For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Moon puts a psychedelic lens on the natural world, rearranging the birth and adolescence of five animal species into bright kaleidoscopes to delight the third eye as much as the first two. Note the details in the artwork—the color shift in the cocoons, the delicately rendered leaves framing the firefly, and the subtle color glow around the black lines.

“This series attempts to capture the beauty of the ever-changing and adaptive natural world,” Moon says. “The theme was inspired by metamorphosis—the magical ability to physically restructure oneself into an entirely new entity.”

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Padró’s Sketchbook introduces a welcome burst of joyful colors to the winter season. “Initially I visualized a monarch butterfly and their flight to Mexico, but I decided to take liberties with the color palette to push the visual realm,” she tells Zócalo.

Gouache is Padró’s primary medium. For this migration series, she scanned and digitally edited her gouache illustrations to create final vignettes that fly off the page.

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In July, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) added the monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus plexippus, to its Red List of Threatened Species, a recognition that the insect’s ongoing decline could lead to extinction. Though monarch numbers increased 35% from December 2020 to December 2021, their numbers overall have been in steep decline for the last three decades. As the IUCN listing indicates, now is a crucial time to reassess monarch conservation policies across North America.

As a woman born in Mexico and now living and teaching in Canada, I know that nothing is ever simple for anyone who makes their home across borders. I have conducted research throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada, following the struggles of humans and insects migrating across North America. Both have been shaped in harmful ways by the erasure of Indigenous knowledge that supported populations of many species for millennia, and by the globalization policies, border security, and toxic agribusinesses that have transformed the landscapes of North America. Ecological justice for humans, monarchs, and other species will only come when we prioritize community livelihoods and ecological decision-making beyond borders.

Monarch habitat decline began during the 19th century, as settlers transformed the open prairies in what is now the Corn Belt of the U.S. and Canada. Monarch caterpillars eat only one thing: milkweed, which once grew in abundance in those landscapes. But settlers evicted Indigenous people, whose agricultural practices embraced biodiversity, and brought monoculture agriculture, planting single crops over vast areas and uprooting the milkweed.

In the modern era, one of the main culprits of the monarch’s decline was the agrochemical giant Monsanto, now part of the German corporation Bayer. The company’s Roundup herbicide decimated the butterfly by killing monarchs’ host plant. Its pesticides damaged caterpillar growth.

Monsanto was also a major producer of genetically modified (GM) corn seed, which has not only had devastating effects on monarchs, but also on Mexican rural livelihoods. Strains of corn traditionally grown in Mexico cannot compete genetically or economically with GM corn, which is more resistant to disease. Imports of GM corn from the U.S. made corn farming in Mexico less profitable, thus forcing workers to seek other crops or to migrate north—often risking their lives to cross a border that has become hostile political terrain.

Insect and human migrations are also both affected by the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, updated as the USMCA). Though the agreement opened doors for trade in manufactured goods and produce, it closed them for human migrants and butterflies alike. The U.S.–Mexico border, once an interconnected habitat with lots of monarch food, became industrialized and fragmented, while traditional agricultural and land management practices across the continent declined. Despite these negative effects, NAFTA leaders appropriated the monarch as a symbol of tri-national trade relations.

The construction of the U.S.–Mexico border wall has further exacerbated these effects. Most directly, when the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas objected to a Trump administration attempt to extend its border wall through the conservation area, fringe groups baselessly accused the center of facilitating illegal immigration and human trafficking. The center shut down for several weeks after QAnon threats. It has since reopened, but with heightened security (the New York Times reported that the executive director now wears a sidearm), and it remains embroiled in lawsuits over the plans.

