Chiltepín: Past, Present, and Future

Heirloom seeds provide us with faint portals to the cultural heritage that sustained people through millenia. In the case of chiles, the history and research are complex, with each discovery an expression of the agricultural ingenuity of humans and the fruit’s unique environments.  Recent archaeobotanical research has unearthed evidence suggesting that chiles may have roots in present-day Colorado from at least 50 million years ago, far earlier than the previous estimate of 15 million years.  Despite this revised timeline, most archaeologists can agree that humans have been perfuming their kitchens with chiles for at least 7,000 years, particularly in northeastern and central-east Mexico, where they continue to find new cultivars. While the domestication of chiles is most often linked to Mexico, researchers believe the wild chile fruit itself originated in South America. But, most chile we know and research is not wild. The vigorous fruit was patiently crafted into “hot green chiles, smoked chiles, water chiles, tree chiles, flea chiles, and sharp-pointed red peppers” by Aztec and Mayan cultures, and sold in markets, as archived by the Spanish Franciscan friar Fray Bernandino de Sahuagún in 1529. By then, different varieties of the fruit, initially thriving in the shade of warm, wetter latitudes, had migrated independently from their Andean and Mexican origins, adapting to new environments and cross-pollinating along the way, west and north into Mexico and southward through Mesoamerica. It is within these regions early farmers selected for pod types that ripened on the plant, peppers shielded by foliage, and fruits that matured evenly.

When Spanish colonizers arrived in the Western hemisphere in the late 15th and 16th centuries, they witnessed the reverence with which chile was held. Devoid of protein and caloric substance, chile was still a profoundly sacred food. The Spaniards penned in grave detail the fruit’s ubiquity in indigenous diets, where it flavored everything from maize-based dishes to even the most beloved cacao beverages. They noted how it was preserved, dried, and ground, hoarded for use across seasons. In Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España, now known as the Florentine Codex, Sahagún not only described the aromas and tastes of these regarded landraces, but also noted how each chile was discretely prepared to complement the proteins in dishes. These early colonial records describe the full gamut of this ingredient’s value beyond culinary pairings, too. Sacrifices to rulers in the form of weekly chile tributes, pleasing gods through intentional fasting, prescriptions to physical ailments and maladies, and spiritual rituals inhaling the smoke were daily practices—it was consumed, it was medicine, and it was currency. Infected by the chiles’ accounts, Columbus introduced the spice to European palates, who immediately embraced it for its ability to not only add heat, but also robust flavors to traditional stews and sausages, such as chorizo and arrabbiata. A global trade into Asia and Africa ensued, transforming the previously unknown fruit into a staple in foreign lands where coveters of this commodity undoubtedly sowed its seeds.

Remarkably, a single wild relative of these earliest domesticated forms, the Capsicum annuum var. galbriusculum, still grows today. The humble pepper, scarcely larger than a peppercorn and commonly known as chiltepín, roughly translates to “flea chilli” in Nahuatl, a nod to its apparent size, yet deceptively dangerous heat. Often referred to as the “mother of all chiles,” chiltepín is the progenitor of countless domesticated varieties in the markets worldwide including jalapeños, poblanos, and cayenne. The pepper grows wildly throughout the desert borderlands of northern Mexico and the American Southwest, notably different from the landscapes housing earlier wild chile species. The integration of chiles, specifically chiltepín, among Southwestern Native populations is not as extensively chronicled. Despite this, it has been a requisite in the lives of Sonoran desert dwellers, particularly among the Tohono O’odham indigenous community, who likely acquired the wild chile through trade with neighboring tribes like the Yaqui during the late 17th century. While historians have documented this trade between tribes in the southwestern United States and the Mexican tropics, the wild pepper was most likely introduced by birds, unaffected by its fiery heat, who dispersed seeds from their native habitats along the Andes in South America near the arid landscapes of northern Mexico.  It is such a staple for the United States SW/NW Mexico indigenous population that it is commonplace for the ingredient to permanently reside in the pockets of tribe members. A refresh of the pocket pepper can only happen once a year in the Southwest. 

