1In this paper, we merge anthropological analysis, cultural studies, and environmental humanities, to consider insects as driving forces for human evolution and culture. We examine how interactions between humans and insects are shaped by culturally-informed worldviews related to subsistence patterns and political economies, understood here as adaptive and economic strategies and structures that change through time and place. We analyze Mexican customs and history featuring insects, Amerindian cosmogonies and children’s stories with origins in Indigenous languages, many transmitted through oral traditions. These stories form an intangible heritage connecting symbolism, ancient knowledge, ritual, and cultural practices, inviting children to connect to insects as they exist in the diverse ecologies of Mexico. We follow a decolonial pedagogy by comparing these cultural artifacts and worldviews to European perspectives dating back to colonial contact, and challenge the prominence of Western worldviews to center and promote Amerindian knowledge and history. The “decolonial shift” we follow implies a change of perspective to focus on the practices and knowledge forms of colonized people (Maldonado-Torres, 2007) by vindicating and recognizing ancient knowledges, traditions, and identities in resistance to the modernity model imposed by coloniality (Díaz, 2010). We look specifically to Oaxaca, Mexico to argue that historic subsistence patterns of Amerindians and Spanish colonizers influence different insect-human relationships and attitudes toward insects and biodiversity more broadly. Our analysis underscores how biological diversity and cultural diversity are intricately linked.
2Many contemporary attitudes toward insects and biodiversity can be traced back to ancestral subsistence practices and colonial settlement, extraction, and globalization. Early Judeo-Christian teachings promoted and justified domination over the natural world, a worldview that contrasts sharply with mesoamerican ideologies in which humans coexist with insects, are dependent upon other beings, and are therefore part of diverse natural worlds. In Indigenous mesoamerican cosmogonies, animals and insects are often trusted intermediaries and authorities, negotiating relationships between the natural/supernatural and between deities and humans, because these links are visible to animals but not humans. García-Gallegos (2022) explains that this approach endows animals with “the capacity to interact with everything that humans are incapable of visualizing” (pg. 92). The cultural symbolism of the Mexica, ancestors of the Aztecs after whom Mexico was named, also reverses the power structure in human-animal relationships because animals —not humans— are understood as the owners of the natural environment. According to Juárez Becerril, in some Amerindian cosmogonies, like the Nahua, animals are wiser than humans because they connect with gods and forecast meteorological phenomena (2011). In pre-hispanic societies of Mexico, the success of crops (and therefore, of the communities) was dependent upon knowledge about the seasons, clouds, lunar cycles, and insects. Examples of this include the abundance of chapulines forecasting rain and ants as predictors of good or bad crops of corn. Ants are also observed to predict weather patterns as they form long lines to protect themselves from future rains (Juárez Becerril, 2011)
3In temperate regions, like Oaxaca, there is an abundance of year-round insect species, people coexist with more insect species, and interact more closely with them. Amerindian respect for insects might be explained, in part, by a greater reliance on them in more recent collective memory and consciousness. The connection between subsistence, worldview, and storytelling is captured by Schuetz-Miller (2022) who writes that,
what sustained life was recognized as the primary avatar of the deity. Before our earliest ancestors invented weapons they relied on insects and bird eggs as the main sources of protein. It explains how a mantis, spider, or bird ranked at the top. Small animals that could be trapped or netted, such as rabbits or pack rats, were further sources of protein to hunter-gatherers and became part of the creation myth (pg. 2).
