Mexico Cooks!

Piteado: The Macho Art of Embroidery

It's Sunday morning just before dawn.  A vaquero (cowboy) in his best jeans and sombrero swaggers into the courtyard of the hacienda. His boot heels click softly on the red clay tiles of the patio. As the sun breaks over the barn roof, the mustachioed vaquero chooses his best saddle from its wooden stand and carefully cinches it around the belly of his favorite mount. He's off to town, both he and his horse dressed carefully for their day off.

Let's take a closer look at the cowboy's boots, his belt and his saddle. Each of them is hand-embroidered using an ancient Mexican technique called piteadao. To understand the process of the embroidery, we travel to the southern jungles of Mexico, to the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, where the tall trees grow, where coffee is grown, where the air is steamy and thick with humidity. Under the shelter of the jungle trees, the smaller plants grow away from the glare of the sun.

The thread used for the embroidery is processed from a bromeliad plant called ixtle. The plant, grown as undergrowth in tropical jungles, eco-forests, or coffee plantations, takes approximately eight years to grow to maturity. Usually the entire plant is harvested, allowing better and faster growth of the young plants which have sprung up much like baby spider plants. However, only the longest and healthiest leaves of the ixtle plant are used to produce thread.

The preparation of pita, the ixtle thread, is time consuming and arduous. The long leaves are scraped, either manually or using a hand-cranked machine, to free the ixtle fibers. The fibers are then washed several times and hung in the sun to bleach. Once they are bleached, they are combed and braided into bundles called muñecas (bunches), which are sold to talabarteros(saddle makers and artisan leather goods workers) working primarily in the town of Colotlán, in Los Altos—the northern highland region—of Jalisco.

Colotlán is considered to be the world capital of piteado. There are more than 40 workshops producing pita-embroidered leather goods in the town, plus 200 private micro-businesses producing the work. Nearly 2800 townspeople dedicate their daily work lives to this art. Their hand sewn products include belts, boots, sandals, briefcases, wallets, purses, and their crowning achievement, saddles. The work from this village is so well known that several belts from Colotlán are exhibited in the renowned Prado Museum in Madrid.

The practice of the art of piteado, which has given this town and the region international fame, dates to the last decade of the 19th Century. This craft has been passed from father to son through the course of generations. Today, approximately 10,000 belts are produced in the town each month. The belts are sold everywhere in Mexico and are shipped to international destinations such as the United States, where a piteado belt is a hallmark of many Mexican men.

These handmade goods are not inexpensive: you'll find less expensive imitation piteado, sewn by machine using cotton thread, but almost all of the hand made work is still done in Colotlán. Expect good quality genuine piteado belts to cost several hundred dollars.

There are many individual steps that lead to a finished product. Traditionally, piteado artisans have worked individually in all of the different stages of production, from design work to marketing. In some respects this has limited the development of piteado as an industry, but it has ensured the continuing tradition of the work.

Piteado is worked only on leather, most of which is brought to Colotlán from León, Guanajuato or from San Luís Potosí. The original designs came from Aztec traditions, but those designs have gradually been modified over the years and have lost some of the flavor of that culture. Today, many of the designs include Huichol elements due to the influence of that indigenous people in the area of Colotlán. Some of the commercial workshops have more modern designs, such as flowers and horse heads, adapted to the requests of the customer.

The production of belts is the bread and butter of the piteado artisans in Colotlán. Most of the belts are sold at fairs and in stores throughout Mexico. In my travels around Guadalajara, I sometimes see ambulatory vendors selling piteado belts.  If you make a trip to the Mercado Libertad in Guadalajara's Centro Histórico, you'll find hundreds of belts, boots, huaraches, and every other sort of piteado leather goods. Be aware that when you're shopping for piteado and the price seems too good to be true—and the dealer swears that his products are the real piteado, hand-sewn from pita fiber—you're probably hearing a sales pitch for inferior goods sewn with cotton. Most of these pirated imitation piteado items come from the Guadalajara area.

It's difficult work to hand embroider a belt. The production of each one takes a single worker a full week to complete. First, the size and shape of each belt are traced onto the leather; then the leather is cut into strips. Each strip is then shaped and polished. The design or drawing for the embroidery is hand-cut into the leather with a chisel. Once the leather is ready, the most difficult part of the work begins: the embroidery. The mesquite wood needle is punched through the leather using a hammer and an awl.

Using a heavy duty sewing machine, the embroiderer sews the lining to the back of the belt, cuts it, and hand-finishes it. Finally, another person adds the buckle, the closure, and the loops that hold the end of the belt when it's fastened around the buyer's waist. Any leftover leather is used to make brooches, earrings, pins, and other small goods. It's all a question of not wasting any costly materials.

The most difficult work is called alamar doble, a term that has no adequate translation into English. The work is complex and baroque and so specialized that almost no one outside the town of Colotlán tries it. In the rare instances when it's copied, a buyer in the know will recognize that the work is done with cotton thread and is a poor imitation of genuine piteado from Colotlán.

