How the colour red is linked to political ambition
It all began with a stubborn crushed bug. A story of colour, capitalism, and colonisation. The story of red.
It’s hard to imagine centuries of trade reduced to something that barely meets the eye. Tinier than a ladybird, fussy like a toddler, the cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) has an unassuming presence, and yet its inner workings are a study in contrast—both a marvel of Nature and a formidable challenge for those who seek to control it.
Trust only a cochineal to be unbothered by the raucous demands of a sixteenth-century conquistador, its fragile biology hurrying for no European ship. Female cochineals lead a sedentary life on prickly pear cacti, their preferred host, on which they feed and reproduce. Like most immobile creatures, female cochineals have a fair share of enemies and have a poison of their own to protect themselves—carminic acid.
This chemical compound, though intended to repel predators, made a predator out of humans. As early as the second century BC, civilisations in the Americas discovered that a potent red dye was obtained by crushing the soft creatures. This dye is responsible for some of the most lustrous reds the world has ever seen. What the cochineal may lack in strength, its colour makes up for in vibrance—tenfold.
The domestication and cultivation of the cochineal was a feat of precision and care that ancient Mexicans mastered over centuries. Each stage of the process was fraught with potential for disaster, whether from predators, the weather, or disease. Farmers had to keep a vigilant eye on both the insects and their host cacti, ensuring that conditions remained conducive to their survival. The insects matured over several months, but even then, harvesting them was a tedious, laborious task, one that demanded patience and particularity. According to University of Guadalajara biotechnologist Liberato Portillo Martinez, at the end of it all, it could take more than 70,000 insects to produce a mere one pound of dye.
Despite all the challenges, in the sixteenth century, cochineal dye managed to inch its way up the trade ladder to become Spain’s second-largest export. To understand why this happened despite the difficult nature of its cultivation, one must first look at the historic search for a strong, brilliant red.
As Amy Butler Greenfield traces in her book A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest For the Colour of Desire, before cochineal swept through Europe, dyers and painters wrestled with reds that refused to behave. Vermilion, made from the mineral cinnabar, graced Chinese scrolls and Roman frescoes, but its allure came at a price. Toxic and costly to mine, cinnabar also betrayed artists by darkening over time, losing its brilliance with each exposure to sunlight.
The search for red continued—complicated further for dyers, who needed not just beauty but durability. While artists only required their reds to hold up on canvas, dyers faced a greater challenge. Their reds had to withstand sunlight, sweat, and endless washing without fading or bleeding. Plant-based dyes, such as ochre, yielded dull, lacklustre tones on fabric. Others involved elaborate concoctions—leaves, bark, and animal waste mixed in unpredictable combinations—but the results were unreliable, rarely achieving the deep hues people craved.
Among these plant-based options, madder dye stood out, offering shades from coral to russet for dyers in Egypt, China, and ancient Rome. Though a perennial plant, the production of the dye depends entirely on soil quality, water conditions, and dyeing methods since the dye is highly sensitive to alkalinity and temperature. Even the most skilled dyers often found their madder experiments producing muddy or orange-leaning pigments. Greenfield says, “Madder’s orange-red was glory enough for many Europeans, especially those in the lower and middling ranks.” But for those seeking prestige in the twelfth century, it simply would not do.
European dyers turned to imports such as Brazilwood (a tropical hardwood that could yield deep crimsons and purples), archil (derived from coastal lichens), and lac (a resin secreted by insects in Southeast Asia). Each came with its own set of troubles. While brazilwood faded quickly to a lacklustre brown and its stiffening effect on fabrics frustrated buyers, lac produced fiery reds but fared better on wood and leather than cloth.
According to Greenfield, the best insect-derived dyes, dating as far back as the eighth century BCE, were oak kermes, Polish cochineal (also known as St. John’s blood), and Armenian red, which offered vivid and lasting hues. However, they came with logistical headaches. Harvesting these insects was an arduous process, as the insects often camouflaged themselves or were easily mistaken for other, useless, bugs. Even when gathered correctly, their scarcity drove prices prohibitively high, reserving these reds for royalty and the Church.
Venetian dyers, famed for their scarlet, fiercely guarded their techniques. Whispered rumours warned of haunted dye houses and arsenic-laced recipes. Yet, even these masters struggled to meet the demands of the fashion industry. By the early sixteenth century, Venice’s monopoly over high-quality red began to wane as global trade routes shifted toward Spain and Portugal.
Finally, after years of searching, the Spaniards happened upon what Mexicans had been mastering for centuries. Unlike the problematic reds of Europe and Asia, cochineal offered an unparalleled brilliance and permanence on wool, silk, and other animal fibres, its colour so potent that it immediately rivalled the finest Venetian scarlet.