4The idea that insects are agentive, sensing, and attentive beings is widely found in Amerindian folklore, but this idea is less common in Western literatures and altogether absent from Christian theology. Studying colonial contact allows us to examine the interface of these differing worldviews. In fact, researchers suggest that specific colonial patterns –not just climatic differences and availability of insects– may have influenced continuity of indigenous cultural patterns, including subsistence patterns related to biodiverse environments. This impacts how insects continue to be incorporated as food and commodities in Mexico. Colonial patterns and European attitudes toward colonized peoples throughout the Americas vary in time and place, thereby affecting their rights and relative autonomy. The centralized power of the Spanish in colonial cities like Oaxaca “allowed for many people to remain out of sight of the repartimiento system and maintain their spiritual beliefs, food culture, and indigenous identity” (Lesnik, 2019). For example, relatively fewer Oaxacans were subject to land expropriations when compared to other parts of Mexico and the Americas, and “as a result, many indigenous communities in Oaxaca have held on to portions of their ancestral lands as the basis of food security for hundreds of years” (Denham and Gladstone, 2020). Today, many communities continue to be isolated by mountainous terrain in Oaxaca, and they were relatively more protected from Spanish persecution and surveillance, and therefore freer to continue long-standing traditions and food ways. Katz and Lazos (2016) argue that Mexico, more so than elsewhere in Latin America, is where Amerindian food traditions have been best preserved. Of course, Indigenous and mestizo people throughout the Americas have been substantially impacted and disrupted by colonial influence, but the various patterns of colonization nonetheless help explain cultural diversity in places like Oaxaca. By comparison, the Indigenous peoples of what is now the United States and Canada faced “a sweeping expansion” of colonial power, wherein they were systematically killed and displaced from their homelands (Lesnik, 2018 & 2019). This disrupted place-based knowledge about biodiverse environments and many cultural and culinary traditions more than in places like Mexico where many people and cultural traditions stayed in place.
- 1 “A la grana que ya está purificada y hecha en panecito llaman tlacuáhuac tlapalli, que quiere decir (...)
- 2 Nocheztlicalli is a museum and cultural outreach center dedicated to educating locals and visitors (...)
5Analysis of cochineal production in Oaxaca helps illustrate how differing cultural worldviews shape political economies and impact biodiversity. Cochineal are tiny, parasitic insects that burrow into the fleshy pads of various nopal cactus species. The female is immobile, delicate, and coveted for the carminic acid she produces. When dried and crushed, these insects produce a vibrant red color, earning the Náhuatl name nocheztli, “nopal blood.” In pre-contact Mexico, cochineal was widely used and traded among the Aztecs and other Indigenous groups as paint (including painting various codices), for dying textiles, and in cosmetics. Systematic cochineal production and trade was detailed by Bernardo de Sahagún in the Florentine Codex (written 1545-1590). In fact, the Florentine Codex outlines different varieties of cochineal that were utilized and variation in preparation methods for processing and selling them in tiangüis (markets, or tianquiz1). However, ‘discovery’ of cochineal by Spanish invaders in the mid-sixteenth century amplified the most productive varieties of the cochineal and corresponding nopal cactus —focusing particularly on what is known as the ‘grana fina,’ —a varietal that was then intensively cultivated and exported. For centuries, the Spanish extracted tons of Oaxacan cochineal and labor, enriching the Spanish throne with the ‘blood’ of the cochineal and its farmers. In fact, the high price and global demand for cochineal –and the exploitative global commodity chains created by the Spanish– are recognized by historians as key drivers of early cultural and economic globalization (Marichal Salinas, 2018). Globalization “as a technological and economic phenomenon, asserts specific models for the governance of common resources,” sometimes referred to as the “capitalization of nature,” a practice that eventually leads to loss of biodiversity (Toly, 2004). When biodiversity is threatened, associated traditions and forms of knowledge are also devalued and endangered. Cochineal production in Oaxaca and elsewhere rapidly declined after the introduction of artificial coloring agents and chemical dyes to the global marketplace and traditional knowledge surrounding this practice was nearly extinguished in Mexico. Even as contemporary interest in organic materials and local production has revived alongside tourism in Oaxaca,2 cochineal production faces multiple threats to the viability of its cultivation.
6The colonization patterns explained in the previous section have enduring impacts on insect-human relationships today. Mexico is home to the largest numbers of edible insects, with over 300 species documented, many from Oaxaca (Shockley et al., 2018). They are a widely-recognized component of internationally-renowned Oaxacan cuisine, they appear in tourism branding, and are closely tied to some cultural identities (Thrussel, 2016; Grieshop, 2006; Hurd et al., 2019). Oaxaca boasts the greatest cultural, linguistic, and biological diversity in Mexico, so insect and human relationships continue to take many forms there. Many specialty foods and attractions feature various insect species, for example. Tourists flock to Oaxaca to sample chapulines (grasshoppers), chicatana (flying ants), and gusanos de maguey (maguey worms) or purchase textiles and fibers dyed with natural pigments including cochinilla. Insects are emblematic in contemporary Oaxaca, especially chapulines which appear in art, logos, papel picado, and elsewhere (see Fig. 1).