In Colotlán, Armando Gaeta Loera is one of the acknowledged maestros of piteado. He began to study the art when he was barely eighteen years old. For two years he worked as an apprentice with Rafael de León. Later he and his wife opened their own shop. With time, he hired assistants and as the years passed, his three sons have entered into the family business. Today he has two workshops, one in Jerez, Zacatecas and the other in Colotlán.

Maestro Gaeta designs and makes bags, belts, holsters for pistols and knives, cases for machetes, boots, chaps, and sombreros of piteado, along with other smaller articles for both men and women. He uses leather from a variety of animals: cattle, goat, sheep, deer and fox, among others. For finely detailed work, he chooses suede and other special leathers that are the softest and therefore least difficult to embroider.

The work is demanding. Maestro Gaeta is often called upon to prepare special designs for his clients, designs which incorporate specific emblems, flowers, names, initials, or animals. The prepared leather is properly flattened and stretched before the parts of a piece are cut and before the design to be embroidered is traced onto the skin. This planchada—literally, 'ironing'—is always done from the reverse side of the leather.

After further hand processing, the designs are distributed over the surface of the leather. Maestro Gaeta uses a hard lead pencil, a wooden square, a ruler, a marker, and a metal compass—all the usual tools—to trace the intertwined flowers and foliage, the horse heads, the initials or names of the owner of the piece, and any other special requests onto the leather.

Once the drawings are finished, they are marked with a marker and Maestro Gaeta begins to make tiny holes in the leather with an awl. He then begins, little by little, to embroider with the pita, twisted in two or three strand lengths, depending on the design and the depth of the relief that he wants to give the embroidery. The sections of the piece he's making are then joined either with a hand needle or with a special sewing machine that is exclusively for this kind of leather work. If the piece requires a fabric lining, this is the time it's put into place.

The finished piteado, whether belt, boots, or saddle, is highly prized by the owner and may well be worn during competition in championship charreada, the stylized Mexican horsemanship competitions.

You're well on your way to being a connoisseur of the fine and macho  art of piteado. If you are reading this while you're living North of the Border, be sure to look at the belts you see worn by Mexican men in your area. You'll see examples of the art of piteado and you'll know exactly how they're made and where they originate.

All photos courtesy of http://www.colotlan2.com/

Guadalajara's Wholesale Flower Market

It was my great pleasure to wander Guadalajara's wholesale flower market this month, talking with one of the long-time vendors and taking more pictures of glorious blooms than will fit on these pages.

I confess that on the day I went on my investigative trip to the wholesale flower stalls, I was in a funk and would have preferred to stay at home. I scowled my way through traffic to the Mercado Mezquitán in downtown Guadalajara and barely managed a brief smile when I found a handy parking place. And then I was on the street, the flower-filled street, and my bad mood vanished in a heartbeat. How could my funk hang on when the sight and fragrances of literally millions of blossoms were all around me?

It was hard to know where to look first. The narrow old market street, clogged with belching pickup trucks, crammed beat-up cars, overloaded handcarts and people carrying enormous bundles of flowers, runs parallel to super-busy, modern Calzada Federalismo. I smiled as the blatant contrasts of Mexico once again showed me that I was definitely not North of the Border.

A scruffy yellow dog sniffed the greenery in his path as he hunted for something more promising than flower trimmings for his almuerzo (late breakfast). What looked like a moving tower of bright red roses jostled me as I stood in the street. It was a workman, hurrying along with dozens and dozens of paper-wrapped packets of beautiful blooms on his shoulder.

Mounds of multi-colored statice wait on a hand truck.

For two city blocks, tiny Calle Mezquitán is a sea of blooms. The actual flower market, a small enclosed building of perhaps 30 stalls, is insignificant compared to what happens in the street. I've often driven along Federalismo and noticed the market building; it's just across from a municipal cemetery.

I walked along asking permission to take pictures and marveling at the variety of flowers. My eye was caught first by girasoles (sunflowers), then leticia (statice), then pompones (pompom chrysanthemums).

The vendors greeted me as I strolled past. "Qué va a llevar, señora? Hay de todo." (What are you buying, lady? Everything's here.) Over and over again I asked permission to take photographs. The quantity of flowers was completely overwhelming, their fragrances perfuming the air.

This basket of at least four dozen roses and asters costs 250 pesos, a little less than $25.00 USD.

I stopped to ask one of the vendors about the cultivation of flowers in Mexico. Flowers, he told me, are grown commercially primarily in one area of the small State of Mexico, both for export and for use here in the Republic. Flower business is big business in that fertile valley not far from Mexico City. Flower-growing land sprawls over more than five thousand hectares. That's well over 12,000 acres.  In addition, the cultivation of flowers provides either direct or indirect employment to 225,000 people in that state.

Gerbera daisies and stargazer lilies.

In the State of Mexico, flower growing generates a yearly economic bounty of $2,700,000,000 pesos: two billion seven hundred million, folks. It's not a typo. The brief selling season just prior to the Day of the Dead in November generates $617,000,000 pesos—in only a few days. The profits from just those late-October flower sales represent nearly one-fourth of the economy produced in the State of Mexico's fields.

