The Discovery of Pulque

A taste for pre-Hispanic topics sprang up in the National Fine Arts School after the restoration of the Republic in 1867 and constituted the way in which the said institution played its part in the changes set in motion by the liberals, who promoted cultural manifestations based on the recounting of history, with stress being placed on certain aspects of the pre-Hispanic civilizations. In 1869, José María Obregón, one of the students in the schools painting department, decided, under his teachers' guidance, to depict a legendary scene from Mexican history, in the form of an incident said to have taken place around 900 A.C., when the Toltec culture, centered on what is now the city of Tula, was in its heyday. Obregón peoples his oblong-shaped composition with idealized indigenous figures, dressed in exotic garb, inside a palace-like building with Toltec features. The story concerns a young woman called Xóchitl who, led forward by her parents, is offering Tecpancaltzin, the King of Tula, a gourd filled with the drink, called pulque, that she has discovered. Struck by her beauty, the King marries her. In 1880, the historian, Manuel Orozco y Berra, questioned this version, asserting that the account had erroneously arisen from a misreading of a neo-Hispanic documentary source, the drink in question really being a mead-like beverage obtained from honey by decanting it until only a sugary residue is left. The alcoholic drink called pulque (sometimes also referred to as octli) has been known in Mesoamerica for over 2,500 years. This work was shown at the XIVth Exhibition of the National Fine Arts School in 1869. It entered the MUNAL, as part of its founding endowment, in 1982.