We Make Ixcateco

Our town is Santa Maria Ixcatlán…

and our people the Ixcatecos — in our own language, we are called Xuani or Xula. We are located inside Reserva de la Biósfera de Tehuacán-Cuicatlán, a natural reserve (Área Natural Protegida) in southern Mexico about three and a half hours northwest of Oaxaca City.

We live in a hilly area surrounded by large summits. The intersection of several mountain ranges give this place a unique climate that supports life in surprising and beautiful ways.

In the Reserve you can find 15 species of agave — or maguey, as we call the plant. But in our town we just use ONE to ferment and then distill Ixcateco.

History

Without people there’s no agave spirit. Without land or biodiversity there would be no agave spirit. Without people’s knowledge of their land, there’s no agave spirit. This is one of the reasons why it is important for you (and for us) to know and understand our history. 

We reckon from the stories our elders have told us (because this is how we learn history) that the first settlers of our ethnolinguistic groups stayed in the region as outcasts from other groups. They found in these hills some suitable places to fulfill their needs — like water and good soil — during those early beginnings of agriculture. Our people were related culturally with other groups in the Highlands, like the Popolocas or Mazatecos (about 12 centuries ago) and earlier with the Mixtecs and Zapotecs (about 65 centuries ago). 

Most Xuani history in today’s world has to do with the foreign affairs that have, in profound ways, shaped our boundaries and our state, as well as our cultural and even personal identity. For example, we know that before the Spanish monarchy arrived in the Americas, some 8,000 Xuani families were forced to pay taxes to a handful of Mexica and Nahuale lords — all before 1520. When the Europeans stumbled upon America there came a new term to classify not only us, but everybody in this land: indigenous. Before that we were simply different people. Our population was decimated as a result of pestilence and disease (known as matlazahuatl and cocoliztli) brought by these intercontinental foreigners, as well as war. By 1580 there were only about 1,200 survivors among the Xuani. They migrated from their communities scattered around the region to the current town of Ixcatlán. 

After that seigniory systems — feudal lordships — were installed. Since then, outsider monarchs, emperors, and, later, bourgeois presidents set and defined our borders and even our level of development, making decisions based on how much different we were from them. That, ironically, created a sense of social union and support among the locals, which would eventually be called “communality.” In a global world, with the almost-extinct nation states and the establishment of the market economy as a super power, we are indeed again pressured into an economy of production and land management. Hence the importance of agave spirit, which is both our identity and the desire of the market.

Environment

Ixcatlán is a place that modern ecologists would describe as a dry forest. The Xuani people identify the quality of the land by the color of the soil: dark soil means very fertile, which only exists in a few places; red soil is also fertile but hard to access because of the steep hills; white soil covers most of the places and is not very good to grow the most important crops, like corn and beans.

But many different plant and animal species have adapted to this soil. In our forests you can find several species of oak (yange in Xuani) that we use for multiple purposes. One oak species is renowned for providing wood that makes hard handles for axes — without doubt a tree with great significance. Of course, we use some of those trees for agave spirit. This wood smells and burns beautifully. Another important tree is the ahuehuete (yachjen indá) which is said to be a bringer of water because water springs are always found beneath its shade.

Also on the plant side, our forests are home to two of our most important resources: maguey (tsu) and palm (tjen).

Some of the wild animals that are found in our hills are coyotes, foxes, rattlesnakes, and coral snakes, all of whom we wish to avoid because lore tells us they might deceive us or harm us. So when we hike into the mountains we ask the mountain not to present any of these animals, since we don’t want to hurt them back in defense. Some other animals to be found in the hilly areas are deer, wild cats, and wild pigs.

Land we know and animals we respect. Knowledge and respect are synonymous in some ways.

Daily life

Remember that if you buy from us you are trading both products: money and culture. Many things that we make — such as agave spirit — have a deep, symbolic meaning. We would like to involve you in our life and customs so that you will enjoy our agave spirit responsibly and not exploit it just because you want more of it. When you exploit our agave spirit you exploit our life and our customs.

There has always been water scarcity in our community. Some of our cultural myths tell us that supernatural forces were trying to bring water to the town by making geological movements. But years ago, there was plenty of water to be used for our crops. Now water becomes more scarce every year, and we depend on trading with the money we receive from other activities to replenish our water supply.

These activities, which are guided by a religious and agricultural calendar, are what we do most of the time. Of all of the economic activities, two are really big because they connect us with our environment and are very important for our economy: palm weaving and agave spirit distillation. The timing for palm weaving and agave spirit production depend on our religious festivities, which are a combination of our pre-Hispanic spiritual practices and Catholicism. Originally we only evert made agave spirit for these festivities. The purpose was to make a nice offering to the spirits and to our kin.

Palm hats are another staple of our economy. We would trade them for corn, beans, various grains, or vegetables. In recent years, palm, like agave spirit, has become a product sought out by the global craft community, which deeply values things that were once made by hand everywhere, but now are made in an industrial fashion. The money we earn selling our woven-palm items is used to purchase goods that history has told us are good for development.

If you come to the town you will find small stone houses with ceilings made with clay tiles or palm. Some of the newer houses are built with brick, metal, and cement, as well. Our back and front yards are called in Spanish solares. They are adorned with tall cactus shaped like the pipes of an organ and you can find small orchards with endemic fruit trees. We also have some pigs, chickens. In every solar you cannot miss the underground caves that we use to store and prepare our palm — inset into the mountainside, these are cool places that we use to work and gather in the dry season.

Our lifestyle has changed dramatically, not because we sought these changes, but because outside pressure has forced us to adapt. This is the moment for us to make history, not because of our foreign interactions, but because of how we have considered our culture within the context of this changing world.