Here's just one small example of Mexico's Day of the Dead flower power. In 2003, growers planted ninety hectares of roses which were to be harvested in the last week of October. Those roses produced 11.3 million stems, which were bundled 25 to a package. Each package of 25 roses sold at wholesale for 37 pesos. Total earnings for the brief October rose harvest were 17 million pesos.

In addition to roses, the flower growers of the State of Mexico also cultivate huge numbers of chrysanthemums, vast quantities of gladiolas, millions upon millions of carnations, and most of the rest of the flowers that are available in wholesale markets all over this country and the world. Many, many of the flowers that you who live North of the Border will purchase or be given on Valentine's Day and Mother's Day come from the sunny lands South of the Border.

Claveles (carnations) are among the most popular flowers for sale at the market.

Everywhere I looked, I was tempted to buy. Huge bundles of pink, red, candy-striped or white carnations, each bundle containing 60 or more flowers, sell for 40 pesos--less than $4.00 US dollars. Gorgeous, enormous ready-to-sell flower arrangements, perfect for a banquet table centerpiece, sell for 250 pesos--less than $25.00 US dollars. Bundles of 25 roses sell for 70 pesos.

After walking along the market street for an hour and then investigating the market itself, I stopped to ask a young vendor how long the market had been operating on Calle Mezquitán. She admitted that she wasn't sure and encouraged me to ask Dr. Roberto Avila, the owner of the business where she worked. He was busy taking a large wholesale order on the telephone. "Dr. Avila knows everything about the market, from the time it started," she assured me. I waited and watched the action on the street as hundreds of thousands of flowers glowed in the morning sun.

Dr. Avila graciously took the time to answer my questions. "This flower market has been here for more than 50 years," he began. "I'm 57 years old and I was born two blocks from here. My grandmother and my father brought me here to work with them when I was seven. I've had this business for 25 or 26 years now.

Long-stemmed roses sell in bundles of 40 for 70 pesos, less than $7.00 USD.

"Look across the street, right over there." He pointed to a small house on the corner. "That house is made of adobe. All the houses along here were made of adobe, that's how old this section of Guadalajara is. Over the years, they've fallen down because of the rains, but people build them right back up again.

"Some years ago, Calzada Federalismo was widened to accommodate all the traffic that comes this way. Before the street was widened, the market building was more than twice the size it is now. The market building back then wasn't just for flowers. There were meat markets, tortillerías, and plenty of stands where you could eat. The government took most of the market to build the street. Now there's no tortillería there at all, the meat markets have mostly moved out, and there are only a couple of food stands left." He shook his head. "There used to be a kindergarten here. And there were frontón (a ball game played with a kind of basket-shaped racquet) courts." He smiled. "There are many other frontón courts in the city, but the ones right here are gone."

"There are more flower markets in Guadalajara, you know. One is right in front of Parque Agua Azul, on Calzada Independencia near González Gallo. Another is at the corner of Manuel Acuña and Contreras Medellín, just about ten blocks from here. But none of those markets sells the amount of wholesale flowers that we sell here."

I thanked Dr. Avila and walked up and down the street once more. The flower market had lightened my mood and I knew I'd come back on other days just for the lift. Although I was determined to buy a bundle of carnations, my eye suddenly lit on a huge bucket of tight yellow Siberian iris buds. "Cuánto cuestan?" I asked the vendor. Thirty-five pesos for ten long stems! I bought two bunches and strolled happily to my car.

Back home, after I arranged the flowers in a tall vase, I checked my favorite online florist for the price of Siberian iris in the United States. Suffice it to say that I would never have been able to afford them. When you come to Guadalajara, we'll make a field trip to the wholesale flower market, where you can afford to buy all the flowers you could possibly want.

 

Jello Shots, Mexican Style

My friend Sra. Abundis prepared this clear gelatina.  It's approximately 15" in diameter and stuffed with fresh red and green grapes, canned pineapple, and peaches.

Whether you're having a midday meal at a traditional Mexican restaurant anywhere in the República or celebrating at a private party at the home of Mexican friends, you can be almost 100% sure that a prominent item on the dessert menu will be gelatins. As you browse the produce at any town's tianguis (street market) or elbow your way through the crowds at a fiesta patronal (patron saint's celebration), you'll see vendors selling plastic cups and glasses of—you guessed it, jewel-colored gelatin desserts. Gelatina is a shimmering sweet fact of life in Mexico, popular with young and old alike.

What is this Mexican obsession with a food that smacks of 1950s Middle America? Delight in gelatin desserts has been prevalent in Mexico for years; marketing experts here report that it's eaten daily in nearly 90% of Mexican homes. Mexicans consume more gelatin desserts than nearly any other country in the world—three times the quantity of gelatin consumed in the United States alone. In restaurants, the dessert tray will almost always include a variety of gelatin desserts. When Señora Fulana (Mrs. So-and-So) is invited to a party at the home of her best friend, it's very traditional for her to take along a gelatin dessert, all fancied-up and ready for the admiration of the rest of the attendees. At a birthday party, the dessert of preference is rarely cake and ice cream. It's almost always a plate of cake and a jiggling serving of gelatin, which requires no refrigeration to maintain its shape.