Figure 1 - Street Art in Oaxaca de Juárez (Oaxaca City) where insects feature prominently in marketing for tourists and city branding, courtesy of A. Pfister
7Colonialism is an extractive endeavor, so while the Spanish who arrived in the Americas were keen to cultivate one kind of insect to extraordinary profit (cochineal), the majority of Europeans were, and continue to be, vehemently opposed to the idea of insects as food. As with other commodities they encountered in the New World, the Spanish capitalized on species and commodities they found useful or profitable, while rejecting, scorning, or otherwise distancing themselves from others. Thus, “food … helped distinguish Spaniard from Indian” (Earle, 2010). Remarkably few Europeans argued in favor of eating insects, and the few who did (i.e. Holt’s oft-cited 1885 Vicorian publication of Why Not Eat Insects?) reveal a decidedly Western gaze wherein the standard was European food and tastes. Duché (2024) writes that “the European perspective [is] deployed in these accounts, which relate either witnessing or partaking in non-Western insect meals, [as central to] argumentation” and that “most had simply ascertained the taste of ‘unaccustomed dishes’ prepared by an Other, often by establishing gustatory resemblance with European food” (Duché, 2024). So, in Mexico, even as “the first colonizers adopted many local foods because indigenous women, keepers of the culinary traditions, cooked for them” (Katz & Lazos, 2016), many of the foods the Spanish encountered in the Americas were perceived as potentially compromising the Spanish “body and character” (Earle, 2010) and seen as ‘uncivilized’ and ‘primitive’ (Moore, 2004). The Spanish perceptions that Amerindians are more closely dependent upon, and coexisting with, biodiverse natural worlds justified colonizers’ actions as they dominated and exploited them, treating them as they did other parts of the natural world. Though many of the new foods the Spanish encountered in the Americas were seen as inferior, Anthony Pagden (in Earle, 2010) theorizes that insect foods may have been held up as symptomatic of the inability of indigenous peoples to distinguish between ‘edible’ and ‘inedible.’ Of course, reactions to food are informed through culture and experience (Lemelin et al., 2016; Cruz and Peniche, 2018), and the multiple health benefits of eating insects are well documented (Ramos-Elorduy, 1996; Nowakowski et al., 1991; van Huis, 2020; Orkusz, 2021). In fact, insects were –and continue to be– consumed regularly, ritualistically, and as a treat – not just as a ‘fallback’ or ‘emergency food’ (Lesnick, 2017; Acuña et al., 2011; Cohen et al., 2009). Spanish aversion to foods they viewed as inferior is further evidenced in the writings of López de Gómara (1552) —who upon arrival in what is now México in declared:
They eat hedgehogs, weasels, bats, locusts, spiders, worms, caterpillars, bees, and ticks, raw, cooked, and fried. Nothing living escapes their gullet, and what is all the more amazing is that they eat such bugs and dirty animals when they have good bread and wine, fruit, fish and meat.
8Notable here is López de Gómara’s expression of disdainful surprise that Amerindians chose their own customary foods over Spanish imported foods like bread and wine (in Earle, 2010). In fact, he seems to disparage biodiversity itself, at least with regard to the range of foods incorporated into the diets of the Amerindians he encountered. This further underscores European worldviews favoring reliance upon fewer species and extractive methods to exploit those species deemed useful or profitable.
9Milpas are an important part of our analysis because they provide further insight into worldviews connected to biodiversity. The milpa —dating back to pre-colonial Mexico— further underscores how biodiversity is respected and emulated among Amerindians, not something to be dominated or destroyed. Milpa practice is subsistence farming wherein various crops –typically corn, beans, squash, chilis and other herbs– are planted together in the same plot, unlike intensive agriculture and monoculture practices. The milpa is described as a cornerstone of cultural heritage on governmental websites celebrating biodiversity (i.e. biodiversidad.gob.mx), and is promoted as a sustainable answer to food insecurity and self-sufficiency (Rodríguez-Robayo, 2020; Novotony et al., 2021). The milpa is also central to cosmogenic belief and broader socio-cultural systems encompassing “family, community, political organization, cosmovision, knowledge, values, rituals and customs associated with food,” tracing inspiration about biodiversity as mentioned in the ancient texts of the Popol Vuh (Terán Contreras, 2010). The milpa embodies the idea that, even as humans are dependent upon some species, biodiversity need not be compromised through the prioritization of certain lives at a cost to others. Today, milpa practices —sometimes described as engendering “traditional agrodiversity” and the “coexistence of crops and weeds” —are often replaced by more semi-permanent agricultural practices (Peréz-García and F. del Castillo, 2016). Milpas continue to be an iconic symbol of Mexico, fostering knowledge about –and favorable feelings toward– biodiversity. The endurance of milpas also facilitates a Mexican imaginary that blurs the line between wild and cultivated, as we saw with the cochineal above.
