Is Pulque Really Prohibited?
Francisco ‘Paco’ Sanchez was busy putting the final touches on his pulque, a milky home-brew beer-like drink, and thinking about how it would taste when it completed its fermentation process. It had taken him quite a bit of time and running around all of Chicago’s Southside before he was able to find the dark agave syrup and the champagne yeast he needed to make his pulque.
The country was in the midst of two crises of sorts. The first was the Great Depression, the collapse of the stock market which had been artificially supported almost from the end of WWI. The second was the growth of organized crime as a result of its virtual take-over of the clandestine business of providing alcoholic beverages during Prohibition, the constitutional amendment banning almost anything having to do with alcohol. However, Paco was blissfully unaware of what was going on around him.
Small and thin, from the time he was a teenager he had found work at the race track in Querétaro, Central Mexico, where he would be a groom or ride the horses for their morning workouts. A couple of years ago, three men representing the Arlington Race Track in Chicago had come to Querétaro to find someone to work at their track. Thinking of the possible adventure of living in the U.S. for a time, Paco volunteered his services and was immediately hired.
He didn’t speak English, so it was hard for him to make friends except for a couple of the other Hispanic jockeys. After a couple of months of sleeping in one of the stables, he decided to move into a place of his own. With the help of one of the jockeys, Paco found an apartment in the Southside. The jockey didn’t mention anything about a Depression and doubted Paco would understand even if he had.
That’s when Paco’s undertaking to make his home-brewed pulque began. Just a quick tour around the Southside made it clear there were no pulquerias in Chicago to serve his favorite drink.
Finding the champagne yeast wasn’t too difficult. Apparently a lot of the Americans liked to make their own breads and things. He didn’t know that homemade sourdough bread often was the cheapest and only meal many families could afford during the Depression.
But finding the dark agave syrup took him almost six months of wandering the streets of Chicago before he found some in Pilsen, a Mexican neighborhood on Chicago’s lower west side. All Paco was interested in was the fact that it was where he would be able to get the dark agave syrup he needed whenever he would require it in the future.
One of his neighbors knocked on his door one day, asking if Paco had some sugar the neighbor could borrow, and Paco gladly gave him a cup. The pulque was in the process of fermentation and the neighbor could clearly see that Paco was preparing some type of alcoholic beverage. He looked at Paco, surprised that this young man would be making home brew against the law. The neighbor filed the information away in his mind for future reference, in case he should ever need it.
Making pulque at home was a long, tedious process that required a lot of boiling and different periods of fermentation in the refrigerator. However, the final product was what interested Paco, and his mouth was watering just thinking about being able to savor the results of all of his work these past weeks.
A couple weeks later, the neighbor was caught stealing an orange from a makeshift fruit stand nearby. Seeking to make a deal to avoid prosecution, the neighbor told the investigating detectives that he knew of someone making homebrew in his apartment, and he would provide the information if they dropped the charges.
Paco was nearly startled out of his wits when he heard shouting in English outside his door. Worse still, when a battering ram broke down the door to his apartment, he almost fainted. Paco got agitated when several of the burly men who rushed into his apartment headed straight for the kitchen where the pulque was fermenting and not only grabbed it, but began looking for a place to dump it. He rushed at them and received a good knock on the head for his trouble.
The leader of the raid began speaking to him sternly in English. Paco had no idea what the man was saying, understanding only that the man had dumped out all of the pulque it had taken him so long to prepare and which was almost ready. When the raid leader realized his suspect hadn’t the foggiest idea what he was saying, he asked in an atrocious accent “Español”?
Paco nodded, and the man pointed to the floor indicating that Paco should sit there while the leader got someone to explain what was happening and why he was being detained. Then the man turned and told one of his men to get one of the uniformed men, a young Mexican-American who spoke Spanish named Carlito Suarez, who had been left to guard the premises while the raid took place.
Rushing in, the ambitious young cop asked the leader what he needed.
“Talk to this guy and tell him we’re arresting him for violating the law by preparing an alcoholic beverage. There was quite a bit in the big pot he had, so he may have even been thinking of selling some of that stuff, whatever it was,” the leader told the uniformed agent.
Turning quickly towards the seated Paco, Carlito told the seated suspect “You are being arrested for violating the law. You were preparing an alcoholic beverage here and the boss thinks you may have even been thinking of selling some or all of it.”
“What?” Paco asked, puzzled. “I was just making some pulque for myself. It’s my favorite drink, and it took me months before I could get all the ingredients together to make it. It was almost done when these guys came in and threw it all away.”
Carlito suddenly realized that the suspect had no idea what Prohibition was all about, or that it even existed. This was borne out by Paco’s next question.
“You mean that pulque is somehow against the law here in Chicago, in the United States? What kind of law is that?” he asked.
Carlito nodded and turned to the leader of the raid and said: “Boss, I don’t think this guy has any idea of Prohibition or that he was doing anything against the law. He just was making a drink that is very popular in Mexico where he’s from. It would be a shame to put him in jail.”
The raid leader thought about it for a moment and then agreed. “Just tell him that making that ‘polecat’ stuff or whatever you call it is against the law and if he does it again he will be going to jail.”
Carlito explained it all to Paco, and that was when Paco learned that pulque was ‘prohibited’ in the U.S.