The global textile industry’s quest for a stable, vivid red predated the Spanish conquistadors’ arrival in the Americas in the early 1500s. It was in the thick rush of Mexican markets that the Spaniards, under the leadership of Hernán Cortés, first witnessed this extraordinary dyestuff.
But amazement does not grow cochineal, and Cortés and his men were quick to realise that this was no fool’s game. The dye presented a unique dilemma to colonialists, unlike many other exploited resources from the Americas. In the case of chocolate, for instance, by the late sixteenth century, as Spanish settlers developed a taste for the drink and understood its significance in American markets, they began growing their own beans on massive cocoa plantations in modern-day Mexico and Guatemala, tended to by African slaves. But cochineal production was not so easy to take over.
The cochineal insect’s nature defied the ambitions of the Spanish. The delicate balance required to raise cochineal ensured that the insect could not be mass-produced. The bug’s biology was, in many ways, intrinsically anti-colonial. A quiet, natural resistance to the forces of imperialism.
While Spanish settlers managed to dominate the supply chains of various commodities such as gold, silver, sugar and silk, the clandestine red dye remained stubbornly in the hands of the indigenous people. It was a thing that could not be taken—not even by a people who had become far too skilled at taking. The Spanish, for all their might, were simply not equipped—or perhaps too proud—to learn the intricate knowledge needed to cultivate this precious dye. As a result, most conquistadors and missionaries refrained from becoming involved in the cultivation of cochineal, focusing instead on what they perceived as more lucrative ventures.
In her book, Greenfield points out that despite claims by Spanish missionaries that they had ‘taught’ the indigenous people how to grow cochineal, the reality was very different. The ancient Mexicans were already experts in this field long before the friars arrived. In regions such as Oaxaca and Mixteca, it was the indigenous communities who first recognised the global demand for this vibrant red dye. How the Spanish conquistadors failed to identify this is a puzzle in itself.
The more the Spaniards ignored cochineal, the more opportunity indigenous communities had to fulfil a growing demand. The Tlaxcalans, an enterprising native community, secured a unique degree of autonomy under Spanish rule, a legacy of their resistance against Aztec domination before the Spanish arrived. Unlike other indigenous groups, they were free to adapt to shifting economic opportunities, and they seized the cochineal trade with both hands. While the Spanish authorities were distracted by their silver mines and silk farms, the Tlaxcalans stealthily expanded their cochineal production to meet European demand, becoming the unchallenged leaders of the trade by the mid-1540s. It was their expertise and independence which ensured that cochineal continued to flow into the world’s markets even as the Spanish turned their attention elsewhere.
It was only a matter of time until cochineal found its way into broader trade networks, reaching the markets of Constantinople, Turkey, Persia, Cairo, and eventually China. Everywhere it went, it revolutionised textiles, draping the world in bold scarlets, rich crimsons, and delicate, yet resilient, pinks. In cities such as Venice, Milan, and Florence, cochineal was woven into the finest velvets, satins, and taffetas.
The strongest proof of cochineal’s lasting impact on fashion was the hold it maintained even as black and neutral colours became en vogue in the sixteenth century. Black attire, for all its elegance, risked blending into commonness from afar, forcing aristocrats, especially women, to cling to their scarlet and crimson garments. Others opted for subtler looks, pairing their black-and-white ensembles with a contained pop of red. Even their homes were furnished with shades of red in tapestries, curtains, and cushions. Cochineal struck a careful balance during its spread across Europe, affordable enough to be popular, but rare enough to confer prestige on those who wore it.
The dye’s appeal also extended beyond textiles, seeping into numerous other industries, the most significant being art. In a 2018 BBC article, writer Devon Van Houten Maldonado highlights how cochineal became a vital component in the palettes of European painters during the Baroque period as an exaggerated red that defined the movement’s dramatic contrasts.
Maldonado takes a moment to note the use of cochineal in Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas “where St. Thomas’s consternation and amazement is palpable in the skin of his furrowed forehead” and red splotches appear like a rush of blood under the skin. And if Caravaggio used the dye to enhance his subjects’ realism, Rubens showed its power to turn them into hazy, heavenly beings. In his 1610 Portrait of Isabella Brandt, Rubens washed the wall behind her in a deep, glowing red, from which she appears holding a Bible, also in the same colour.
Even as the nineteenth century ushered in synthetic alternatives, Impressionist painters such as Paul Gauguin, Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh couldn’t seem to loosen their grip on cochineal. All three harnessed the dye in their own distinct styles: Renoir to bring his subjects to life; Gaugin to create striking colour blocks and accents; and, most remarkably, Van Gogh to achieve burning saturation as seen in The Bedroom.