10Aparicio Aparicio (2018) talks about the etno-entomological knowledge that is transmitted from generation to generation through oral tradition, particularly using legends and short stories. This tradition functions as an important vehicle for diffusion of biological information which, in turn, contributes to preserving culture and shaping how traditional communities interact with natural environments (pg. 63). Insects are not solely seen as elements of nature, objects to be consumed, or pests, but rather, they are seen as messengers of the gods and guardians of the environmental knowledge needed for human survival. Therefore, it is necessary for children to learn the behavior of insects in order to understand and predict weather conditions for the crops. These lessons are taught through language, cultural practices, stories, and legends. In addition, it is important for children from a young age to understand the consumption of insects both in ritual and sustainable practices, since insects constitute such an important protein source.
11In her ethnographic research of the Yaxhil community (town of San Juan Yagila in Spanish), García-Gallegos (2022) describes how animals, insects included, are the most important connection with Mother Earth. In this indigenous worldview, human existence is dependent upon —but also harmonious with— the environment. Insects are the smallest and closest to earth, so connect humans to nature. This connection begins after childbirth with the burial of the placenta and various offerings, including chicken broth and chingre (a local alcoholic beverage) (García-Gallegos, 2022 : 98). Because insects are knowledgeable, their activities are followed and observed by humans who learn from them. Insects are used as medicine –as antidotes, in the case of bites or venom– and as caretakers –ants are observed and their methods replicated by humans to build roofs, for example. Insects are harbingers of climate; the barhe boo or black ants, forecast storms and the cicadas, or sobrin, chant to declare that springtime or heat waves are forthcoming. They are messengers to the infraworld, knowledgeable creatures with whom humans dialogue because they look to them as protective entities, and as links to the earth, the wind and the vast and diverse natural world (García-Gallegos, 2022).
12Insects often constitute an interspecies bridge for children, one forgotten by the world of adults, and insects have featured in children’s stories throughout history (Loo and Sellbach, 2015). Maclear (2022) suggests young children identify with the “struggles of those of piddling size.” Children are keen to observe creatures that are smaller than them because they can play with them directly and get lost staring at them for hours. Discourses and attitudes shaping disgust and filth, and other relationships involving the natural world, are partially informed by insects. Children find insects more relatable and manageable, but they also invite a “masquerade” as Maclear (2022) states, of their fears, worries, or relationships to the broader world. Of course, these interactions are often managed by adults, culturally mediated, and variable (i.e Boileau and Russell, 2000). In many cultural contexts, insects are used pedagogically in classrooms, many contending these interactions are critical in early childhood education. Insects exemplify microfauna, model team work, teach about biodiversity, and more generally mirror the relations that humans have with the “natural world.” Cross-cultural knowledge about insects invites us to consider an interrelationship between insects and humans, and to recognize their existence is not dictated through human terms. Although insects have preceded human existence, they are nonetheless deeply affected by human actions and interactions (Bell and Russell, 2000 : 3). This challenges the human exceptionalism laid out by early Judeo-Christian worldviews by reminding us of the chronology and breadth of evolutionary time. In the age of the Anthropocene where evidence of human impact is everywhere, insect relationships provide important reminders about our interconnectedness with the environment.
13In this section we analyze contemporary literature featuring three insects in Oaxaca: el grillo (the cricket), el chapulín (the grasshopper-locust) and la grana cochinilla (the cochineal). These stories originate from projects produced by Mexican governmental agencies through the nationalized Secretary of Education, The National Council of Biodiversity (Conabio), and the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples. Each project is community-based, working with popular culture and oral histories transmitted generationally. These stories are freely accessible through the Internet; some are based on printed volumes, others are only preserved through soundcloud recordings. Many of the stories are told through the voices of children using Mixtec, an indigenous language, later translated into Spanish. These organizations have also used global platforms like YouTube, which was used to promote these stories during the contingency plans of social distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.
