— Mexicanistas —

Ramona: California’s Enduring Celebrity

January 8, 2025

The image of Ramona, as imagined by artists, directors, publishers, and promoters, has endured within California's visual language.

N.C. Wyeth: Ramona and Alessandro on the Narrow Trail (1939)

For 140 years, Ramona has reigned as one of California's most ubiquitous celebrities. Her name graces street signs, schools, towns, and highways throughout the SoCal region. Her dark-haired beauty has been depicted in movies and on stage. Since she first sprung from the pages of Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 best-selling, myth-making novel, Ramona has come to symbolize the promise and potential of the California dream. She is the romance of the Mexican Ranchos. The fragrance of orange blossoms across a citrus grove.

Of the many Ramonas featured on numerous book covers, my favorite interpretation comes from the artist N.C. Wyeth (1882 -1945). Publisher Little, Brown and Co. commissioned this work (left), entitled Ramona and Alessandro on The Narrow Trail, from the artist to illustrate its 1939 novel edition. Read more about Wyeth at the National Museum of American Illustration web site.

Wyeth at the time created four cover renditions for the publisher, including the illustration (left) Ramona with her Guardian. (The original illustration was discovered in 2017 in a New Hampshire thriftstore and purchased for four dollars. Read more here.)

Alas, Ramona, an orphan of Scottish and Native American roots, is also a dark reminder of California's brutal past regarding the mistreatment of Native Americans, first by Franciscans in the Spanish Missions (1769 - 1833), then as forced laborers within the Mexican Rancho system. Things worsened when settlers arrived in the west with U.S. Government land grants declaring them rightful owners of the Indian's ancestral homelands.

N.C. Wyeth: Ramona with her Guardian, CA 1939

But that part of Jackson's story, the most important part to her was mostly overlooked by publishers, film directors, and theatrical productions that, over the decades, have presented to audiences their own version of the literary heroine. Typically winsome and goodly, Ramona's ill-fated love affair with the Indian Alessandro was simply more captivating than the tragic plight of the native people and the loss of their land.

Below are several depictions of Ramona for the stage, film, and television:

Mary Pickford (left) starred in D.W. Griffith's 1910 adaptation of Ramona.

Dolores Del Rio starred in the 1928 American film directed by Edwin Carewe.

A young unknown actress named Raquel Welch played the title character at the Ramona outdoor stage play in Hemet, Calif., in 1959.

Kate de Castillo brought a new edge to the role in a 2000 Mexican telenovela adaptation of the book.

Claudia Sheinbaum: Mexico’s First Female Presidenta

July 2, 2024

Also in this issue: Gay Inmates of Belén Prison

Mexicanista: Claudia Sheinbaum

In the wake of Mexico electing its first female president, I was expecting more excitement from friends and aquaintances here about Claudia Sheinbaum's June 3 victory. (Her six-year term, taking over from Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, begins Oct. 1, 2024.) But when the polls closed, response to the news of Sheinbaum's win was tepid and muted.

"This is historic and exciting, right?" I asked people I encountered in Oaxaca City. Sheinbaum had led in most polls and her main opponent Xóchitl Gálvez is also female, so the election of a woman was not a surprise.

"More of the same," one person said.

"People were voting for the party," said another. "It didn't matter that she was a woman."

Mexicans are understandably cynical about politicians and politics. Corruption is commonplace and expected. This post doesn't aim to assess Mexican politics. Rather I take a moment to recognize Mexico's first female president in its 200 years as a republic.

Mexico before the U.S. in achieving this milestone. Indeed, while the U.S. is moving backwards on critical issues affecting women, Mexico is making some progress. Abortion is now federally decriminalized. And a movement of people taking to the streets on International Women's Day to demand the government address ongoing gender violence grows each year. (AMLO was decried for being unresponsive to women's voices.)

Claudia Sheinbaum is clearly intelligent. She is a climate scientist who studied at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. She is a self-described leftist with an understanding of social justice (as a girl she accompanied her parents to visit incarcerated political prisoners). The former mayor of Mexico City (2018 - 2023) is also notable as the first Jewish person to lead the largely Catholic country.