During these years, the dye’s journey didn’t stop at the canvas. Greenfield points out that in early nineteenth-century England, for example, bakers used cochineal to enhance the colours of fruit in their pastries, and in some circles, it was even believed to possess calming, medicinal properties when added to the meals of patients with mental illness in the United States.
She continues, “For all that cochineal proved a useful addition to European dressing tables, paintboxes, and medicine cabinets, it was primarily the textile industry that fuelled trade in the dyestuff,” cementing its status as one of New Spain’s most valuable export in the 1560s, trailing behind only silver.
Fast-forward to 1759, when Voltaire’s Candide ou l'optimisme delivered a blistering critique of metaphysical optimism with the Dr Pangloss character’s infamous quote: “Without America, we should not have chocolate and cochineal.” His statement was in response to the novel’s hapless titular protagonist as he contemplated the spread of syphilis caused by The Columbian Exchange.
Pangloss’ ethos parodied that of German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who believed that humanity resides in the ‘best of all possible worlds’. Few literary works back then achieved the biting irony that Candide did, and Leibniz’s sentiment was the main target of Voltaire's satirical denunciation.
Though Leibniz (and Pangloss by extension) are figures of derision for Voltaire, their comments reveal a certain European zeitgeist, distinct to an era of imperialism. They reflect a philosophical framework of the colonial world in which land and resources are simply commodities put on earth by God for them to perchance upon. The inherent ‘goodness’ in these commodities also seems to redress the ‘evil’ byproducts of obtaining them. Such is the manner in which Europe could reconcile with their role in foreign occupation—with chocolate and cochineal.
The fact is that while both resources were highly valuable, neither one was ‘discovered’ or placed on earth as a divine gift. They were craftily created from Nature by native communities of the ‘New World’. However, to a majority of eighteenth-century Europeans, the possibility of indigenous ingenuity was much too ludicrous—it made much more sense to place all the credit at God’s door.
Assessing the benefits of indigenous cochineal production remains contentious for this very reason. On the one hand, Tlaxcalans enjoyed financial opportunities that were rare for indigenous groups at the time. Unlike many of their counterparts, who endured harsh labour conditions and little economic mobility, the Tlaxcalans could maintain a degree of self-determination that allowed them to reap greater rewards. They even participated in more sophisticated financial practices, such as cochineal credit systems, where Spanish merchants offered advance payments that enabled them to invest and diversify their incomes.
Beyond monetary gain, and perhaps most spectacularly as Greenfield’s book suggests, cochineal-producing groups could resist the pressure to adopt their colonisers’ customs and cultures. Where other forms of labour required indigenous groups to part from their communities, cochineal production did not, allowing them to work out of their homes in the company of their families.
Because of this, many villages that grew cochineal were able to preserve languages and traditions for centuries. Oaxaca, the primary cochineal-producing region, still stands as the most culturally and linguistically diverse state in Mexico. Moreover, being surrounded and supported by their kin also kept the villages considerably unaffected by devastating Old World diseases that would later decimate many native communities.
Still, for all this impressive financial and cultural prosperity, the Tlaxcalans’ mass production of cochineal did change existing social relations in complex ways. In the short term, the Tlaxcalan cabildo, the council that oversaw daily life in the province, noted that the newfound wealth began to unravel the region’s social fabric; it decided that business was getting “too profitable”, according to Greenfield.
“What bothered the council most, however, was that the Tlaxcalan cochineal growers no longer showed proper deference to their betters. In the best tradition of nouveaux riches everywhere, the cochineal farmers were growing uppity,” she writes. But the council's attempts to impose prohibitions and limits on cochineal cultivation between 1552 and 1553 proved futile, and producers continued to profit from selling the dye to Spanish traders.
In the larger scheme of things, the more troubling revelation about the Tlaxcalans’ response to the surging demand for cochineal was how it bound them to the whims of global capitalism. The dye’s cultural meaning was gradually overshadowed by its commercial value, transforming from a symbol of Tlaxcalan identity into yet another product on the shelves of European markets for Voltaire to remark about.
As Mexico navigated its tumultuous path to independence in the early nineteenth century, the cochineal industry underwent significant shifts that altered its standing in the global market. During the chaos of rebellion, the insect responsible for producing this sought-after dye slipped beyond Mexico’s borders, finding its way into Guatemala. Initially, this spread went largely unnoticed as Guatemala, alongside other Central American provinces, briefly became part of Mexico after independence in 1821, making cochineal a predominantly Mexican product. But this changed dramatically two years later when Guatemala and its neighbours seceded, positioning their cochineal producers as competitors to Mexico’s.