There are far more ways to prepare gelatin desserts in Mexico than your mother's Jell-O mixed with fruit cocktail or shredded celery and carrots. Some of the desserts are prepared with water, some with milk, and some are prepared as a layered combination of both.  Some are major productions involving hours of labor intensive preparation time.

Sra. Abundis and Cristina prepared and painted this marvelous tiger gelatina for a child's birthday party.

Several months ago it was my task to prepare individual serving cups of gelatin for a two-year-old neighbor's birthday party—it seemed like I made hundreds. I thought it would be a complicated and difficult project, but it turned out to be quite a lot of fun. After asking another neighbor's advice, I learned that it's possible to buy powdered gelatin at any dulcería (candy store) or grocery store. The variety of available flavors is amazing: in addition to the ordinary strawberry, lime, and orange, I also found pistachio, almond, tamarindo, and peach.

While I could have kept my project simple, I decided to get fancy. No single-flavor cups of gelatin for this party! I read the directions printed on each bag and learned to prepare this flavor with water, that one with milk. I combined a layer of strawberry (prepared with water) with a layer of pistachio (prepared with milk). Recklessly, I disregarded the instructions to use water to prepare the peach flavor and used milk instead, combining an opaque peach-flavored layer with a clear orange-flavored layer.

Commercially made in Guadalajara for sale in supermarkets, this three-layer single-serving gelatina includes a fruit layer (complete with a prune and its pit), a milk-based layer, and a clear layer.  The gelatina comes with its own tiny yellow plastic spoon.  These 200 gram gelatins are prepared with preservatives and artificial coloring.  Each one costs 7.1 pesos, or 65 cents US.

It's so simple. Of course you can do this at home, even North of the Border. Just buy two different flavors of your favorite brand of gelatin dessert powder, some four-ounce plastic glasses, and have at it. Prepare one flavor and fill each glass to the half-way point. Refrigerate and allow that flavor to set. Prepare the second flavor, using either milk or water, pour it on top of the already jelled flavor, and refrigerate until set.

One traditional recipe is for Mousse de Rompope (eggnog-flavored gelatin dessert). It is so delicious that it bears repeating now.

Rompope (rohm-POH-pay) Mousse with Strawberry Sauce

The mousse:
2 envelopes of unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup water
1 cup heavy cream
2 cups rompope (Mexican eggnog flavored liqueur)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg whites

In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin onto the water and let stand until absorbed, about five minutes. Meanwhile, heat the cream slightly in a small saucepan. (Do not boil.) Remove from heat and stir in the gelatin, mixing well to dissolve. Strain into a bowl; add the rompope and vanilla and mix well. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Fold in the eggnog mixture, and then pour into a lightly greased 1.5 quart ring-mold, bowl or specialty pan. Refrigerate at least four hours, preferably overnight.

Strawberry Sauce:
1 pound strawberries, stems removed
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon almond extract, anisette or Frangelica (hazelnut flavored liqueur)

Place strawberries, sugar and flavoring in a bowl and let stand for two hours. Purée in a blender, strain and set aside.

Just before serving, remove the mousse from its mold and drizzle with strawberry sauce. Garnish with slightly sweetened whipped cream. If desired, the mousse can be molded with a graham cracker crust.

The preparation of gelatin desserts has been raised to a fine art in Mexico. Special classes in gelatin preparation fascinate housewives and give rise to thriving cottage industry here. Recipes metamorphose from the relatively simple preparations in the preceding recipes to the most elaborate of flavor and design combinations. Recently, the craze for making individual clear gelatin desserts which contain flowers also made of gelatin has hit Mexico like a bombshell.

Flower gelatins like this one, made and copywrited by the Abundis family, are called gelatinas encapsuladas.  The flowers are made with a syringe.  Neither Sra. Abundis nor Cristina took classes in making the flowers, although many handicrafts schools and individuals offer those courses.

This week I was fortunate to spend some time with Sra. Abundis and her daughter, Cristina, who operate a small home-based business in Guadalajara.  The Abundis family invited me to come watch and take pictures as they prepared special gelatinas for a child's birthday party.   Mother and daughter have worked together for the last two to three years, preparing made-to-order gelatins for birthdays, baptisms, girls' fifteenth birthday parties, baby showers, engagement parties, and weddings.

The gelatina personality of the day was Spiderman.  Cristina explained that the gelatin for the Spiderman mold and many more are milk-based, while other gelatins are water-based.  Milk gives the gelatina a more nutritious aspect than does plain water and also makes Spiderman's features show up better after they're painted.

In the Abundis kitchen, Spiderman is fresh out of the mold.  A selection of milk ingredients is lined up behind him, along with a small plate full of individual-serving Spiderman heads.

Sra. Abundis showed me the basic ingredients for the dessert; once the basics are assembled, they're flavored with vanilla.  Spiderman is prepared with powdered milk.  Other gelatinas are made with sweetened condensed milk or with evaporated milk.  The Abundis family uses pure cane sugar and unflavored gelatin for its desserts.  No preservatives are added.  These home-prepared gelatinas must be consumed within 48 hours of their preparation.

