ABSTRACT
Mezcal is a traditionally distilled beverage mostly made by small producers in several states in Mexico. This production system departs from that of the tequila produced and distributed by large corporations. Beginning in 1994, the Mexican state, through the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, granted Mezcal a geographical indication (GI), more specifically the label denomination of origin (DO); however, this action fostered processes of exclusion rather than the expected promotion of democratic socioeconomic development. Primarily, this is the result of the fact that the DO does not take into account the territorial, biological and cultural specificities of the existing types of Mezcal. Its design follows administrative delimitations that exclude large numbers of traditional small producers and places them into illegality for continuing to use the name of Mezcal to label their products. The chapter shows how the definition of DO is an instance of political and economic discrimination since the Mezcal producers included in the DO are only a fraction of existing producers. Supported by Mexican state institutions, this small group of producers advanced this politics of exclusion by trying to forbid other producers from using the expression “distilled from agave” and attempting to force them to employ the unknown name of komil. The chapter further probes the issue of the adoption of alternative forms of recognizing Mezcal. The adoption of these alternatives depends on the organizational capacity of small producers, the types of negotiations they have with the Mexican state and their relationship with other actors in the production chain.