One woman I spoke with reflected: "Well, at least little girls will see a woman leading." But this moment can be about much more than optics.

Mexican women first gained the right to vote in 1953, only nine years before Sheinbaum was born in 1962. She rose to prominence on the shoulders of the many great Mexican feminists who fought tirelessly over decades to advance women's rights in a machismo culture. One approach that has brought more women into politics is a legal framework created over years that requires gender equality in political positions.

“I think it's not a dream. I think it's a battle that has been won," said the distinguished Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska in a recent interview about Sheinbaum's election.

I for one, am excited to see what Sheinbaum's leadership brings and if she will listen to women's voices and govern on their behalf. These days we all need to hope for the best.

Read these articles for additional information about Sheinbaum and Mexican female politicians:

Time Magazine: The Meaning of Mexico's First Female President

NPR Interview with Elena Poniatowska

Aljazeera: Who is Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president-elect?

The Gay Inmates of Belén Prison

Relief prints by Edward J. McCaughan . Click on image to enlarge.

At a recent Pride Month exhibition in Oaxaca City, artist, writer and scholar Edward McCaughan paid tribute to the men and women who were once incarcerated in Mexico City's notorious Belén Prison for Being Gay.

Part of the group show TODXS SOMOS TODXS at the Red Dot Art Gallery, McCaughan's relief prints (wood cuts and linoleum cuts) are based on photos taken in 1930 by an unknown photographer who went into the filthy and crime-ridden prison to document these men and women.

"I have tried to capture elements of the pride and spirit of resistance, as well as the degradation experienced by 'las locas,' a vernacular expression used to refer to very feminine gay men, who were imprisoned simply for being," McCaughan said. An emeritus professor of sociology at San Francisco State University, he has been researching and writing about Mexico for many decades. He lives in Oaxaca.

The photographs are housed in the astounding CasaSola Archive that holds hundreds of thousands of photographs and negatives depicting Mexico throughout the past one hundred years. The foundational collection of the photo archive, Fototeca Nacional, administered by the Mexican government, it includes important historical images from the regime of Porfirio Diaz and the Mexican Revolution.

McCaughan first encountered the original photographs in 2001 at an exhibition organized by the Gay Culture Circle at the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City. He remained haunted by them for more than 20 years.

The Belén photos, and consequently the relief prints, show the men and women in postures of defiance; some display a carefree spirit, despite being robbed of their lives and cruelly punished for their identities.

This irreverent attitude especially inspired McCaughan. "The photos show the inmates looking straight into the lens and smiling, even laughing. Locked away in these horrible circumstances, they refused to lose their humanity, despite society's attempt to strip them of this, simply for being themselves."

It's remarkable to consider the trajectory of these long-ago images captured by an unknown photographer. McCaughan speculates they were taken for publication in a scandal sheet. From there they were added to the CasaSola archive, then procured by a curator for an exhibition more than 20 years ago. By bringing them into the present moment through his artist interpretation, McCaughan sends a message of Pride that reverberates today.

More information at www.reddotgallery.com

Lola Álvarez Bravo: One of Mexico’s First Female Photojournalists

May 21, 2024

By Manuela Gomez Rhine

Entierro, 1946. Lola Alvarez Bravo Archive, Center for Creative Photography.

If my photographs have any meaning, it's that they stand for a Mexico that once existed.

Lola Álvarez Bravo

Sometimes you fall in love with a place because you connect with the perspective of an artist, writer, or journalist who loves the place too. Through their works you enter a world that captures your heart. You see what they see. Feel what they feel. If you've never been to New Mexico, for instance, the artist Georgia O'Keeffe may bring it alive through her electric pink, purple, and green landscapes. After visiting the U.S. Southwest, you might still remember the magical land through her gaze.

Long ago I fell in love with the Mexico captured through the lens of Lola Álvarez Bravo. The Mexico of my father.

Manuel Gomez Boo was born in Tampico in 1921 during the advent of a new emerging Mexico. The nation was on the cusp of a transformation born from the rural and indigenous people who had persevered and won back their self determination during the country's 1910-1920 Revolution.