Many fancy gelatinas are painted once they're chilled and set.  Spiderman is no exception.  The paints are special vegetable food coloring gel, manufactured here in Guadalajara. 

Sra. Abundis watches closely as Cristina paints Spiderman's red base coat.

While Cristina painted, Sra. Abundis told me that when her relatives moved from Mexico City to Guadalajara in 1940, there was no gelatina in the city.  Finally the relatives found a source--one stall at the Mercado Corona in Guadalajara's Centro Histórico sold it.

Cristina starts the initial work with black gel food coloring, outlining Spiderman's eyes.  She holds a licenciatura (bachelor of arts) in graphic design from the University of Guadalajara.

"The gelatina has to be very cold in order to paint it," Cristina commented.  "If it's not as cold and firm as possible, the paint will run."  Spiderman stayed briefly in the freezer between coats of food coloring gel.

Spiderman's intricate thread work is complete.

I asked Sra. Abundis and Cristina which molds are most popular for parties. "Right now, Spiderman is the one all the kids want.  Of course they also like Buzz Lightyear, Sponge Bob, all the Disney princesses, and Barbie.  The old favorites like Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, and Tweetie Bird are always popular."

Josua Isai Abundis Linares, Cristina's nearly six year old nephew, participated eagerly in the time I spent with his family.  He and I both anticipated our dessert: one of the individual Spiderman heads.

Cristina added, "For adult parties like weddings and baby showers, people want gelatinas encapsuladas, the ones with the flowers, to accompany their special cakes.  And it's funny, the kids gobble down their gelatinas, but the adults want to save theirs.  The flowers are so beautiful."

Cristina shows off the finished product: Spiderman in person!  Sra. Abundis painted the blue base.  The cost of this fantastic super hero is 130 pesos, approximately $11.50 USD.

"The people who ordered this Spiderman for their child's party will pick it up late this afternoon.  The party is tomorrow."  Cristina was happy that she finished the painting with no smears. 

For dessert after your midday meal, for a snack or for a light supper, sweet wiggly gelatina satisfies every time. Cooling and slithery, a gelatina is just the ticket when you need a little something, but you don't want too much.

They knew what they were talking about, way back then, when they said, "There's always room for..."

If you happen to be in Guadalajara and need a gelatina for a special party, contact the Abundis family:

                Tiny Gelatinas
                Calle Ciprés #1819
                Colonia del Fresno
                Guadalajara, Jalisco
                Tel: 3812-8426 or 044-33-3815-1917

 

Big Business, Sweet and Icy in Tocumbo

When I was a little girl, a Popsicle was a big deal. Summertime meant that the ice cream truck, bell tinkling, would trundle through the neighborhood where I lived. After a frantic plea to Mom for money, she counted out coins and I raced to the corner where the rest of the kids were already gathered, waiting for the vendor to dig through his icy case for cherry, lime, or the reviled banana. The odor of amyl acetate (the chemical used for artificial banana flavoring) remains cloyingly in my memory.

Remember? Hot summer days made those frozen snacks melt quickly, down childish fingers and the side of the hand, down the wrist and almost to the elbow in sticky trails of blood red and pale green. Nips of the cold treat slid in a chilly track from tongue to stomach, giving a few moments relief from childhood summers' heat and humidity. We didn't care that they were artificially flavored; Popsicles were a summer joy. Once I was an adult, I left them behind in favor of more sophisticated gelatos and sorbets.

Long before I dreamed of venturing to Mexico, Ignacio Alcázar of Tocumbo, Michoacán had a vision. Paletas—frozen treats similar to Popsicles—were on his mind. Tocumbo was a tiny village in the 1940s.  Life there was harsh and subsistence was difficult. Eking a hardscrabble living from the sugar cane fields of the region around Tocumbo depended as much on Mother Nature's vagaries as on a farmer's backbreaking work. In those days, the pay for peeling 2,000 pounds of sugar cane was two pesos. Campesinos (field workers) could expect to earn a maximum of three pesos a week.

But making a living selling paletas depended solely on creating a desire for something delicious and refreshing to satisfy someone's antojo (whim). In the mid-1940s, Ignacio Alcázar, his brother Luis, and their friend Agustín Andrade left the misty mountains and pine forests of Michoacán and headed for Mexico City, the country's burgeoning hustle-bustle capital. The men had made paletas in Tocumbo for several years, but it was time to try their hand in the big city.

In 1946, the three men, illiterate native sons of Tocumbo, established an ice cream shop in downtown Mexico City. The new paletería (paleta shop) wasn't elegant, but it worked. People clamored for more and more paletas. The Alcázar brothers and Andrade expanded, and expanded again. They sold franchise after franchise of their paleta brainchild to their relatives, friends, and neighbors from Tocumbo. The single shop that the two men started became the most successful small-business idea in Mexico in the last half century, known across the country as La Michoacana. More than 15,000 La Michoacana outlets currently exist around Mexico, most of them owned by people from the town of Tocumbo.