14In Oaxaca, legend says that grillos are prophets of water. When they sing, the earth is telling them it is wet, it is going to rain, and after the rain, crickets are going to sing to celebrate the abundance of water. Grillos are often associated with fertility and abundance, whereas chapulines are the kings of the land in Oaxaca. In other Amerindian stories, like in Aztec thought, chapulines were considered transformative and had a direct relation with the infraworld. The locust/grasshopper transformation brings together important dualities related to subsistence patterns: abundance (grasshoppers) and destruction (locusts), and the possible and the impossible (McGarry, 2011.)
15In Mixtec language, the word Ndava-ti is used to describe all the little animals with appendixes for jumping. These insects are usually indefensive and are used to describe hyperactive children as in the description of this interview included in the collection put together by Aparicio Aparicio: “Aren’t you tired of playing? You look like the grasshopper/cricket that is jumping from here to there!” (Woman, 40 years old) (63). The indifferent use of grasshopper and cricket in one expression causes the confusion that describes the story of “The grasshopper and the cricket,” the first story we explore.
16“El chapulín y el grillo” is part of an oral history project, “Cuentos y leyendas de Jamiltepec, Oaxaca. Mixteco de la Costa,” by Raymundo Felipe Salinas García (2012) and supported by the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples of Mexico and UNESCO. Salinas García recounts ten stories and legends in Mixtec and Spanish, preserving cultural diversity and traditional storytelling from Jamiltepec, Oaxaca. In El chapulín, a little boy recovers an "orphaned" cricket from the trash and brings it to the prairie. The cricket is agentive, moving the story along by recognizing his friendship with the little boy. The little boy cares for the cricket, watching over him during the day, is comforted by his singing at night, and falls asleep to his beautiful singing. The child, surprised by his living in the trash, begins a conversation with the cricket. The cricket tells him, “I am the King of the night, that’s why I hop from grass to grass” (min 1:09). By making such a powerful statement at the story's beginning, the story connects readers to the cricket by giving him an other-worldly position of authority. The narrator uses techniques from oral traditions, making the sounds of crickets, grasses, and wind. The listener feels as though they were in the field, just below the grass.
17The narrator admires the intelligence of the little boy, by interjecting the conversation with the voice of the grandfather, who asks him about the cricket color which is of a “blue sky,” and “the color of nature” (min 3:19). The narrator of this story admires the child’s wisdom because he can converse with insects. He says, “This little boy understands every insect in the field. He is, no doubt, a very wise child because he understands the power of nature” (min 2:10). With this statement, the narrator begins his pedagogical tale about caring for nature. The conversation with the grandfather is essential to the story, “I am too old and I can’t play with crickets,” the grandpa says, “I will sit down and rest, you with the wisdom that nature and God gave you, you know what to do” (min 3:52). For the narrator, it is important to transmit the idea that children are empowered to make decisions about nature and recognize ancient knowledge, wisdom that is transmitted generationally and understood within local cultural contexts. These stories teach children from the earliest ages that they contribute to a wider goal of preserving ecological diversity and the cultural knowledge related to biodiversity including ethnolinguistic diversity, ecological use of resources, and customs and traditions that strengthen social and community relations. The diffusion of these short stories in Mexican communities speaks to the importance of using diverse methods and disciplinary approaches to revitalize interest in biological diversity as well as the ecocultural relationship with crickets and other insects in Oaxaca.
18As the story goes on, the boy, admiring the cricket’s singing, decides to bring him to the milpa, the green prairie where green chapulines (grasshopper-locusts) live. The boy begins the trip, and the cricket talks to the child, admiring the “songs” of chapulines that “sing with their wings,” different from the sound that the cricket makes, “using his feet.” The cricket admires grasshoppers, who “eat well, live well, and eat the greenest grass” (min 5:15). At the beginning, the cricket is rejected by the community of grasshoppers, who laugh at him for “living among the trash, eating ticks and lice, and only singing during the night” (min 6:28). The cricket defends himself, comparing himself to the grasshoppers:
It’s wonderful to be a grasshopper because you eat the best grass and drink the wildflowers’ honey. The bad thing about you is when you become a locust pest: you devastate farmers' crops. When you devour everything, you don’t leave anything for humans (Min 7:22).
