Debate in Mexico

Grubby Mexican peons, sodden and weary from their long annual pilgrimage to Ome Tochtli (Two Rabbit, God of Drunkenness) in Tepoxtlaa, staggered into Mexico City last week to find themselves bedeviled by cops, shrill women and crackdowns, tempted with low-taxed beer. The Mexican Government was full swing in its campaign to wean peons away from their vile national drink, pulque (pronounced pool-kay), educate them up to beer.

The Habit. Pulque, compounded of fermented cactus juice from a Mexican century plant, is a malodorous, milky-looking sour liquid which sells for ten centavos (2-c-) a liter, is swished down by low-class Mexicans as a substitute for water, which in Mexico is scant and bad. Some scientists believe that pulque's yeast and vitamins offset the unbalanced diet of chili, corn and beans, act as a counterirritant to hot peppers. But that is the best that can be said for it. Its production is unsanitary. Its sale is in filthy, squalid pubs. Its consumption produces a stumbling goofiness after the second or third liter.

To drive out pulque the Government must conquer a superstition, smash a major industry. The superstition dates centuries before Cortes. This fall as in hundreds of years past, many a peon still trudged miles up into the mountains to participate in a bibulous ritual on the site where Ome Tochtli's idol once stood. As an industry, pulque employes a million and a half persons, covers a million acres of land.

The Cure. Prohibition was tried in one province, did not work. The evils of alcohol were taught to school children. Health laws were used to crack down on the worst pulquerias. (Fortnight ago, 13 brigades of 20 women each made the rounds of Mexico City's worst dives, got police to jail 380 proprietors for violations, dump 140,000 gallons of illicit pulque down the sewers.) But the best chance of smashing the pulque trade seems to be to divert it to beer. Mexican beer is among the world's best. And since 1932, the beer industry has persuaded the tax-conscious Government to reduce taxes on beer so that it can be sold almost as cheaply as pulque. Breaking the tippling habit of centuries will be slow, but Mexico's booming beer industry shows that it may be done. Beer consumption in Mexico in the past ten years has jumped fivefold, from 55 million to 240 million liters.

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