Álvarez Bravo began documenting this Mexico in the 1930s as the primary photographer for a magazine called El Maestro Rural - a left-leaning government educational publication aimed at the many new teachers hired to educate rural and indigenous students. Its pages featured pedagogical essays, lyrics to popular ballads, and news about openings of schools. Álvarez Bravo took this job after leaving her marriage to renowned photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo.

Mujeres de Papantla, ca. 1940s. Lola Alvarez Bravo Archive, Center for Creative Photography.

Self portrait ca 1950, Lola Alvarez Bravo Archive, Center for Creative Photography.

Untitled. Lola Alvarez Bravo Archive, Center for Creative Photography.

Ciego, ca. 1945. Lola Alvarez Bravo Archive, Center for Creative Photography.

Then in her thirties with a small son, Álvarez Bravo traveled around Mexico, often to remote locations, to document with her camera schools, orphanages, hospitals, farms and factories. She developed a sharp eye for place and landscapes. She learned to photograph people honestly without sentimentality, to capture the subtle moments of everyday life among Mexico's poor and indigenous people who had in the past not received much attention from the government or upper classes.

While my father Manuel's family was not crushed by poverty, they lived in decidedly modest circumstances in the Gulf Coast state of Tamaulipas. I have few photos of my father's childhood. Álvarez Bravo's images therefore provide insight into my father's young life. When looking at Álvarez Bravo's photos, I think, Manuel may well be the baby sleeping on a burlap sack atop a cobbled street beneath an open black umbrella. Or among the rows of children sunbathing upon long concrete steps. Perhaps he encountered in real time the clutch of women, their heads covered by white rebozos, kneeling before a church entrance. Álvarez Bravo's photographs of 1930s and 1940s Mexico provide a glimpse into the long ago Mexico that Manuel had himself inhabited.

Álvarez Bravo said she wanted her work to stand as a denunciation of the poverty plaguing Mexico despite the progressive politics of the President Lazaro Cardenas and the victories of the Revolution.

"My commitment is to guard and conserve the beauty of the race and to make the people who cause their misery to feel embarrassed when confronted with the Indian's poverty, abandonment, slow and terrible death," Lola Álvarez Bravo said. "I believe that I am obligated to expose a reality for which we are all at fault."

Álvarez Bravo brings to mind another female photographer I admire. The American Dorothea Lange. Four years older than Álvarez Bravo, Lange documented poverty during the 1930s U.S. Depression for the U.S. Government. For her this job as well provided a means to support her family during difficult times. Her most recognized image, Migrant Mother, was published in 1936, during the same time that Álvarez Bravo was documenting rural life and everyday Mexicans to bring attention to their circumstances.

Because of Álvarez Bravo, my father's Mexico is not entirely lost to me. She preserved a time and culture just as had Dorothea Lange. These photographs continue to hold meaning and insight into the lives of our ancestors.

You can see more of Álvarez Bravo's work in the online gallery at the University of Arizona Center for Creative Photography. https://ccp.arizona.edu

Anita Brenner

March 22, 2024

Reflections on a Writer’s Return to Mexico 100 Years Later

By Manuela Gomez Rhine

Tina Modotti, Anita Brenner, circa 1926. (Witliff Collections, Texas State University)

Anita Brenner was not a conventional beauty. Nor was she a conventional thinker. She clearly had a mind and look of her own as evidenced in this iconic 1926 photograph taken by Tina Modotti in Mexico. Though at the time only 21 years old, Brenner appears regal, confident and self aware.

By this point in her life, Brenner had embraced her identity as a Jewish Mexican-American woman, even though her Jewish heritage and Mexican background brought scorn while she lived in the United States from the ages of eleven to eighteen. In 1923, painful discrimination prompted Brenner to flee Texas and return to her native Mexico. By 1924 she was working there as a journalist and writer.

I stumbled upon Anita Brenner while researching Mexican history. I ordered and read her 1929 book Idols Behind Altars in which she writes about the Mexican spirit as related to its indigenous history, customs, religion and art. A literary force who went on to write many books, Brenner demonstrates in Idols Behind Altars her innate understanding of Mexico's beautiful and tragic soul. About the Mexican spirit she wrote:

The need to live, creating with materials; the need to set in spiritual order, the physical world; the sense of fitness–these are components of an artist's passion and these are the Mexican integrity. That is why Mexico cannot be measured by standards other than its own, which are like those of a picture and why only as artists can Mexicans be intelligible.