19In this inter-species conversation, the cricket is characterized as closer to humans and friendlier than grasshoppers, who can easily become pests and enemies of humans. Crickets, according to the story, live more closely with humans, and are cast as more predictable and reliable because they are always crickets, whereas grasshoppers periodically transform into locusts and when they do, they become destructive swarms of pests. The confrontational interaction between the cricket and the grasshopper reveals an ambivalence surrounding insects not uncommon in many cultures, but nonetheless underscores how they are agentive, sensing beings and therefore should be respected. This follows mythology, mirroring the vulnerability of the gods, who at times provide abundance (the honey-sipping grasshopper) but also cause destruction (as aggressive, swarming locusts). After being mistreated and discriminated against, the cricket returns to his demure state, singing “with his legs and his tail,” and “enchants everyone as they fall asleep at night” (min 9:56). The grasshoppers eventually accept the cricket, adopting him and inviting him to live among them in the prairie.
20At the end of the story, the little boy, admiring the life of the chapulines, decides to become a grasshopper himself, and so goes to live forever as an insect. In the story, the family look for him, but he only responds to his family, never desiring to come back:
Boy: Here I am, dad! I became a grasshopper! Nature has transformed me into a green insect!
Grasshopper: Don’t worry, sir! We will take care of each other! And we will play!] (min. 15:10)
21The short story ends with the boy transformed into a grasshopper, abandoning his human family. But, instead of being a story of loss, or a painful memory, the family respects the decision the boy makes to be transformed into a cricket, admiring his new life among nature and eating the greenest grass. The message of the story promotes an understanding of crickets and grasshoppers having spirits that can be understood as ancestors or relatives. This position reverses ideas about insects as resources only to be consumed, extracted, or driven away as pests.
22The cochineal is the main topic of our second story. “¡A pintarnos de color! La grana cochinilla” is one of the 18 texts included in Bichos para jugar, comer y soñar. Los insectos en el México prehispánico is a project from Conabio (Biodiversity National Commission in Mexico) written in Spanish and Náhuatl. The text, authored and translated into Spanish by Vázquez Hernández (2009) approaches insects through a politics of respect, a readiness to learn, and an appreciation of insects. Through culturally diverse texts, Vázquez Hernández spreads knowledge of biodiversity to children with the goal of motivating them to take care of the environment. Using a simple language and colorful images of insects and landscapes, the book is accessible to children and other audiences. It is a free, public, online resource, inviting readers to experience the entomological diversity of Mexico, from crickets to beetles, butterflies, worms and cochineal.
Figure 2. ¡A pintarnos de color! La grana cochinilla. Bichos para comer, soñar jugar. Los insectos en el México Prehispánico. Image created by Hugo E. Fierros-López (courtesy of Vázquez Hernández)
Nocheztli sangre de las tunas23The story is more than a fictional tale; it recalls a time when pre-hispanic children played with cochineal:
Do you know what Aztec, Toltec and Zapotec children liked to play with? You don’t? Well, I will tell you about it: They used to paint their faces and arms with an intense red color. They also painted over amate paper (pg. 15).
24In ancient civilizations, paint was used for ceremonial purposes, and this story engages children's five senses and stimulates the imagination. The language in this tale captivates readers who are instantly attracted to color and the idea of playing with paint. Additionally, body painting allows children to learn about their bodies and bond with ideas through physical engagement, communication, and transformation of their bodies, imagining them to have “supernatural” powers. (Duffy 2016). After this small introduction to pre-hispanic times, the author describes engagement with grana cochinilla, calling them little “cotton balls,” which is a reference to the white coating the immobile cochineal use to protect themselves from predators:
They painted their bodies with a soft little plush ball, like little cotton balls, that they found in bunches covering nopal cacti. They grabbed one of those cotton balls and ran it over their bodies, decorating themselves with curved lines (Vázquez Hernández 15).
25By providing an image of cochineal as something closer to the children’s imagination (i.e. “cotton balls”) and defining their place by referencing something familiar (on nopales), the author takes away the strangeness or fear children might be predisposed to feel toward insects. In addition, the author evokes engaging and attractive play by describing the process of decorating their bodies, by running the grana over their arms and faces. So, the red dye of the cochineal becomes the social and cultural expression of engagement with the natural world and biological diversity.