Mexico City alone has more than 1,000 La Michoacana outlets. Usually the paleterías are called La Michoacana, La Flor de Michoacán or La Flor de Tocumbo.  No Mexican town with more than 1,000 residents is without one. Only Pemex, the nationalized petroleum company, has blanketed Mexico so completely.

When I moved to Mexico in 1981, a Mexican friend insisted that she was going to buy me a paleta. "A Popsicle?" I scoffed. She took me by the scruff of the neck and all but shoved me into the nearest La Michoacana. I peered into the freezer case and was amazed to see hundreds and hundreds of rectangular paletas, organized flavor by flavor, lined up in stacks in their protective plastic bags.

And what flavors! Mango (plain or with chile), blackberry, cantaloupe, coconut, guava, and guanábana (soursop) were arranged side by side with strawberry, vanilla, and—no, that brown one wasn't chocolate, it was tamarindo. Some were made with a water base and some with a milk base. Every single paleta was loaded top to bottom with fresh fruit. There was nothing artificial about these. I was hard pressed to decide on just one flavor, but I finally bit into a paleta de mango and was an instant addict.

The story of the paleteros (paleta makers) from Tocumbo piqued my curiosity. For many years I've been determined to visit this out-of-the-way town. I finally made the trip to the place where it all started. Getting to Tocumbo isn't simple, but driving the two-lane back roads winding along green mountains is lovely.

The names of the towns I passed through (Tarácuato, Tlazazalca, Chucuandirán, Tinguindín) roll off the tongue in the ancient rhythmic language of the Purhépecha (Michoacán's indigenous people). Women, teenage girls, and children wear beautiful ropa típica (native dress) as they walk to market or gather wood in the hills. Fragrant wood smoke mixes in the air with the crisp scent of pine. Wildflowers dot the roadsides and mountains with purple, orange, yellow and blue.

The well-manicured entrance to the town of Tocumbo lets you know immediately that you have arrived. No statues of Miguel Hidalgo or Benito Juárez grace the junction, nor is there a proud plaque commemorating a favorite local hero. Instead, the townspeople have erected a two-story statue of (what else?) a paleta. I'd seen photos of the monument, but the actual sight of the huge frozen delight made me laugh out loud.

Carefully trimmed trees, flowers, and lawns edge both sides of the road into town. Large, well-appointed homes line the streets and the local trucks and cars are recent models and very well maintained. Tocumbo has one of the highest per capita incomes of any town in Mexico.

My first stop was at the Tocumbo parroquia (parish church). Named in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the church is modern and beautifully adorned with stained glass. The architect who designed the church is Pedro Ramírez Vázquez.  Arquitecto Ramirez also designed some of Mexico's most famous buildings, including the Basílica of our Lady of Guadalupe, the 1968 Olympic Games installations, Aztec Stadium, the National Anthropology Museum and the National Medical School buildings, all in Mexico City.

Arquitecto Ramírez is one of the most outstanding building designers in Mexico today. It's particularly telling of the economic power of the town that the people of Tocumbo contracted with him to design their parish church.

As I sat for a bit in the town plaza, two local women strolled across the square eating paletas. After we greeted one another, I asked who the best person in town would be to give me local history. They directed me to the mayor's office on the other side of the plaza.

I spent several hours at the Tocumbo mayor's office talking with town official German Espinoza Barragán, who told me long stories of life and times in Tocumbo, and the history of the paleta.

Sr. Espinoza mentioned that many people erroneously believe that all La Michoacana stores throughout Mexico are owned by one family. "You already know that the founders were Ignacio Alcázar, his brother Luis, and their friend Agustín Andrade, and that they sold the first La Michoacana franchises to their relatives and friends. After that, the relatives and friends sold franchises to their relatives and friends, and the business just continued to spread. With a simple formula of handmade products produced every day and sold inexpensively, the business has produced hundreds of jobs as well as a high standard of living that's different from any other town in the region."

Sr. Espinoza commented, "All of our streets are paved, and all have street lights. People live very well here, although it's difficult to say how many actually do live here year round."

I looked up from my notes. "Why is that?"

"A lot of tourists from all over Mexico and many other countries pass through this town," he began. "Many see that our life here is peaceful, our climate perfect, and our town beautiful, so they ask about renting or buying a house here. Once they see Tocumbo, everyone wants to stay."

I nodded in agreement. The thought had occurred to me.

Sr. Espinoza nodded too. "People say, 'Find me a house to rent.' I just tell them to forget it, it's hopeless. Then they tell me, 'But so many of the houses here in town are vacant! Surely the owners would like to rent their houses.' I shake my head, even though up to 75 per cent of the houses here in Tocumbo are vacant for eleven months of the year.

"The thing is, everyone comes home at Christmas. No matter whether so-and-so's family lives all year round in Chiapas or Tijuana working in their La Michoacana store, in December everyone is here. Where would they stay, if their houses were rented?

