July 2005

Near the end of each June of years hundreds of years in the past, the women of the One World completed their season’s work and began preparations for festivities of thanks. Early Aztec women, salineras, performed the hot, hard work of extracting precious salt from seawater and at the end of the season they led their villages and cities in offering appreciation to the goddess who they believed taught them the process they used.

The legend of Huixtocihuatl, sister of the rain god Tlaloc, tells how she quarreled with her brothers and ran away to live in the sea. There she developed the process of using shallow bowls to gather seawater to set under the sun to evaporate and leave behind pure sea salt.

The women used a similar method, and many modern salineros - men do the work in most modern operations - use the same basic techniques. Bernal Diaz in his writings of the 1500s reported that the Aztecs created salt from urine, but Oaxacan salt works dating back to around 1000 B.C. have been discovered and these of our area have been exploited for hundreds of years.

Inspired by tales of long ago, near the end of the season I visited the 35 kilometer long salt flats of the Cuyutlán Lagoon to see how salineros in this area produce the salt sold in shops and from roadside stands all over Colima State.

Entry to the salt flats is restricted but I dropped by Cooperativa Headquarters to get permission to go into the area. José de Jesus Olivares Corona volunteered to guide me to the working area, and to show me his operation.

Each of the approximately 200 salineros in this section of the lagoon holds individual ownership, and the right to process salt from areas with strictly defined boundaries. One function of the Cooperativa is to record ownership of these plots. Each salinero gains ownership through purchase from a previous owner or by inheritance. One plot of about 3 acres recently sold for around 13,000 pesos.

Each salinero also pays 1,000 pesos per year to the Cooperativa. For that fee he receives medical insurance coverage for his entire family. The cooperative also provides most of the materials and equipment needed to process the salt. That includes the huge plastic sheets used in their evaporation pools, pumps and fuel, front-end loaders and dump trucks, and automated bagging machines. They also serve as the governing authority; settling disputes, protecting property rights, buying the production of each member, transporting the salt from the fields to the warehouses, processing and bagging the salt, and providing marketing services to the members. And they contract for and supervise the many auxiliary personnel needed to operate this complex business.

On the day of my visit most of the salineros had completed their work for the season and were in varying stages of dismantling their operations. José was still working and he explained the entire process. At the beginning of the season; after the last rains, usually in March, the salineros re-set the boundaries of their individual plots.

Most will first build a simple shelter to provide them with respite from the blazing sun during long days of labor. Then they scrape the soil of the lagoon to form long rectangular pits with walls about 6-8 inches high. Each one then takes the black plastic sheets provided by the Cooperativa and lays them inside the barriers to form a series of shallow watertight pools.

After that, the pools are ready for use. Holes about a foot and a half wide are then dug in the floor of the lagoon to allow access to the seawater lying only about 3 to 4 feet below the surface. Hard rubber suction hoses hooked to portable gas-powered water pumps are then dropped into the holes and water is pumped into the shallow pits.

For the first day or so all the salinero can do it wait for the sun to do its work of evaporating the water to leave behind large crystals of pure salt. As the water evaporates the salinero steps into the pool and, using a large pushbroom, begins to sweep the freshly formed crystals into piles. This process is repeated until all of the water is gone and a pile of damp salt is left. The salt is then swept and shoveled out of the pit and piled where the product of subsequent evaporations can be added to it. Once the system is set into motion each salinero can average from 2 to 3½ tons of production per night, depending upon his degree of industry.

I emphasize “per night” because many of the salineros prefer to do little work under the sun during the day. They must occasionally venture into the pits to sweep the salt to separate it from the water as it evaporates but much of the shoveling and piling is done as the sun begins to set and the evening breezes cool the lagoon.

After a pit is emptied it is swept clean and refilled with seawater so the process can be repeated. In the 3 months or so of the salt production season a single salinero can produce anywhere from about 240 to 370 tons. Wholesale prices vary but at this time each ton brings about 1,500 pesos piled in the field.

After the salinero processes enough for a load, he notifies a driver to pick up his salt. Some load by hand and others prefer to have the front-end loader do the job mechanically. The driver then takes the load from the flats to a scale near the warehouse. The load is weighed and logged in under the name of the producer and then driven into one of the warehouses where it is dumped, to be bagged later.

Most of the salineros work other jobs outside the season, and a high percentage of them come from the city and suburbs of Colima.

The craft of the salinero is a hard one. He works in heat often above 100 degrees. His worksite is the dry salty sun-baked saltrine of a lagoon surrounded by both tropical vegetation as well as the most evil and dangerous of the desert plants. Whatever he needs for the day he must carry in. And he works alone in most cases. But he’s a free man. One who chooses to do this work. One who pays for the privilege of owning his own small business and being his own boss for those few short months in the lagoon. Hard-working, determined to wrest a living from a harsh environment, willing to sacrifice in the short term in order to reap the benefits of his labor, a man to be admired for his industry and determination. Not romantic, this job; but necessary, and appreciated, and with a history that proves its value to the development of Mexico.

The Cuyutlán Salt Museum is open to visitors and is an excellent depiction of what you have just read above.

E-Mail Don Adams dondelmundo@yahoo.com