I celebrate Anita Brenner as our latest Mexicanista not merely for her work and considerable legacy, but for the vigorous way she pursued her visionary ideas. When Brenner burst onto Mexico City's post Revolution art scene at age 18, a hundred years ago, she did so with unapologetic boldness and moxie. Consider:

1. After experiencing antisemitism and discrimination in the U.S., Brenner did not shrink back but embraced her identity.

In 1923, after living in Texas for seven years, 18-year-old Brenner persuaded her parents to let her to return to Mexico. (The family fled Aguacalientes in 1916 to escape turmoil from the Mexican Revolution.) To leave behind her family and travel alone toward an unknown future most certainly took courage. But Brenner refused to live among people who disparaged her heritage. After completing her freshman year at the University of Texas, Brenner boarded a train to her destiny.

2. She found people who matched her own intellect, creativity and ambition, and charged into their orbit with the belief that she belong among other dazzling people.

When Brenner arrived in Mexico City from San Antonio, she discovered a vibrant scene forming around the Mexican Muralist movement. Brenner wasted no time forging friendships with artists, writers, intellectuals, and social and political activists, including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Tina Mondotti and Edward Weston. Anita nurtured these relationships. She found mentors and created projects with colleagues. She worked hard and generated her own opportunities. In 1926, for example, she commissioned Modotti and Weston to travel with her and take photos as she researched Mexico's decorative arts.

3. Brenner embraced who she was and what she loved, and shared these aspects with audiences around the world.

As a Mexican-American living amidst a creative revolution, Brenner also saw an opportunity to write in English about the art, culture, and history of Mexico that she loved, and import this information to foreign readers.

Whether Brenner pursued these paths from an altruistic desire to build cultural bridges, or she developed a savvy marketing perspective of how to get her foot in the door, what does it matter? She created a life with purpose and left behind a rich legacy.

4. She developed the skills she needed to achieve her visions and goals.

As a Jew in Mexico during a time when European Jews were immigrating there in high numbers, Brenner was compelled, based on her own feelings of acceptance, to promote Mexico as a destination for their migration. Brenner became a self-taught journalist. She pitched editors story ideas and began writing articles that painted a positive image of Mexico as a safe-haven for Jews for both Mexican and American journals and newspapers.

Who Was Anita Brenner?

Anita Brenner was born in 1905 to Jewish-Baltic immigrant parents from Latvia who first settled in Mexico. In 1916 the family fled Aguascalientes to escape the violence of the Mexican Revolution. In Texas, Anita was scorned for being different as a Jew and Mexican. At 18 she begged her parents to let her finish college at Mexico City’s National University. I late 1923 Anita boarded a train and traveled to Mexico City on her own.

Tina Modotti, Anita Brenner circa 1926.

Part of a circle of Mexican artists and intellectuals drawn to Mexico City after the country's revolutionary war, Brenner helped its founder, Frances Toor, launch in 1925 the influential magazine Mexican Folkways. She worked as a translator and research assistant for the Mexican anthropology Manuel Gamio. She collaborated with the painter Jean Charlot on a series of articles and book projects chronicling the Mexican muralist movement. Anita absorbed many lessons from her many mentors who gave her educations in photography, writing, archeology, history and art-making.

As part of her lifelong quest to promote Mexican culture to an American audience. Anita moved to New York in 1925. In 1929 she published her seminal work, Idols Behind Altars. The book's eclectic view of Mexico’s indigenous traditions and contemporary artists was a success.

By the 1930s, Brenner was one of the earliest interpreters of Mexican modern art in the United States, and one of the main promoters of what historian Helen Delpar called “the enormous vogue of things Mexican,” which reached its peak in the Depression years. Throughout her career, Anita Brenner's writings profoundly influenced the international embrace of the Mexican Renaissance, a term she herself coined.

