates and exploitative labor held by the conquistadors.

            If conquistadors could not appreciate the value of cochineal, Charles V and his son Philip II did.  Merchants from Spain also recognized that money was to be made in cochineal, and they came to Mexico, established relationships with local village officials, and provided them with credit.  The officials, many of whom were not regularly paid, welcomed the credit and made some of it available to local cochineal farmers.  The Spanish merchants also made connections with the trans-Atlantic traders that took the cochineal to Spain.  The Spanish government continually tried to control the activity of the merchants, but the determination of the merchants and the distance from Spain limited the government’s ability to collect even more money than the royal fifth.  Spanish merchants did protect Spain’s monopoly on cochineal.  English and Dutch pirates were able to occasionally capture Spanish ships, an enormous treasure when it occurred, and they were able to purchase cochineal from French merchants.

            Great effort was spent by various people to secretly remove cochineal from Mexico and grow it in other locations.  It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that cochineal estates were established elsewhere.  Java proved to be a failure in part because the Dutch system of forced labor was so brutal that the careful attention required by those who tended cochineal was impossible, and because the Dutch public when they learned about the brutality complained to their government.  The Canary Islands became a major producer of cochineal after a fungus destroyed the vineyards that had been the basis of the islands’ economy.  Rising production coincided with rising demand related to increases in population and increases in per capita income in Europe.  The final blow to cochineal was the invention of synthetic dies.  These dies did not last as long, and possibly weren’t as beautiful as cochineal, but they were much less expensive than cochineal.  The new dies came in time to color the clothes that the new consumers, modest and middle class people, could purchase with their wages.  They did not expect clothes to last for a long time, and they appreciated the variety of consumption items now within their reach.  Cochineal will never again be the important commodity it once was, but despite this a few farmers in Oaxaca may be able to raise cochineal for a luxury market that is willing to pay a premium for natural dies.