"During the 1990 census, INEGI (the Mexican census bureau) tried to count the number of people in town. They counted about 2,400 people. But truly, triple that number call Tocumbo 'home'. No one misses the holiday season here. They come home to tell their stories, to find out the last word in the business, to look for a girlfriend, to get married, to have quinceañeras (a girl's15th birthday celebration), to baptize their babies. They put off all of these festivities for months, until the winter low season for selling paletas arrives and they can come home.

"This year, the Feria del Paletero (Fair of the Paleta Maker) starts on December 22 and ends on December 30. There will be sports events, free paletas, rides for kids and adults, and other things for everyone to do. You should come."

"The success of the Tocumbo paleta business must inspire people all over Mexico," I commented.

Once again Sr. Espinoza nodded. "It's a kind of work that offers even the person with the least schooling a way to make a good living, without going to work in the United States and without getting involved in selling illegal drugs."

He returned to the history of the business. "Of course, word of the success of the new paleta business in Mexico City reached Tocumbo really fast. All Tocumbo packed its suitcases and went to get in on the gold mine. Everybody was buying paleta stores. And the best is, all the contracts were made on the solid word of the parties, without any paperwork, and all the loans to start the businesses were made between the buyers and the sellers. No banks were involved.

"This first generation of paleteros (paleta makers) felt the obligation to let everyone have a part of the success. Remember that Tocumbo is a very small town. Almost everyone is related to everyone else. Everyone of that generation had grown up together, and everyone shared just a few last names. The belief was 'today it's your turn, tomorrow it's mine'. And everyone lived by that.

"Today, things are a little different, but only a little. There's still room for all the paleterías in Mexico, and the majority belong to Tocumbans. Even though other ice cream stores like Bing and Dolphy have opened and there are even new brands coming in from the United States, there's no other big success like we have had. To start with, the paleta is the people's business, not corporate business. Other businesses might spend huge amounts of money on advertising and special wrappings, but we Tocumbans don't run our businesses that way. We're flexible, we save our money, and we work very hard. The paleterías are open from early in the morning till late at night, every day of the year. Even when the owners are home for the holidays, their employees are working in the stores. We make only as many paletas as we can sell each day. We don't use chemicals in our paletas, and we adapt the flavors to the regions where our stores are."

Sr. Espinoza went on to tell me that the most popular flavor paleta is mango, because it's the fruit that everyone in Mexico loves. He continued, "In the south of Mexico, we have to offer mamey, zapote, and plátano. Where people have more income, we can sell a paleta for seven pesos. Where income is lower, such as in the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, we sell a paleta for five pesos. We keep our stores very simple, so everyone can feel comfortable to come inside. And we try to open our stores in places where lots of people congregate: near schools, near hospitals, and near sports facilities."

The story of this business amazed me. I shook my head and said, "What was the next step for the paleteros?"

"When we saw that so many Mexicans were living in the United States, the next logical move was to start stores there. We started moving there too, and opened the first shops in California, Texas, Arizona, and Florida. And now—now there are La Michoacana stores in Pennsylvania, in Chicago, and in New York. Next will be Central and South America, you'll see.

"Did you look at the monument at the entrance to town?" Sr. Espinoza asked me.

"Of course! It's wonderful," I exclaimed.

"On the way out of town, look at it again," he said. "Look, a little drawing of it is on my business card." He handed me the card. "See the blue ball of ice cream in the paleta? And see the paletas all over the ball?" I did see them. "The blue ball represents the earth, and the bright colored paletas cover it." He smiled at me. "And someday, paletas from Tocumbo, Michoacán will truly cover the globe."

I have absolute faith that he's right.

NOTE:  Be sure to see the update to this post, published on December 19, 2007.

Traditional Baking at Lake Chapala

Two days a week, José Manuel Mora Velásquez continues a tradition that has been part of his family for more than 80 years. Long before dawn he begins preparations for baking pan de tlachigual, a type of bread so distinctly regional that Sr. Mora says that it has only been made in San Juan Cosalá and in Ajijic, although it's sold in other towns along the north shore of Lake Chapala.

In years gone by, natives of those two towns did not allow a wedding, baptism, First Communion or confirmation to pass without tlachigual as part of the festivity rituals. Although times are changing, even today the most traditional celebrations of these life passages include the humble local loaves.

Sr. Mora showed me around the tiny bakery at his home in Ajijic. The ceiling is low and the only light comes from windows without glass. Loaves of freshly baked tlachigual are piled high on a wooden shelf while dough rises in a warm corner, out of the way of any passing breeze.

Tlachigual loaves stuffed with nuts and raisins rise on the bakery shelves.

"The oven is heated only by wood. It's not easy to keep a good supply of wood, but we collect it from all over the area. People usually tell me where a dry tree has fallen, or where someone has cut down a tree that will burn well when the wood is dry."

"Which days of the week do you bake?" I asked.

"Wednesdays, like today, and Saturdays. It's very time-consuming work and you have to pay very close attention to the masa (dough) or it won't turn out right." Sr. Mora turned to peer into the oven as he spoke to me.

"A full twenty-four hours before I bake, I have to prepare the harina fermentada (starter). It's a mixture of flour and water. I mix that, and then it sits in the warm bakery for a full day before I can use it for the bread.

