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Rosalío Gómez González, “Chalío,” ventures alone into the mountain range of Durango for four to six hours a day, hunting for scorpions, a trade known as “ alacraneo ” in this region.
We're in the Palos Colorados community, in the lower area of the mountain range, 40 minutes away from the capital city of the state. The sun is blazing and there's no one nearby we could ask for help in case we are stung by a scorpion – arachnids people here have been hunting for centuries. The scorpion hunter walks between the trees with the agility of a teenager. With a hook, he turns stones to see if there are scorpions hiding beneath them.
“They hide from the sun, it's when it rains that they come out,” explains Chalío, 46.
Today, he hasn't found many. Every day, he travels anywhere between three to five hours by bicycle in order to reach the mountain range. In a good day, he hunts up to 200 scorpions yet his average game is somewhere between 70 to 100. He then sells the arachnids at the market in downtown Durango for MXN$ 2.5 each. Chalío says sometimes they only want to pay him MXN$ 1.
Many years ago, people hunted scorpions for the government, out of necessity, but in recent decades they do it for the craftsmen and the cooks who used them in their dishes.
Until April 2018, Durango's Ministry of Health registered 564 victims of scorpion stings.
(Rosalío Gómez González hunting scorpions - Photo: Francisco Rodríguez/EL UNIVERSAL )
An ancient trade
Chalío says that 34 years ago, when he was a kid, he began to hunt scorpions in his native community, currently with a population of fewer than 200 people.
His father was a scorpion hunter and Chalío says he still is, despite being 86 years of age. Back then, they were paid MXN$ 0.20 cents per scorpion. The people in his town lived from corn and beans but Chalío says these are difficult crops to grow and that “it's best to hunt scorpions.”
Chalío sometimes works as a masonry worker but says that if he goes out looking for work and finds nothing, then he has lost a day hunting scorpions.
“It's better to hunt [scorpions] because I live hand to mouth.”
He likes being a scorpion hunter because he can feed his family and dress his four children.
Scorpion hunting
is a trade practiced in this state since 1760. The city's chronicler Javier Guerrero Romero states that in that year the town of Durango recorded an item on “scorpion slaughter,” when they paid the inhabitants for live scorpion specimens. This is when scorpion hunters were born, people who would hunt them and sell them to the government, given that scorpions were considered a plague and a health problem in those days.
At the same time the figure of scorpion hunters appeared, so did the “scorpion overseer,” a government official in charge of attesting the number of scorpions caught by a hunter.
“They cut off their tails and threw dead scorpions to the river. The overseer corroborated the number of scorpions and issued a promissory note so hunters could be paid ,” describes the chronicler.
(Scorpions - Francisco Rodríguez/EL UNIVERSAL )
Unregulated trade
Chalío carries on. He leaves no stone unturned and finds a scorpion with her offspring. After 30 years in this business, the man's got an eye for this. He grabs the animal with his tongs, smacks it against the rock, puts it inside a container and moves on. In this area, scorpions are small. Further in he finds the bigger ones, the ones he can sell for up to MXN$ 100 in the market. There are four main species of scorpions in Durango: Hudrudus Aztecus , Centruroide Vaejous , Centuroide Suffusus, and Centuroide Noxius – the latter is also found in Nayarit and is the most venomous species in Mexico.
Miguel Correa, an entomologist from the National PolytechnicInstitute (IPN) in Durango, confirms that the Suffusus species is indeed considered a plague in the city, as it adapts easily to its environment. Moreover, it's the second most venomous scorpion in Mexico.
Correa explains this scorpion isn't a protected species thus there are no regulations for hunting it.
Chalío tells us that a few years ago he was able of hunting up to 300 scorpions a day but all that's left of that time are the memories.
When asked why he thinks he finds fewer scorpions these days, he replies: “Unemployment; people do this because they can't get a job.”
However, there are no statistics on how many scorpion hunters are there in Durango. It's an unregulated trade. The reality is that anyone can suddenly become a scorpion hunter as these animals pop up in houses.
Chalío turns another stone and finds two scorpions there. “Female scorpions are fatter and male ones, thinner,” his many years of experience talking.
The scorpion hunter turns every stone he finds, catching the scorpions he finds and placing them inside his plastic container until late in the afternoon.
(Durango souvenirs - Francisco Rodríguez/EL UNIVERSAL)
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