century an inquisitive child might discover a little bottle of crimson essence
labelled carmine or cochineal. The cook used it to colour
the icing on birthday cakes or for flavouring. It was also used as a natural dye for colouring
sweets, medicines and cosmetics because it was neither harmful nor toxic. But
originally cochineal was processed as a dye for textiles.
The cochineal dye was, and still is on a smaller scale, obtained from a
sessile parasite which is native to tropical and subtropical South American
regions. The insect survives by sucking the juices and nutrients principally from
the Opuntia or paddle cactus, a genus
in the cactus family which is often referred to as tuna in the Canary Islands.
taking a close look at a prickly pear plant, especially on the southern
hillsides of Tenerife, will often discover not only the reddening and delicious prickly pear fig flowering on the rim of the cactus leaf or paddle, but
also a mass of tiny dark-coloured insects under an ashen-white, waxy substance which the nymphs secrete to protect themselves from the sun.
It
is from the female of this parasite that the carmine dye is taken. The male is
grey and has wings. The female is wingless and is a much more impressive dark blue-red
colour. Like most living species she does most of the hard work. On the other
hand it is the duty of a solitary male to cope with three hundred females for
the purpose of reproduction, enabling each female to then lay hundreds of eggs.
carmine dye from the beetle is not an easy task but during its heyday in the
1860s and 70s tunera farming for the
cochineal insect proved very profitable. A thriving cochineal industry in the
Canary Islands survived until the 1970s although synthetic dyes had long before
made the breeding and harvesting of the cochineal beetle too costly and labour
intensive. It required 70,000 beetles to provide a single pound of cochineal
dye as well a lot of women wearing layers of clothing as protection against the
cactus thorns in order to gather in the beetles.
Stone, nineteenth century traveller and author of Tenerife and Its Six Satellites, explored the Canary Islands with her husband, John Harris Stone in the
1880s. She described women scraping the insects into large flat metal trays.
This procedure occurred when females of second generation of beetles were ready
to lay their eggs. The trays of insects would then be placed in ovens to toast.
The beetles could also be put into boiling water and later dried in the sun.
She also described insects being mixing together with black sand in a linen bag
several feet long which would then be swung back and forth by men holding each end of the bag until the juices seeped out. In the industry’s halcyon days, as Olivia Stone described them, before
the discovery of synthetic dyes, cactus farmers could make between 75 and 100lbs from an acre of ground. It was a very profitable business and labour in
those days was extremely cheap.
Spaniards discovered cochineal in the 16th century during their
South American conquests, particularly in Mexico. The Aztec people were using
it to dye their blankets and clothes but also squeezed the beetle with their
fingers and rubbed the resulting scarlet juice or blood onto their faces as war
paint. Historians suggest the amazing Aztecs had been cultivating the beetle
since the 10th century.
Most inhabitants had cactus growing in their
fields and were very careful to protect the beetles from rainstorms. However
they never realised the economic significance of their precious insects until
the Spaniards began to harvest them and cochineal became one of the colonies’
principal exports.
the 17th century the colouring of fabrics had become one of Europe’s
most important industries and cochineal dye, imported from Mexico, Peru,
Bolivia and Chile accounted for a fifth of the Royal income during the reign of
Philip II. The king is thought to have described cochineal as a commodity equal
to gold and silver. The Spaniards were able to maintain secret their discovery
and the process involved in producing the dye for many years. They considered
the cochineal dye industry so important to their own economic interests that
they encouraged a lack of knowledge and even the use of deceit to hide the
secrets of the tiny prickly pear beetle.
French botanist Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville discovered the Spanish
mystery in 1777. He smuggled some insects out of New Spain and attempted to cultivate cochineal in Haiti with scant success. The climate was too humid. The French also planted cactus in
Madagascar and Algeria. The plant flourished but the beetle did not survive the
climatic conditions and their experiments failed.
the Spaniards found no success in their early attempts to bring the industry
across the Atlantic to Europe and they could not compete with their American colonies.
However, just before Mexico became independent in 1836, the cochineal beetle
was introduced to the Canaries where the Opuntia variety of cactus for the production
of the prickly pear fruit, the higo pico,
was already a success.
The climate and temperature was perfect. Production
spread rapidly throughout the islands despite initial fears amongst landowners that the industry would damage their traditional vineyards.
Nevertheless, when they realised the high profits they could make from the
beetles they took a very keen interest. At the same time South American
countries began to favour coffee production on a large scale. This led to the cochineal
industry in the Canary Islands becoming even more important. In fact such was
the monopoly that landowners were able to set their own high prices.
Canaries flourished for many years on the cochineal industry. It replaced many
of the islands’ famous vineyards which had been so cruelly devastated by the oidium tuckeri, the powdery mildew
fungus which thrives in the mild, humid conditions found in the northern
valleys of Tenerife and other mountainous islands. British Consular reports
reveal that cochineal even replaced wine as the Canary Islands’ main exportable
product to British seaports. In fact cochineal dye from the Canary Islands also
played a significant role in the development of the English textile industry
during the industrial revolution.
There is little doubt that English orders for
cochineal helped turn many of the rugged volcanic malpaís badlands into productive cactus plant enclaves. In 1831 the
amount of dye powder bought by textile merchants in England was a tiny 8lbs.
Ten years later exports had risen to over 100,000lbs. In 1850, the wine trade
having been virtually wiped out by disease, cochineal dye exports to Britain
were an estimated 783,000lbs. By 1861 the figure had risen to over 2,000,000lbs. But there was yet more to come. Production of the dye and its exports
to Britain reached a peak in 1869 with over 6,000,000lbs. One
of the principal clients for cochineal dye was the British Government.
Originally only for officers’ uniforms, cochineal became the vital ingredient in
conjunction with certain chemicals which was used to produce the brilliant
scarlet of the famous British Army tunics, so fearlessly worn in battle
but which made such easy targets for the enemy.
(Some images have been reproduced from internet with no personal financial gain intended.)
Comments
Melchor Padilla
Estupendo artículo, John. Me gusta mucho la divulgación de lo nuestro que haces. Un abrazo.
tenerifeprivatetours
Muchas gracias, Melchor. Agradezco tu amable comentario. Cuando estés por el Puerto…….Un abrazo