She received a PHD in anthropology from Columbia University in 1934. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the study of Aztec art in Europe and Mexico. From 1955 to 1971 she ran the magazine Mexico/This Month. It worked to improve social and business relations between Mexico and the U.S. by promoting travel, investment and retirement in Mexico. In later years she ran an agricultural farm in Aguacalientes.

Anita Brenner died in an automobile accident in Mexico in 1974. She was survived by a son and daughter.

Additional Reading

Another Promised Land: Anita Brenner's Mexico

Aperture: How One Woman Helped to Invent Modern Photography

Idols Behind Altars, Beacon Press; 1970 Edition.

Post Revolution Mexico City

After the Mexican Revolution ended in 1921, the country’s capital began to evolve as an important center of indigenous politics, art and philosophy. US and European artists, writers, folklorists and intellectuals were captured by the city’s counter culture and emerging artistic scene. Exiled revolutionaries, émigrés, refugees, revolutionaries and dreamers flocked to Mexico City throughout the 1920s.

An influx of Jews to Mexico in the 1920s

Between 1917 and 1920 Jews began to arrive in Mexico from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, the Balkans and the Middle East. The rate increased in 1921 when the United States imposed quotas on its immigration and Jews were forced to find another country to call home. Ten thousand arrived from Eastern Europe to the port of Veracruz at the invitation of President Plutarco Elías Calles. In 1924-25 the mass arrival of Jewish migrants to Mexican shores grew even more. Jewish organizations such as the Comité de Damas and North American B'nai B'rith were formed to help the new arrivals adapt. Anita Brenner’s parents and older siblings were part of a Jewish diaspora, emigrants who arrived in Mexico and settled in Aguascalientes.

Read Past Mexicanista Stories Here

La Catrina

October 22, 2023

SIX QUESTIONS FOR LA CALAVERA CATRINA, THIS MONTH'S MEXICANISTA

With Dia de los Muertos just around the corner, Mexicanista reached out to a woman who needs no introduction, the holiday’s most famous celebrity. Would La Catrina give an interview to answer questions inquiring readers want to know?

“Of course not, she’s busy!” Her assistant snapped. “She’s being fitted for her new bonnet.”

But after our persistent pestering, La Catrina granted Mexicanista five minutes of time. Provided we bring a dozen sweet pink tamales with cinnamon and dried cherries, and several dozen bouquets of Cempasúchil, the fragrant yellow marigold flower that she surrounds herself with wherever she goes.

We found La Catrina in a tomb at Oaxaca City's Panteón General, among a clique of other calaveras, busy pinning feathers to her oversized purple bonnet. Catrina opened the bag and inhaled the sweet pink tamales.

“I can’t eat fast enough,” she exclaimed. “Being only bones means I eat as many tamales as possible and they fall right through me. Jajaja!" With her toothy grin and a snort, she added, “Ask your questions quick. I’m bone tired from all the hoopla. I have so many appearances to make this coming week.”

Mexicanista: According to our research, two male Mexican artists, Jose Guadalupe Posada and Diego Rivera, created your likeness early in the 20th century. (See sidebar for background.) Before that, you didn’t exist.

La Catrina: Hola Chicas, were you born yesterday? Do you believe everything you read? Ridícula! No one invented me with their pencils and paints. I am part of every woman who has ever lived. I am in the dirt. The soil. Wind and rain. My spirit flies free and I choose when I’ll enter an imagination. Strike as inspiration. I created myself with their lead and pigments. Ha!

M: Didn't you get your start as Mictecacihuatl, born of Aztec mythology, Aztec Queen of the Underworld?

C: Start and stop? What funny ideas humans have. I am still the courageous Mictecacihuatl, Lady of the Dead, My job is still to watch over the bones of the dead and preside over ancient festivals of death. I still ensure the preservation of ancestral connections and guide souls to realms beyond. I just dress differently now. A style makeover is a good idea to stay fresh.

Photo of Mictecacihuatl Sculpture by Dennis G. Jarvis

Mexicanista: As you are so well acquainted with death, perhaps you have an insight into Why we are here?

Catrina: To live, to die, to laugh, of course. To dress up and smell the flowers. Also to love your family and ancestors.

Mexicanista: What is your motto that you live and die by?