"Early in the morning of the days I bake, I mix the dough. It's made with the starter dough I made the day before, plus additional flour, eggs, sugar, and lard. Some of the dough is made with whole wheat flour and some with white flour. The white flour dough has white sugar, raisins and toasted nuts blended into it. The whole wheat loaves are sweetened with piloncillo (cones of brown sugar)."

Sr. Mora showed me how he weighs each of the ingredients to make the bread. "I don't measure. The bread is better if each component is weighed. How many kilos of flour I use depends on how many loaves I need to bake on any given day. Usually I make enough dough to produce 400 loaves a day.

"Baking this traditional way is different from baking in a modern oven. The first difference, of course, is that the oven is made of bricks and clay. It's shaped like a beehive. And as I said before, I use wood fire for the heat. Temperature control is more difficult. I have to start the fire about three hours before the dough starts to bake. That's so the oven will reach the right temperature. It takes two hours for the coals to be at the right stage, then another hour for the temperature to go down enough so the bread will bake in the right amount of time."

Tlachigual bakes right on the floor of the brick beehive oven.

I looked into the oven, which has no door, and saw that the baking bread was beginning to turn golden brown. "I don't see a thermometer, Sr. Mora. How do you know when the oven has reached the right temperature to begin baking?"

Sr. Mora checks the oven to make sure the temperature is right.

He laughed. "I put one loaf in to bake. It should be ready in about 30 to 40 minutes. If it takes longer than that, I put more wood on the fire. If it bakes too quickly, I wait a bit for the temperature to go down. Then I try again. Of course I've been doing this for so long that I can almost always tell when the temperature is right, but I still bake a trial loaf to be sure."

I asked Sr. Mora if there were other tlachigual bakers in Ajijic. "Yes, my cousin still makes this bread the old way. She lives on Calle Constitución and bakes on Tuesday and Thursday. I think we're the only two left in Ajijic who bake this bread. There is a family in San Juan Cosalá that still has a bakery, but I don't know them personally."

Ojitos (little eyes) rise near the warmth of the oven.

An article about the San Juan Cosalá bakers appeared several years ago in the Lake Chapala Spanish-language weekly newspaper, El Charal. At that time, Sra. Margarita Villalobos and one of her daughters were baking pan de tlachigual for distribution and sale in San Juan, in Nestipac, and in Jocotepec. Sra. Villalobos told El Charal that as a young girl, she had learned to make tlachigual from her mother. Her methods hadn't changed over the years, she said, because making the bread in the traditional way gives it the delicious flavor that people want. Sra. Villalobos said that someone had offered her an electric mixer to help beat the dough, but she was not interested in changing her style of preparation. "Other bakers make it using the same recipe I do, but they don't mix it by hand. Their results aren't the same," she reported.

Sr. Mora's baking sheet is made of a flattened 5-gallon square tin can.

Sr. Mora tells a similar story. "A woman named Teresa taught my aunt how to make tlachigual, and my aunt taught me," he reminisced. "And now there's no one left to teach. My children don't want to be bakers. It's sad to think that I might be the last in the family to keep this tradition alive."

Although Sr. Mora graciously told me about his work and the traditions of the bread he made, there was never a time when he was not also paying strict attention to the rising loaves, the bread baking in the oven, and the bread that was cooling on primitive wooden shelves along three walls of the bakery. I watched quietly for a while as Sr. Mora worked.

With one eye on the oven, he picked up an escobilla (double-ended straw brush) and started rhythmically sweeping the wood ash from each cool loaf of tlachigual. As he cleaned each loaf, he placed it in a pile.

When he noticed that the bread inside the oven had turned a deep golden brown, he set aside the escobilla and picked up a pala (literally a shovel, but in this case it resembled a long-handled wooden pizza peel). He used the pala to remove a metal tray holding the ojitos from the oven and placed it on a table near where I was standing. In one experienced and skillful motion, he scooped up as many small panes de tlachigual as the pala would hold and transferred them from the oven to a shelf for cooling. With a similar movement, he loaded the pala with unbaked loaves of tlachigual. Gently shoving the pala as far into the oven as he knew it needed to go so that the bread would bake evenly, he snapped his elbow back and the raw loaves landed evenly spaced on the oven floor. In just a few minutes he demonstrated skills he had acquired over his 22 years as a baker.

The sweet smell of baking tlachigual was making me very hungry. "Sr. Mora, do you take all of the bread to be sold at stores here in town?" I was hoping he'd say no, and I was not disappointed.

"A lot of people come here to the bakery to buy bread. And the boys take some to be sold out on the streets in that washtub..." he gestured to a galvanized metal tub in the corner by the oven. "And of course some does go to stores around town."

"What does the tlachigual cost?" I was fingering some coins in my pocket.

"The small loaves are four pesos, the big ones are ten pesos. And those mini-loaves are two pesos apiece. I sell the miniatures to mothers for little kids."

I bought four loaves, one large and three small. The large one came home with me and I took the three small ones to share with my neighbors. My car held the tantalizing scent of the fresh-baked bread for two days.