The Change in Agricultural Activity in the Apan Plains: the Case of Maguey Cultivation in the 20th Century

Abstract

Few geographic spaces dedicated to a single extensive crop in Mexico, as in the world, have been able to change in less than a human generation, this due to a series of alterations both in the preference of crops, as in the change of land use and of the property. Despite being in the Mexican memory the image of a region where the cultivation of maguey of sap was privileged, as basis for the elaboration of the pulque drink, this was completely modified by the commercial incentive of annual seeds, with barley being privileged, accurate for the beer industry. On the other hand, the necessary extension of the maguey cultivation fields, which required both a staggering of plants, according to their age, and a continuous supervision to be used after a decade, due to their slow development, collided with immediate interests of the beneficiaries of an agrarian distribution of the lands formerly of the haciendas pulqueras. This distribution was not successful due to the impoverishment of the area, which led to the construction of an industrial plant that accelerated social changes in the region. The purpose of this attempt was made to develop a pulque bottling industry, and other maguey’s products, that would meet the sanitary and quality requirements imposed by modernity. However, despite these governmental program, the mismanagement and the little acceptance of a different product other than the traditional pulque, ended when the Mexican policy changed to neoliberalism.

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