Catrina: Bones, bones, we are all bones. I love style, as you can see. But beneath our luxurious clothes; beneath our naked skin, we are all the same. Made of bones. When death comes for each of us we all leave as equals.

Mexicanista: What's your super power?

Catrina: My sense of humor of course! Nothing ever gets under my skin. It tickles my funny bone to always laugh at death. Poor Death gets annoyed but we Mexicans are famous for laughing in his face. It’s such a great quality.

Mexicanista: Since our time is limited, we mere mortals must ask, What’s it really like on the other side?

Catrina: Chicas, it’s divine. To be surrounded by every ancestor you’ve ever had. Every dog and cat. We just dance and laugh for all of eternity.

La Calavera Catrina by Jose Guadalupe Posada (circa 1910)

Sidebar: History of La Catrina

Ls Catrina was born into the Mexican psyche when Mexican illustrator Jose Guadalupe Posada made an original sketch of La Calavera Catrina around 1910. La Calavera Garbancera was a social criticism, a satire referencing the high-society European obsessions of the Mexican president Porfirio Diaz, whose corruption led to the Mexican Revolution of 1911. Catrina was a nickname for an elegant, upper-class woman who dressed in European clothing, maybe denying her own indigenous or Mexican roots.

Mexican muralist and artist Diego Rivera gave La Catrina a full body in his 1947 mural, I dream of a Sunday afternoon in the Alameda Central. Being front and center in that Surrealist tableaux of Mexican history really popularized her image.

Over time, La Catrina became associated with Dia de las Muertos and is ubiquitous in cemeteries, within ofrendas, and all manner of remembrances for departed loved ones.

Diego Rivera Mural "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central" Photo by Fedaro Click on image to enlarge.

Images of La Catrinas are public displays taken in and around Oaxaca City, Mexico. We thank all artists for their contributions.

Mezcal Desde La Eternidad

August 20, 2023

Dar Una Mano Amiga – Give a Helping Hand

A Oaxacan mother and daughter defy tradition and stake their claim as women in Mexico’s mezcal industry.

By Manuela Gomez Rhine

Hortensia Hernández (Photo: Mexicanista)

Lidia Hernández displays mezcal. (Photo: Mexicanista)

When Juan Hernández died of Covid at the age of 56, in 2020, his wife, Hortensia Hernández Martínez, was so consumed by grief, she took to bed and turned her back on everything the couple had built together at their mezcal palenque in the Oaxaca municipal of Santiago Matatlán.

Juan and Hortensia had married as teens. Both came from mezcal-making families in this region of maguey fields 25 miles south of Oaxaca City.

Standing behind the counter in the tasting room of Mezcal Desde La Eternidad (Mezcal from Eternity), Hortensia shared how Covid had upended her life. The family business is situated on the Carretera Federal Oaxaca that bisects Matatlán, the self proclaimed Mezcal Capital of the World. It is within this region of wide blue skies and red-earthed fields that maguey is cultivated to create the fermented alcohol. To the mostly Zapotec and Mixtec residents, mezcal is not just a popular booze favored by urban mixologists but a sacred spirit honored by their families for centuries.

Maguey Fields (Photo: Karen Otter)

Hortensia Hernández at her palenque Mezcal Desde La Eternidad. (Photo Karen Otter)

Unable to leave her bed even to work, Hortensia, now 58, couldn’t fathom how she would feed the family, let alone help Nallely, still a teen, and Lidia, in her twenties, continue their educations (Nallely in nursing and Lidia in law) something both she and Juan had desperately wanted for them.

“Juan became ill and died so quickly, it was hard for me to accept,” Hortensia said. In her anguish of losing her husband of 35 years, the widow not only ignored the business that Juan had spent his life developing, she also neglected her children, in particular the couple’s two daughters, who were also reeling from loss.

Hortenisa and Lidia Hernández own and operate Mezcal Desde La Eternidad. (Photo: Mexicanista)

Meanwhile, the sisters, watching their mother’s depression deepen, finally made the decision to take Hortensia to see a psychologist.

The psychologist cut through Hortensia’s fog of despair with a sharp reminder. “Your husband built this palenque and you already have everything,” he said. “You have to turn yourself around.”