Meanwhile, Spain was left scrambling to relocate its source of the prized dyestuff, desperately seeking to salvage something from the wreckage of its once colossal empire. With attempts to establish production on the Iberian Peninsula proving unworkable, the Spanish crown turned its gaze towards the Canary Islands—a strategic port network off the northwest coast of Africa. A 2015 research paper titled Canary Red: Preserving Cochineal and Contrasting Colonial Histories on Lanzarote by Sarah Mattes tracks cochineal’s historical journey across the Atlantic and into its new home.
Mattes explains that the warm, dry climate of the Lanzarote and Fuerteventura islands provided the perfect conditions for the insects to thrive. Yet, the introduction of the dyestuff to the Canaries was not a seamless transition; it came with a heavy-handed overhaul of local economies and landscapes.
At first, Canarian farmers resisted the imposition of this new crop. Cultivating cochineal required abandoning traditional crops and reshaping entire agricultural systems. But the Spanish colonial government forced their hand by driving down profits from other local produce, leaving cochineal cultivation as the only viable path to survival.
According to Robert Cooper West and John P Augelli’s 1976 book Middle America, Its Lands and Peoples, sometime between 1831 and 1874, entire vineyards were ripped out by the Spanish in the Canaries and converted to cactus plantations. With Mexico’s monopoly on the industry compromised after independence, the Canary Islands soon became the world’s leading producer of cochineal, exporting nearly 2,722 tonnes at the height of production in 1875.
Just as the industry peaked, however, scientific advancements in Europe gave rise to aniline dyes—synthetic alternatives of red that were derived using new methods of extracting pigments from coal tar. This left farmers in the Canaries stranded with swathes of fields converted to produce a now-redundant crop. Efforts to pivot towards selling cochineal for food and cosmetic use offered some reprieve, but the damage was already done. The abandoned fields became silent markers of an industry that was imposed rather than chosen, and cochineal on the Canarian archipelago continues to carry the weight of that sordid history. Even today, the Canary Islands are the second largest producers of cochineal after Peru. Chile and Mexico are close behind.
Cochineal’s renowned durability as a dye, coupled with rising health concerns over synthetic additives, has made it popular again in the food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries, where it finds itself in everything from lipstick to dairy products and sausage casings to dessert icings. Products using cochineal, especially in the cosmetics industry, benefit from the pigment’s image as non-toxic and safe even for sensitive use such as eye make-up.
According to The Craft Atlas, a database promoting access to regional crafts and their production, the dye’s appeal today is not just nostalgic or artisanal but driven also by its stability and versatility.
Given the labour-intensive production process and the renewed demand for the dye, science journalist Brittney J Miller reported in Knowable Magazine in 2022 that researchers are now prompted to explore alternative methods, including genetic engineering, to potentially create carminic acid without relying on insect farming. Danish synthetic biologist Rasmus J N Frandsen attested to the enormous changes such research could bring to the industry, not only by imbuing efficiency into production but also by appeasing consumers who abstain from animal products.
This endeavour appears honourable, but the context of cochineal’s colonial history and its centuries of service to the world’s economic powers leaves the waters looking murky.
When sixteenth-century Europeans decided they needed rich reds for sartorial luxury, the industry, powered by indigenous Mexicans, was pushed to produce the dye relentlessly. In the nineteenth century, when they switched to the new synthetic colourants, Canary Islanders were abandoned with devastated production chains and a deafening loss of livelihood. As the twentieth century brought with it the fears of artificial food colourants, suddenly cochineal was needed again. And finally, today, as veganism becomes more and more popular in developed nations, cochineal must wane accordingly, leaving its production to science.
The story of cochineal is one of shifting colonial priorities, a layered identity woven across continents, cultures, and clashing economies. There is no story of cochineal without the story of colonialism. In its land of origin, Mexico, it became a symbol of resistance, used by indigenous communities to maintain autonomy when few were awarded that privilege. And yet, even with what is described as its success, cochineal production left Mexican communities at the mercy of the capitalistic market it served.
Upon its relocation, the dye began to tell a different story: that of a commodity imposed top-down on a people who had little say in the matter. This shift across continents was not merely agricultural but ideological—a crude display of Spain’s position as a global power, uprooting a natural resource and transferring it to new soil, regardless of the consequences for the new ecosystem and those who worked on it.
If Spain had a hand in dismantling livelihoods and destabilising local economies, cochineal was its tool: both the hammer and the nail in the coffin of more than one indigenous community. As cochineal is repopularised today, as a natural and safe colourant, this history is largely forgotten. Perhaps where it remains then is in the colour itself—a red so deep and bloody it may well be a relic of its own violent past.