Ironically, conservation efforts can also have negative effects on monarch habitat, because they often disregard traditional agroforestry knowledge. Conservationists sometimes label small Mexican farmers as “loggers,” to cast them as villains stealing from protected forest areas. But the truth is more complicated. These forest farming communities care deeply for the butterfly. Their traditions hold that the monarchs return just in time for the Day of the Dead, carrying the souls of their ancestors. In these areas, the monarch’s winter home, people long practiced sustainable agroforestry. They grew mixed crops including corn at lower altitudes, while collecting other foods and hunting in mountain forests. As monarchs gained conservationists’ attention, however, vast areas were designated as “people-free cores” in an effort to protect the butterflies. These actions harmed human and insect alike by shutting down a system of coexistence—and pushed people to engage in logging, often to create space for avocado fields, which have become a tempting enterprise because of growing demand for the fruits in the U.S. since NAFTA. New conservation demarcations have diminished humans’ relationship to the forest and their ability to protect the butterflies.

It does not have to be this way. Long before Mexico, the U.S., and Canada existed, monarchs made their annual migratory circuit, nourished by ample milkweed with help from Indigenous agroforestry practices. Similarly, our own species has been in motion throughout its history, and this has contributed to our survival.

How do we reimagine North America as an abundant home for all? In the U.S. and Canada, “butterfly amateurs”—lay enthusiasts who create habitats to support monarchs—allowed me into their world. They fill their yards with milkweed and construct elaborate hatcheries in their homes. Some call themselves “crusaders.” Yet these backyard ecosystems are not enough.

Creating islands where monarchs have what they need is only a partial solution. Because a web of economic and political barriers has made it difficult for monarchs and humans, both species will need fundamental, structural change to thrive. The monarch is a metaphor for a right to live across “two homes,” as many migration activists assert. But this shouldn’t just be a metaphor—it should be our reality. If we want to keep monarchs around, we need to redesign North America as a safe place for migrant humans and migrant butterflies alike.

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How could a color be so valuable? In culture after culture, red commands the eye. We are drawn to its power, and to its passion, its sacrifice, its rage, its vitality. It’s not an accident that the color is red: It turns out that we humans are unusually susceptible to scarlet hues. Studies show that the color quickens our pulse and breath, perhaps because we link it with birth, blood, fire, sex, and death.

But for much of human existence, broad mastery of the color crimson was elusive. Only a few natural substances produce red dye. Henna, madder roots, brazilwood, archil lichens, and fermented stews of rancid olive oil, cow dung, and blood numbered among the sources over the centuries, but most of them fell short—faltering as dyes for textiles and setting into corals, russets, and persimmons instead of true scarlets. The worst of them faded fast into dull pinkish browns. True reds proved rare, and the evocative pigment became even more prized.

Thousands of years ago, however, Mesoamericans discovered that pinching an insect found on prickly pear cacti yielded a blood-red stain on fingers and fabric. The tiny creature—a parasitic scale insect known as cochineal—was transformed into a precious commodity. Breeders in Mexico’s southern highlands began cultivating cochineal, selecting for both quality and color over many generations.

The results were spectacular. The carminic acid in female cochineals could be used to create a dazzling spectrum of reds, from soft rose to gleaming scarlet to deepest burgundy. Though it took as many as 70,000 dried insects to make a pound of dye, they surpassed all other alternatives in potency and versatility.

An illustration of cochineal collection by Mexican priest and scientist José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, 1777. Newberry Library, Edward E. Ayer Manuscript Collection.

Dried cochineal insects from the author’s study. Courtesy of Amy Butler Greenfield.

Cochineal spread through ancient Mexico and Central America, where it was used for the quotidian and the sacred. Textiles, furs, feathers, baskets, pots, medicines, skin, teeth, and even houses bore the brilliant red dye. Scribes colored the history of their people with its crimson ink.

Detail from a page of the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, a pictographic history and genealogical record from Mixtec region of Mexico between 1200-1521 A.C. The British Museum.

When the Spanish conquistadors landed in Mexico, they were struck by the stunning scarlets of the New World. The exotic source of the dye became a sensation back in Europe, where it was deemed the “perfect red.” The Spanish would go on to ship tons of the dried insects back to the Old World and beyond. Their monopoly on the color’s source made it one of their most valuable exports from Mexico, second only to silver.