As Hortensia processed her grief, she saw how her despair was in fact damaging her and her husband’s dreams, for the business and family.

She also realized that her her oldest daughter, Lidia, was her greatest asset in moving Mezcal Desde La Eternidad forward. During the years that Juan built his artisanal palenque, using five generations of mezcal-making knowledge passed down through his family, it was Lidia who followed him around as he worked. As a child, Lidia was most fascinated by the processes involved in the harvesting, cooking and fermenting of maguey hearts. It was Lidia who shadowed Juan asking questions and studying techniques. Now Lidia held the golden key of knowledge.

“Lidia is the one helping me,” Hortensia said with a shy smile from within the rustic brick and concrete building, its walls painted bright yellow. “She’s the one going with me to do the job.”

Lidia, armed with a new law degree and educated in traditional practices by her father, committed fully to the life of a mezcalera, a female mezcal maker. She stepped into Juan’s shoes and began leading the way.

Lidia gives a tour of a maguey field. (Photo: Katy Kavanaugh)

Lidia explains the process of crushing maguey. (Photo: Katy Kavanaugh)

But Hortenisa and Lidia initially faced a formidable hurdle: the culture of mezcal making is still predominately male-based. Mezcaleros don’t go out of their way to welcome mezcaleras into their world. As mother and daughter ventured into the maguey fields, the workers there had no interest in taking orders from women. The men openly disregarded their new female bosses. When Hortensia asked men who had worked for her husband to perform a certain task, they would refuse or begrudgingly do so in a surly mood, she said.

Mezcal production is labor intensive. The women needed the workers’ cooperation to complete the long process that involves harvesting maguey, removing their spines and roasting their hearts (these piñas can weigh a few hundred pounds) in a huge pit filled with hot coals.

Hortenisa told the workers: “I know you are used to working with my husband but he is no longer here. So I am saying please, dar una mano amiga – give a helping hand.”

People around Hortensia repeatedly asked why she was doing "men’s work.” She began to comprehend how this mentality that pervades the region’s society could harm her daughters. Yes, she was born into a culture where education wasn’t encouraged for women who would traditionally spend their lives as wives and mothers. Among older generations of women such as Hortensia, a woman would only run a distillery because she was widowed. Hortensia decided to push against these views so that Lidia could carry on her father’s legacy. So her daughters would have opportunities she never had.

Lidia and her puppy. (Photo: Mexicanista)

Hortensia stands before a mural of her late husband Juan. (Photo: Karen Otter)

Hortensia listens to her daughters. She collaborates with them and shares ideas. In Oaxaca, a woman who starts with nothing and becomes the owner of her palenque is still rare. It’s beginning to happen with younger women, though, who share practices and support through such groups such as Mujeres Del Mezcal (Women of Mezcal).

On a recent reporting trip to Mezcal Desde La Eternidad, Mexicanista chatted with Lidia, 28, as she stood behind the tasting room counter, framed by a wall of brightly labeled mezcal bottles. Her mother, she said, had gone to help a neighbor dealing with a death in the family. As was customary in their community, Hortensia would stay with the family for three days, cooking, cleaning and providing support.

Welcoming us, Lidia poured tastes of two newly created mezcal: one infused with jamaica (hibiscus); the other a blend of mint and watermelon.

“To stand out among mezcal brands you need innovation,” Lidia said. She is developing strategies to market and sell the brand not just in Oaxaca, but throughout Mexico. (One existing client, a woman who buys their mezcal and distributes it under her own label in New York, provides steady revenue.)

Lidia conceded the path had been bumpy. Beyond needing to motivate workers unaccustomed to female bosses, the Hernández’s had been targeted by criminals who figured women-owned businesses were easy to cheat. After some product was lost to scammers posing as vendors, Lidia adopted an air of wariness she never needed before. The setback only strengthened her resolve.

As for Hortensia, she sees a clear path ahead through combining her experience with Lidia’s ideas. By building upon her husband's legacy and taking and giving a helping hand. She is positive that if other women want to enter the mezcal business, they can do so.

“If they have courage...si se puede,” she said.

Find out more at Mezcaldesdelaeternidad.com