If you imagine snail milking as either a punchline or a lost challenge from a particularly eccentric reality show—think again. Along the mangrove-shaded coastlines of Oaxaca, what appears at first glance to be a contest of patience is, as detailed in a Guardian profile, actually one of Mexico’s oldest artisanal traditions, teetering on the edge of extinction. Few crafts outdo this one for a blend of danger, ritual, and eye-popping color.

Between Tides and Toes: Mastery on the Rocks

The daily routine of Mauro ‘Habacuc’ Avendaño, now 81, and his son Rafael is equal parts athleticism, timing, and cultural devotion. As Avendaño describes in the Guardian, their workspace is anything but forgiving—a labyrinth of slippery, algae-cloaked rocks pounded by surf, made even more treacherous by the tides. According to Rafael, a single missed step can mean being swept away, a risk that has claimed relatives in the past. While some may picture tranquil snail herding, footage reviewed by the Guardian and ethnologist Marta Turok’s commentary together paint a picture closer to a high-stakes foraging expedition than a pastoral stroll.

What exactly does snail milking entail? The Guardian follows Avendaño and Rafael as they spot Plicopurpura columellaris, a snail of knobby, dark-green shell, wedged half a meter above the waterline. Rafael demonstrates: a decisive, sideways pull separates the snail from its rock. After a polite detour—the snail first expels some urine, which is tipped aside—the real process begins. With a gentle press to its muscly foot, the mollusc releases drops of a milky ink containing neurotoxins, harmless to people but bad news for unwary sea creatures.

Rafael lets these few precious drops soak into a skein of white cotton thread carefully wound around his hand. Each snail is then tucked safely back into a protected spot to live and, hopefully, to reproduce. Here the real magic—if you can pardon the worn phrase—occurs not in the snail, but in the sunlight. As Avendaño remarks to the Guardian, “If the day is gloomy, the yarn stays green or blue. You have to moisten it again and put it in the sun, then it turns purple, even if a year has passed since it was dyed.” What begins as yellow, then green, bursts into “tixinda” purple—a color sacred to the Mixtecs—after a dose of UV. The resulting violet, somewhere between lavender and amethyst, is said to outlast the cloth itself; Avendaño’s own shirt bears the indelible proof.

One detail worth lingering over: Habacuc’s feet. After almost seven decades clinging to seaside rocks, his toes have curled permanently inward. As he points out to the Guardian, “You can see it in my feet.” No artisan tool marks here—just biology quietly bending to tradition.

From Millennia to a Handful: Tradition at the Brink

So, just how did they ever reach those dizzying numbers? Avendaño fondly recalls, in a detail highlighted by the Guardian, that it wasn’t unusual to milk 3,000 snails in a single day during his youth, dyeing seven to eight hefty strands of yarn. Today, the most determined search might turn up about 100. The Guardian documents that the purpura snail, once common all along Central America’s Pacific shore, was pushed close to the brink in the 1980s. The cause? Japanese companies, drawn by the dye’s coveted hue for luxury kimonos, hired local fishers to help extract ink on an industrial scale. Unfortunately, these contractors paid little heed to traditional methods—snails were left for dead or tossed into the surf after being milked, stripped of the lunar cycle’s pause the animals need to recover.

With snail populations plummeting, it was Mixtec artisans, backed by ethnologists and Mexican biologists, who raised the alarm. The Guardian reports that by 1994, authorities intervened—restricting snail milking to just the Mixtec community of Pinotepa de Don Luis and granting the species protected status. Even so, the effort didn’t claw back abundance. Today, only fourteen men in the region still practice the dye-gathering tradition, distributing dyed skeins to sixty or so weavers who turn them into spirited shawls, blankets, and shirts.

As described in the Guardian, new threats now crowd the horizon. Since an earthquake in 2020 literally raised the coastline and coral beds (a troublesome encore for an already battered ecosystem), formerly hidden snail habitats are within easier reach—not only for poachers, who, as Avendaño laments, “seize every opportunity,” but also for seafood-seeking tourists. Tourist development—roads, restaurants, the works—hasn’t helped matters. “The government talks about protection, but it doesn’t even monitor the beaches,” Avendaño remarks with the weariness of someone who’s watched too many good ideas get scattered by the wind.

Guardians of a Fading Spectrum

Yet, in this maze of difficulty, the Mixtecs have carved out a quiet guardianship. Their presence in Huatulco National Park is itself a deterrent to would-be poachers, according to those quoted by the Guardian. Stringent, self-imposed rules infuse the process: snails smaller than three centimeters are left alone, milking halts during breeding, and the same animal is given weeks to recover between sessions. It’s a careful balance of survival and tradition; as noted by Socorro Paulina Lopez, Avendaño’s wife, both the snail and the “tixinda” dye are sacred.

The rules of the craft don’t stop with the milkers. The Guardian also notes that dyed threads are divided up among local women weavers, who transform the unassuming, sun-cured cotton into textiles with patterns echoing the snails themselves—a kind of embroidery as testimony, memory, and, possibly, resistance all at once.

What’s Left When the Shells Are Still

As the day slips into darkness and the fires burn low, it’s hard not to sense the underlying question raised by this story: How much of the world’s strange, slow expertise lies only a few retirements away from vanishing? Avendaño’s account, threaded with wry pride and a good deal of sadness, lingers well after the final skein is dyed. The Guardian’s portrait is quietly sobering—what was once a ritual involving thousands of snails is now a race against oblivion, their purple legacy flickering in the coastal dusk.

And one has to wonder: in a world where we value speed, profit, and loud spectacle, how many of these quieter, weirder crafts are slipping away out of reach? The snails themselves offer no comment—only a stubborn grip on the rocks and a violet memory that, reportedly, never fades.