Europeans largely used cochineal on textiles, where it produced red fabrics of an unmatchable sheen and intensity. (It could also be used to make shades of peach, pink, purple, and black—but the reds were what made cochineal famous.) To see this magnificent red was to see power. Court gowns and royal robes were made with cochineal, as were the uniforms of British officers. The scarlet dye even found its way back across the ocean, into the “broad stripes” of the embattled banner over Fort McHenry that inspired the U.S. national anthem.

Cochineal also found a spot in the artist’s paint box. If you were a European artist on a tight budget, you could procure your cochineal from shreds of dyed cloth, but fresh-ground insects yielded much better results. Artists usually combined their cochineal with a binder, creating a pigment known as a lake.

It’s impossible to tell with the naked eye which painters used cochineal to make their reds. But recent advances in chemical analysis have confirmed its presence in numerous masterpieces. Among those works is Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride.

Between the muted browns and golds, the bride’s red gown draws the eye. A combination of vermilion base and cochineal glaze allowed Rembrandt to give the dress its great depth and luster. Other painters of the period also loved to use cochineal lakes to paint glowing red fabrics, such as the shimmering scarlet silks in Anthony van Dyck’s Charity and possibly in the Portrait of Agostino Pallavicini as well.

Anthony van Dyck’s Charity. National Gallery, London.

Portrait of Agostina Pallavicini. Getty Museum.

Eye-catching though these cochineal lakes were, they had one great drawback. Unlike cochineal dye on cloth, which usually holds fast to its color, cochineal pigments in paint tended to fade with exposure to light. This was especially true of watercolors. J. M W. Turner’s cochineal-reddened sunsets, for example, literally pale in comparison to what he originally set down. Cochineal could be fugitive in oils too. A lake made with minimal cochineal, or cochineal of poor quality, faded in a matter of years. Even quality cochineal has dimmed over the centuries. The dowdy jacket in Thomas Gainsborough’s Dr. Ralph Schomberg and the blotchy pastel backdrop of Renoir’s Madame Léon Clapisson both are pale versions of the original.

Thomas Gainsborough’s Dr. Ralph Schomberg, 1770. National Gallery, London.

Yet while Dr. Schomberg is consigned to his discolored suit for the foreseeable future, Madame Clapisson recently was given new life. A team at Northwestern University and the Art Institute of Chicago analyzed the cochineal that remained in the portrait and digitally recreated the painting in all its glory. Regard the original and the restoration, and you can see both the force of cochineal and its weakness.

Renoir’s 1883 portrait of Madame Léon Clapisson and the digital recolorization. Art Institute of Chicago via the BBC.

When new artificial reds like alizarins made from coal tar became available in the late 19th century—ones more lasting and less expensive than those created by the naturally occurring insect—artists eagerly picked them up. By the late 20th century, artists had abandoned cochineal. Dyers, too, turned to cheaper alternatives. Even in its homeland, the insect nearly disappeared.

Today, in a surprising turn of history, the cochineal market is booming again—thanks to contemporary demand for safe food and cosmetic coloring. See names like carmine, carminic acid, crimson lake, Natural Red 4, or E120 on a label, and you may be looking at a modern manifestation of the color once fit for kings.

A few artists and dyers, too, have been tempted back by its revival—drawn to its intensity and sheen, its historical and cultural resonances. One is Elena Osterwalder, whose stunning installations employ both cochineal and the amatl bark-paper used by Mesoamericans before the Conquest.

“Red Room” installation by Elena Osterwalder. Courtesy of Elena Osterwalder.

In Oaxaca, once the epicenter of the cochineal trade, you can still find traditional weavers breathing new life into the ancient color.

Traditional tapate—belonging to the author—that was woven by Fidel Cruz Lazo of Teotitlán del Valle, who colors his yarns with only cochineal and other local natural dyes. Courtesy of Amy Butler Greenfield.

Though the high era of cochineal may have ended, the power conveyed by its potent hue remains. Over centuries and continents, we humans have always been drawn in by red. After all, it’s in our blood.

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