New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1880-10-27
Pulque-The Mexican National Drink.

In letter from Mexico to the New.
York San, the writer says: This liquid
is distilled from the maguey plant. Il
has disagreeable smell and taste, but
no description can possibly convey an
adequate idea of its hurtful effects upon
the prosperity of the country. In the
first place, the most fertile and pro-
ductive lands of the upper plain of Mex
leo are altogether given up to the pro-
duction of the maguey plant. When it
is remembered that a maguey takes
often ten years to come to perfection,
and that very little attention is required
in the mean time, it will be evident that
the employment this species of agri-,
culture gives to the laboring class is far
below that required for the cultivation
of any kind of grain. Yet it is by this
very class of persons that pulque is
most drunk, and consequently the reals
of the working man find their way into
the pockets of the rich owners of
hacie'adas who spend their profits in
Paris or Brussels, while the working
people receive almost no substantial
benefit from the principal agricultural
pursuit of the country. Besides, the
effect of pulque drinking is horribly
enervating and dcmoralizing. Taken
in moderation, it is an excellent tonic to
the stomach, and Queen Victoria is said
to be in the habit of drinking it for this
reason; but taken in excess the effect is
fearful, as it produces the very worst
kind of intoxication. have never seen
so many drunken people as in the
city of Mexico, where the pu!que-
r,us are more frequent than gin
palaces In London or gin mills in
the Bowery. A pulque "drunk lasts
for about twenty-four hours, and as one
plant produces every day about four
quarts, just enough to intoxicate a
pulque drinker, and this plant lasts for
about six months, the owner of small
plot of ground can remain half drunk,
as indeed many of them do; for many
years. The enormous amount of this
liquor that is consumed yearly can be
estimated from the fact that in the City
of Mexico alone the consumption is at
the rate of a pint day for every in
habitant. and that special train, tre'a
deSbulQue, runs szice a day between
Apam, a village in the heart of the ma
guey district, and Mexico City, the
freight from pulque on each train
amounting to between seven hundred
and eight hundred dollars! The ma
guey yields another liquor, which is
not so deleterious in it's effects either
as drink or as an object of labor as is
pulque. This is the vino mezcal, which
is species of brandy, distilled from
the juice Of the maguey; but it can only
be drunk as a kqueru, and is not unlike
Jamaica rum. 1t is manufactured in
large quantities at Apam, where the
dry and cold temperature of the
great dusty Mexican plain produces
the maguey in its highest perfection.
At Tequila, little town in the State
of Jalisco, to the north of Guadalajara,
a very supsrior kind of mezcal is man
ufactured, which takes its name from
the town, and is really very palatable
beverage. But am convinced, in spite
of the wonderful usefulness of the ma
guey, supplying as it does fruit, drink,
yam, hemp, paper, needles and brush
es, that it is one of the banes of this IA
vored land.