Naturally red

Ambiguous and fascinating, it has connotations as contradictory as those of danger, anger, war, and also of joy, sensuality, or courage. It is the color of the devil and of divinity. Of the vital or mortal blood. Of love and hate. It is the most striking, the one that provokes the greatest reaction and removes opposing passions by being perceived as aggressive and at the same time seductive.

The meaning and symbolism of red and its coloring substances could be discussed at length. Today we will refer to only 2 of the 105 registered shades, produced by two natural pigments widely used throughout the history of man before the use of artificial ones became widespread. The carmine, extracted from the cochineal – a plump, white-fuzz-covered insect that lives in the nopal – was loaded on ships from America along with other products in great demand throughout Europe in the XVI century. As prized as gold and silver, it was the main tint used for centuries to color fine clothing and upholstery fabrics and in the palette of many painters.  Nowadays, cochineal is bred for artisan use in the dyeing of fabrics in Mexico and especially in alpaca wool in Peru, where nopal was brought by the Spanish centuries ago. The work of breeding and production is very laborious: the plants must be infested with the parasite, then collected, dried, and crushed to extract the carminic acid. From one kilogram of grana, another name for the cochineal, 5 liters of dye are obtained which gives to color 2 or 3 pieces of fabric. In pre-Hispanic times, ceramics, sculptures, and murals of the temples were already painted with this paint.

Beautiful and deadly, the vermilion pigment, bright red that pulls towards orange, is extracted by grinding cinnabar, a mineral that forms alongside volcanic rocks and hot springs and contains 15% sulfur and 85% mercury. From the latter comes its enormous toxicity. Despite this, it was used for thousands of years for funeral rites, decoration of objects and murals, and even as a medicine against syphilis and… as an elixir of immortality! It was used in all civilizations: by the Incas and the Mayas, by the Greeks and the Romans, and by Arab and European alchemists. We find it in wall paintings in Pompeii, in hundreds of paintings from the Renaissance and later, and in the coating of each of the 8000 statues of soldiers and horses of the fabulous clay army of the first emperor of the Qin dynasty -200 B.C.-, painted with lacquer based on cinnabar and other materials; it is presumed that 5 tons of the vermilion pigment was used.

Of scarlet, maroon or ruby, Popes, Emperors, and Kings dressed. In the international political sphere, it is generally associated with leftist movements, the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution and the communist parties; red was the official flag of the former USSR and is that of China, not forgetting Mao Zedong’s “Red Book”. On the contrary, since the 2000 elections in the United States, it is the color of the states that traditionally vote for the Republican candidate. It’s a matter of optics.

It has been used in rituals of all times and places: the Neanderthal man smeared the bodies with the reddish iron oxide before burying them, perhaps to bring them to life with shades of blood. In China and India it inspires joy and sexual vitality: the rite of marriage, traditional or modern, is marked by the red of good luck and prosperity. It surrounds the bride on her wedding day: the dress and decorative objects, the paper lanterns, the gift wrapping. In South Africa, on the other hand, it represents mourning and death. It is a matter of feelings.