The Time of Agave

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project © Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project © Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project View all images ↓
View all images ↓

The agave system in Mexico is facing the confrontation of the ancestral time with the haste of a liquid modernity.

Espadín, the most common agave used for mezcal production, takes about 8 years to grow; wild agaves, up to 30 years. In the last decade, the occidental request for mezcal is pressuring the Mexican territory and its inhabitants at a rate that is far too aggressive for the plant’s intrinsic temporalities.

The Time of Agave is one of so many.

It is the time needed by the different agave species to grow well and sweet.

The same time that also need the actors of the agave system to grow as individuals, surrounded by the sharp spines of the plants, desertic soils and remote communities.

It needs to accelerate not to die and to slow down to survive.

It is tabu and shame, proudness and identity.

It is a physical time that manifests itself on the Mexican territory.

That conforms it, shapes it.

Constructing and destructing imaginaries.

The Time of Agave is contradictory and delicate. Balanced between a growth perspective and a desire for authenticity.

Covering both the pulque and mezcal regions, as well as using time as a reading-key to highlight the damaged agave system, the photos aim to show the subtile and sensible testimonies of a territory living the environmental consequences of its own economic apogee.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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A man is walking on an oven, burning piñas for mezcal production. In the mezcal region, it is common to see huge clouds of smoke rising from the palenques. Workers and inhabitants often complain about air quality.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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The monoculture of Espadín nowadays shapes the territory of municipalities such as Nejapa de Madero and Santiago Matatlán. More than 30 % of the agaves of the mezcal region grow in the perfectly delimitated fields of these two communities.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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A teenage girl between childhood and adulthood bathes in the river of Yegolé. In the communities of the mezcal region, the ancient traditions still define very clearly the gender-based family roles.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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The remotion of the cuticle (mixiote) of the agave is nocive to the plant, directly affecting its photosynthesis. There is a rising attempt to steal it from the producers to sell it for food preparation, resulting in a black market.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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The conservation of ancestral traditions and recipes is important to maintain the quality of the product and pay respect to the past generations of pulqueros and mezcaleros. The use of animals to work on the land is also part of these practices.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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Men are carrying back the « piñas » to the truck after a day of cutting the « pencas » in the hills of Yegolé. Each « piña » weights about 40 to 70kg. In the mezcal area, it is often impossible to use heavy machinery due to land inclination.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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A woman in her kitchen. Mother of 9 children, 7 of them now live in the United States. The phenomenon of younger generations leaving the distant regional areas and never definitely coming back is part of the complexity of family life in remote comunities.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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A huge amount of wood is necessary to feed the mescal’s ovens. In the Oaxaca mezcal region, most of the wood comes from the sierras nearby. The forest industry is directly implicated in the environmental impacts of mezcal production.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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A boy walks in the hostile landscape of Oaxaca's mezcal region. The difficulties he is facing are a mirror of the ones that come with growing up as a man in a community.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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An agave pulquero rises with the morning light in a field of the zona pulquera. Pulque has a pre-hispanic long story and was once considered a beverage of the gods, represented by Mayahuel, a female deity associated with the maguey (agave) plant.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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As international mezcal demand is rising, some producers that once grew agricultural products like maize and frijol turn themselves to agave. Such is the case for this man who opened a small palenque on the road Oaxaca-Istmo.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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The haciendas are significative architectural systems of Mexico’s hispanic occupation heritage. The « aristocracia pulquera » still owns a majority of the most historically powerful haciendas pulqueras.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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In Oaxaca, the importance of the « usos y costumbres » shapes a society that preserves traditions and a strong sense of community. In the church of Santiago Apóstol, a man celebrates solemnly on the Feast day of the Virgen of Guadalupe.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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A cross rises among the nopales on the hill above a cemetery in the pulque region of Hidalgo. The maguey is really closed to the culture of death and this connection is symbolic in mexican poetry. It is common to see agaves emerge from the graves.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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A tlachiquero collects aguamiel with its "acocote" during the early hours of the morning. The hierarchic system of the pulque production has been established with the haciendas and have not change since then.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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Pulquerias have a strong historical implication in CDMX, where already in 1650 there were more than 200 of them before controls imposed by the viceroyalty. They now are a strong testimony of Mexican culture and of the possibility of social cohesion.

© Frédérique Gélinas - Image from the The Time of Agave photography project
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When an agave begins to erect its colossal « quiote », it is also in the process of slowly dying. This spectacle is an uncommon natural manifestation of the fragile frontier between the apogee of life and the imminence of death.

The Time of Agave by Frédérique Gélinas

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