Schoolteacher Mercedes
Luna wishes her father had been with her when she was
growing up.
When Americans debate how to regulate the hundreds of thousands
of Mexicans crossing the border to work in the US each year, they
sometimes forget the toll migration takes back home. That toll is
especially high in rural areas, where families are divided, villages
are deserted and cherished traditions are gradually slipping away.
But in the tiny pueblo of Zoochila, in Mexico's southeast Sierra,
a group of would-be entrepreneurs is brewing up a reason to keep
their friends and neighbors from leaving.
"The idea is to create a source of work so that people don't
have to go," explains Francisco Siguenza, the pueblo's volunteer
treasurer. Instead of exporting workers to America, Siguenza and
about 20 other Zoochilan men hope to send thousands of bottles of
top-quality, hand-made mezcal—a fiery local liquor made from the
spiky maguey plant.
The maguey
plant, used in making mezcal, thrives in places where
corn and beans do not do well.
It may sound like a simple plan, but it is full of hubris. The
forces driving the Mexican migration have been building for decades.
Since World War II, tens of millions of Mexicans have been drawn
to the US by the promise of jobs and economic opportunity. Communities
throughout Mexico have come to depend on the dollars the migrants
send back. About half of Zoochila's 300 families are now based in
America, most of them in Los Angeles.
Erasmo Luna Mateos lived in LA for about 20 years before returning
to Zoochila. But he's one of the few who have come home for good.
"Once people get used to making money over there, it's hard
for them to come back," he admits.
Visit Zoochila during its annual fiesta and you'd think the town
was booming. There are bull-wrangling competitions, basketball matches
and native dance performances. Local bands parade up and down the
dusty streets. Returnees from LA videotape everything and dance
the local jarabe into the wee hours. Their cash and the local mezcal
make for a festive blend.
Zoochilans and their
guests dance in front of the town hall during the annual
celebration.
.
But when the celebration is over the picture looks very different.
Sturdy new houses stand empty in their lots. The handsome town hall
has been restored, but the all-volunteer government is stretched
perilously thin. Residents fear that Zoochila, like other nearby
mountain villages, could become a ghost town.
Members of Zoochila's mezcal collective know it won't be easy to
compete with more established producers for a piece of the export
market. One of the few companies that sells traditional, single-pueblo
mezcal in the United States has only just begun to have some success.
"I've devoted nine years to building a market," says Ron
Coooper, owner of the export company Del Maguey. "It's overwhelming."
Zoochilans are well aware of how time-consuming and expensive it
is to produce a distinctive liquor of consistently high quality.
And they know that they'll need to do more than just break even
if they want to lure their townsfolk back from America. But they've
done the math and they believe they can succeed.
Maguey ferments
in an oak barrel. The word mezcal comes from Metl
or Mexcalmetl, meaning agave in the Nahuatl
language.
Erasmo Luna's daughter, Mercedes, has also done the math. She says
she probably couldn't have gone to high school if her father hadn't
been sending money home. But she insists that 20 years without him
wasn't worth it. "Who cares if we didn't have money?"
she says. "We wanted our Papa to take care of us, to hug us."
Erasmo
Luna Mateos