26
Figure 3. Nocheztli. ¡Sangre de los dioses! Bichos para comer, soñar jugar. Los insectos en el México Prehispánico. Image created by Hugo E. Fierros-López (courtesy of Vázquez Hernández)
27The last text ends with the same image of two people covered in red with the nopal cacti dripping blood. In the Mixtec legend, “Nocheztli, grana cochinilla ¡Sangre de los dioses!” we learn how the cochineal—the most intense red natural dye in the world—was born. Vázquez Hernández relates a legend wherein two warrior Gods walked through the hills, arriving to a field covered in nopal cactus with prickly pear fruit of many colors: red, bright yellow, orange and purple. The warriors soon were greedy to collect everything in the field. But when they began to fight over the resources, their bodies were pierced by the cacti thorns, and their blood stained the cacti, and this created Nocheztli, the cochineal (pg. 45).
28By describing this sacred origin of the cochineal and transmitting it to generations of young people, Vázquez Hernández recovers the mysticism of the insect while also underscoring the rich biodiversity of the cacti and its fruit. There is a moral in this story, warning against dominating nature and instead preserving and respecting biodiversity. When the warriors become greedy, they are punished by the cactus who protect the insects by providing them with a home and nourishment. The stories also establish a sacred connection between this insect and the Gods, and casts the natural world as agentive and capable of defending itself. This story in particular reverses the reductive image of the cochineal as a powerless and over-consumed resource, one that is valuable to humans only when it is dead. Here, Vázquez Hernández explains the importance of the cochineal’s red color for Mesoamerican cultures:
The red color was the color of the most appreciated cardinal point, the North. Its most important symbolic meaning was youth, fertility, light, and resurrection of the sun, after its daily battle with the night (pg. 45).
29Even as the author acknowledges the symbolic importance of cochineal as a sacred resource and commodity for the Mixtec, the message of this story is one of preservation and protection, not extraction or domination. These materials push contemporary narratives beyond the commodification of cochineal, or crickets and grasshoppers as pests, or even unconventional protein sources. Together, they form an enriching intangible cultural heritage by providing an understanding of insects as unique and agentive because the stories allow us to relate to them in various ways. These stories are supported by various Mexican agencies and organizations, so they form a purposeful educational movement that fosters a contemporary appreciation of biological, linguistic, and cultural diversity that is relatable to most Mexicans, but uniquely Oaxacan.
30Comparing the insect imaginaries of Amerindians and European colonists helps us understand the ways biodiversity is more (and less) valued and incorporated into people’s everyday lives to varying degrees. Favorable feelings toward biodiversity and cohabitation with a multitude of insects and animals is passed down generationally among Amerindians, and this contrasts sharply with colonial attitudes toward insects and biodiversity. Here, we use the ecocritical framework of Mixtec and other indigenous cosmogonies of Mexican origin to explore how insects and humans create dialogues that establish a unity of spirits and diversity of bodies. In many cases, these reverse the asymmetrical and exploitative nature of the commodification of insects.
31This paper pairs anthropological investigation and theory with comparative literary analysis of contemporary children’s stories, Mixtec cosmogonies, and other media to examine past and present human-insect relationships in Oaxaca, Mexico. Indigenous peoples are often understood to “carry out many different activities of use and management of the planet’s ecosystems” (Toledo, 2001: 451), so studying worldviews and attitudes about biodiversity helps connect us to Amerindian knowledge about natural worlds. Yet, we must remain vigilant about the dangers of over-romanticizing Indigenous connections to natural worlds, especially as globalizing forces and neo-colonial interests continue to encroach upon their lands and lifestyles. Fad demands, tourism, changing climates, and growing populations produce unexpected contradictions surrounding the touted sustainability of insects as food, natural dyes, and other insect-related commodities in Oaxaca. In this paper, we compared current political economies surrounding the commodification of insects, examining how they mirror and contradict the political economies of colonial New Spain, and explore how indigenous imaginaries dialogue with modern patterns of commodification and exploitation. Anthropological and literary analysis help us understand human-insect relationships through examination of broader ideas about biodiversity and human and animal roles within natural worlds. We believe that interdisciplinary work like this is crucial to appreciating cultural diversity, preserving biodiversity, and is a step toward the goal issued by the United Nations states that by 2030, students will acquire knowledge necessary to promote sustainable development. We argue that cross-cultural approaches to inter-species biodiversity, foodways, and sustainability–like those taken in this paper–will be crucial to attaining that goal.