The body, a reflection of the universe: how to know mezcal
The peasant childhood of the priest and linguist Marcel Jousse was an important milestone for his work. He was the son of an illiterate family, and he viewed his childhood as a laboratory of ideas because he was trained in classical linguistics. He reflected on his family experience and the oral tradition groups he studied. He concluded that the understanding of the world materializes in a human organism. Therefore, the body and the soul were an indivisible compound. His life was his work and the other way around. So with lectures he spread his theory of "the anthropology of the body" where he declared that gestures are the fundamental element or atom of human language.
Encounter of Father Jousse with a Chief Sioux. “It rains… the clouds… hide… the sun.”
In essence, peasant societies are oral tradition communities. Knowledge is not transmitted or stored in texts, but from practical experience. Eckart Boege says that peasant people write on their landscape. To learn history, ethics or citizenship people use complex mnemonics such as songs and poems. So to learn about the countryside and the landscape people use agriculture. Regarding food human groups use recipes, dishes and ways of tasting. Many peasant groups relegate modern technology because they have less access to it. But also because these communities occupy a much more vital technology: the body. This tool allows a more day to day understanding of reality. This instrument is the vessel of the senses and also the mechanism of reproduction of the universe. The body is a metaphor for the understanding of the world. The ability to recognize the attributes of a product such as heritage agave distillates reveal this theory. People know the attributes of a mezcal by their sensory experience. Alcoholic strength, maguey variety and whether or not it was a mature plant can be known.
If we “truthfully” have a mezcal, how to recognize it? For the residents of Santa Catarina Minas it is essential to distill with clay pots; the people of the municipality of Tequila do not believe that there are other true drinks than those of their region; a population can consider a variety of agave is good for mezcal, but in the neighboring town they think it harmful; there is a crowd in San Luis Potosí and other locations using masonry ovens to cook the maguey, contradicting the mere etymology of the word mezcal. Then, what is the common denominator to know the existence of the liquor?
Jousse said that the purpose of anthropology is to identify insights held by specialists of various sorts and combine them to form a coherent synthesis. One who did this was Cornelio Pérez. His concept of “historical taste” condenses peasant knowledge of traditional maguey liqueurs. Each group has a parameter that defines historical taste, yet they have singular explanatory gestures for it. A develop particular ways to process, know the plants and sensory exercises to determine the nature of its creations.
The first time my partner visited a mezcal production site she tasted cooked maguey. It was a revealing moment for her — and for me. She realized “what” agave liqueurs were thanks to tasting the cooked mezonte. She remembered a similarity with the mezcals she previously had. On my side, I recognized my clumsiness to acknowledge the wisdom of the maestras. Everytime I asked what mezcal tasted like they gave a laconic reply: "it tastes like maguey". It is not until one internalizses the flavor of mezontes that one understands mezcal. Producers are redundant to show wisdom, while many use pompous descriptors to reveal ignorance about mezcal. From a very young age in their peasant experiences, producers literally “in-corporate” the idea of mezcal. Sósima, a maestra mezcalera says that her father used to put her to sleep in the fermentation vats when they were empty when she was little. In a spontaneous and diverse way, the universe began to integrate to the senses in rural life.
Playing with mezcal to show the bubbles in the northen mountain range of Oaxaca.
Expressing that mezcal is in good form after playing with it.
In 2017, various companions set out to develop a workshop on the philosophy of food. When we approached the subject of food education, we realized that it is very difficult to know "good food". Especially because we are very far from it and its origin. Hence, we consider three ways of getting closer to this knowledge. The first is to be a farmer, thus knowing what the making particularities are. The second is to have a trusted middle person who shares a certain product with us, who him/herself knows under what conditions was grown. The third is perhaps the most reliable of all the methods, but the most difficult to learn: training hard in the art of sensory appreciation. This act is not vain, ridiculous or insignificant, in fact quite the opposite, it is the most transcendental. To do this, one way is to live a more rural life, more integrated with the potential of the body in the ecosystem.
Jousse considered the Druids of ancient Gaul his teachers. Much like them peasants, country people, farmers, agriculturalists serve a wide variety of trades. They are philosophers, teachers, artisans, cultivators, breeders and the repository of the communal wisdom of the earth expressed in one person:
“The human who stands in front of us will do so with all the richness of his strength and muscular power. Careful! It is a musculature carrying the universe, a universe of understanding. ”
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