Tangled up in Blue

Inspired the history of Pulque and Tequila.The Aztecs would say , “ Drunk as 400 rabbits”. They created an alcoholic drink called Pulque that was made from the Blue Agave plant.  After the fall of the Aztec empire in 1521,  a trade route was established between Manila, Philippines and Acapulco, Mexico.  This was known as the Galleon Trade during the time period of 1565 to 1815. The Spaniards used Filipinos for the Galleon crews.  When ships would arrive in Mexico whole crews would abandon ship and mix into the local population. With this integration, a different process of distilling sap from the Agave plant was introduced. This different distilling process produced what is now called, Tequila and Mezcal.  In the painting the gold coins and silver cup represents treasure that was traded for goods and services. The skull with bandana represents a ship’s crew member, the blue tone and bottle represents alcohol made from the blue blue agave plant, and the foot print on cork is the image used by the Aztecs to represent travel and migration.