Bridged between the city of Tucson and the border, the Tumacacori Mountains translates to the “place of the little round chiles” in O’odham. A bouncy ride along an anonymous road off the I-19 leads to the northernmost latitude where wild chiltepines can grow in a protected preserve called the Wild Chile Botanical Area. This terrain is one of fifteen places in the US that serve as habitats for the wild chiltepín. It retains the ideal ecological guild for the growth of this plant: a temperate south-facing slope, abundant rocks, shady legume trees, and hovering birds who can disperse its seed. Figures like ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan, who recognized the significance of this landscape, appealed to the US Forest Service to officially protect the sprawling 2,500 acres within the mountain range, establishing the first preserve for a wild botanical species in the United States. This preservation is particularly crucial in areas like Tumacacori and neighboring rural communities, where demands of industrial agriculture focus on high-yield, uniform crops have systematically sidelined wild plants like chiltepín. As Nabhan observed decades ago in The Desert Smells Like Rain, “many of the traditional drought-hardy crop varieties fell out of use and became extinct when commercial agriculture based on pumping and hybrid crops was initiated earlier in this century.” He recounts how the O’Odham people, forced to abandon their floodwater fields to work for wages in irrigated fields, lost many of their bean and corn varieties as the life of their remaining seeds expired in their absence. Devin Kate Pope, in her newsletter The Good Enough Weekly, offers a critical lens through which to view such accounts of agricultural and cultural “loss.”  She urges us to reconsider the passivity implied in words like “fell out of use” or “lost,” phrases that often obscure the violent forces that actively displace traditional crops and practices in favor of market-driven monoculture. Instead, she notes, when we read “lost,” we might instead think of “taken,” which more accurately acknowledges the roles of power and exploitation in erasing traditional foodways. The dismissal of ingredients like chile was not new, and early Spaniards took to literature to record their early interactions.  In Nabhan’s book, Gathering the Desert, he recounts a myth from the Cora Indians of Mexico’s west coast written by a Franciscan priest. It tells of the Maker’s grand feast, where every creature brought the foods entrusted to them. Narama, the patron of salt, mescal, and chile, arrived last and defiantly sprinkled the pepper on everyone’s food. Initially, his offering was chided, but the patrons soon took to his seasonings enthusiastically, which elevated the spread of fruits, fish, fowl, seeds, and vegetables.

Today, within the botanical preserve, the coveted wild chiltepines remain untouched by market forces, which price this chile at $80 per pound, by prohibiting commercial harvesting. Instead, harvesting the pepper remains a ritual where the timing, color, and preparation all contribute to its final transformations.  A test of patience and focus animates swaths of families to set up camp in week-long intervals in the mountains to harvest the chile’s flush during September and October. Harvesting too late, you will be met with wilting leaves and the season’s fading vitality; too early, and the pepper’s potential is unrealized. Furthermore, transitional periods when the fruit’s color is orange or black will spoil. Elders etch the facts of this perennial plant to practice, archiving and passing down the knowledge which give the chiles its special, powerful place in their communities. Generations communing together preserve the awareness of this plant, which too easily could be forgotten in a sea of spiky desert plants and rocky, sandy earth.  But the memory of picking the bright, red pods reminds the present and future chiltepineros where they come from, and how their ancestors could do more than feed themselves for sustenance.

A single hand might pluck the fruit, depositing the chiles into a weathered feed sack held with the other. Others work with both hands, deftly gathering the bounty into aprons or sacks tied snug around their waists. Green peppers are pickled, while the red ones are further processed. Much like cacao, drying chiltepín is meditative. The peppers are lined under tarps, methodically shuffled to present air on its surfaces and prevent mold from growing. Under the sun, it grows in its smoky complexities. Once completely dried, the peppers are stored in jars, where people will add them to dishes and refresh their pockets. Rubbing the smooth skin of a freshly picked pea-sized chile between a thumb and forefinger permeates its citrusy, almost grassy, fragrance. Those brave enough to chew into its flesh will face a searing punch around 20 times hotter than a jalapeño, immediately rewarded by a unique smokiness and nuttiness. But chiltepín is more than its heat. A taste of this wild plant, of what the desert sun, rocks, water, and hungry birds can produce, bursts of the Sonoran Desert itself. The elegant and unfettered existence of desert flora can easily be confused with emptiness and poverty.  The pure potentiality of desert life demands daily coexistence and meditation, to witness the ephemeral sea of red that you could only imagine before would exist somewhere like the Amazon basin. To harvest and preserve chiltepín is to remind us that disappearing traditions are not just losses, but rather erasures of identity and sever our connection to the land.