My mother as a growing child would go to her aunt's huerta and pick the lagrimas or tears of the maguey and eat them as candy but before she ate the maguey's nectar that had coalesced in some gooy substance, for breakfast she drank agua miel. Every morning in her hometown of Zacatecas, my grandfather brought jicaras of agua miel which is the juice of the maguey and my mother drank the juice with a sense of reverence. For not only was the agua miel delicious but it could not be kept beyond a day because it would ferment as pulque. As aqua miel my mother savored every drop without knowing if my grandfather would go the following morning to milk a maguey.
My mother was born in Zacatecas, and she has a wealth of memories over her village that she along with her family left due to a drought. Her family had a farm from which they were self reliant but once that drought hit, they lost their lifelihood. What sustained them was sharing whatever resources the extented family had and the nopales and magueys. Although it no longer rained for the fields to produce beans, squash, corn, chile and lentils, every morning my grandfather went to the llano and picked tunas from the cactus and milked the magueys. The tunas did not grow year around; however the magueys constantly gave agua miel. Before the drought, my grandfather claimed that agua miel replaced milk because it was healthier. Once the crops dried and the animals began to die, my mother's family survived through the magueys. Eventually the family emigrated from Troncoso in 1949 when my mother was seven years old.
My mother has not returned to her village which is now said to be a growing municipio but she vividly remembers the town of her of childhood years. She remembers the beautiful and the traumatic of her village life. When the drought hit, there was hardly any water to cure and she was dying from a stomach infection but she survived. In relation to the maguey she narrates how my grandfather would cut a vein to siphen the agua miel; however he would do special cuts so that the maguey would not die or become sterile. My grandfather avoided to castrar or castrate the maguey.
Whenever my mother talks of the maguey, the plant is a lost but cherished relative that she yearns to see. As a young woman in her thirties, she recalls a hole in the wall of a cantina in downtown Juarez which sold pulque. Since she came to Juarez, aqua miel and pulque were unknown. She had never tasted pulque but since it came from the aqua miel, she wanted to experience her memories of a child. My father and she ordered the drinks in a pair of jarritos and thinking that she would taste the morning harvested juice of earthiness, she spat something that tasted like processed pee. My father finished her pulque as she just sat there dissappointed.
My mother is in her mid sixties and everytime she sees a maquey, she recalls that drink which she has not had since she was a child. Whenever I ask her if she desires to visit Zacaecas, her answer is always no but she laments that agua miel could not be transported without becoming liquor. For her, the maguey is not a decorative plant that at some time will blossom a flower to then die, but that she is a generous plant who nurtures, feeds, cures and has the potential to clothe as well. She wonders if these border magueys that grow in the cities of El Paso and Juarez offer agua miel: for the magueys of her memories are giant and voluminous in comparison to the compact ones that grow in the border.
I do not know if my mother will travel to her village for a morning drink of aqua miel and harvest the lagrimas after the maguey has been cut. I do not know if her village now a municipio still grows the nurturing plant with odd words like castrar to explain the process of milking the maguey. Interersting the Nahuatls saw the maguey as female while in my mother's village, the maguey has a male personification. All I know is that my mother has never lost that yearning.
As for me, I'm curious.
