Jimador
The agave harvester who strips the leaves and extracts the piña using a long-handled coa; the role is dangerous, deeply physical, and largely hereditary.
The jimador is the agricultural specialist who harvests a mature agave by removing its leaves and freeing the piña from the field. The tool of the trade is the coa de jima, a long-handled implement with a circular flat blade roughly 20 cm across, sharp on the leading edge. The jimador strikes the agave at the base of each leaf to slice it cleanly from the heart, then chops down through the trunk and tap-root to free the piña from the ground.
It is brutal work. A jimador can move several tons of agave per day in the central tequila fields, working from before dawn until the heat of midday in temperatures that often exceed 35°C. The coa's blade and the agave's serrated leaf margins (which the Spanish chronicler Hernández compared to fish gills in the 16th century) make injury routine. The role is overwhelmingly hereditary: a jimador is most often the son or grandson of a jimador, with field technique passed down through generations of muscle memory and family tradition.
The jimador also performs capón on emerging quiotes, judges piña ripeness by sight and feel, and selects which plants are ready for the day's haul. See the culture chapter Part 3 for the hereditary-craft framework that the jimador shares with the tlachiquero and the maestro mezcalero.
Sources
- Consejo Regulador del Tequila. Production process.
- Valenzuela-Zapata, A. G. and Nabhan, G. P. ¡Tequila!: A Natural and Cultural History (2003).
- Mezcalistas. Inside the work of the jimador.