One of the Last Old-Generation Raicilleros of Ixtlahuahuey

Introduction

Tucked deep in the folds of Cabo Corrientes—far from the beaches, highways, and tequila-tour buses—lies a world that most people never see. A world where water runs cold from underground springs, where agave hearts are carved by hand, where families survive off rugged hillsides and ancestral craft.

This is the world of Don Francisco Estrada Rodríguez, one of the last old-generation raicilleros of Ixtlahuahuey. He began working in the taberna at eight years old, grew up in a community that hid its stills from government inspectors, and lived through the era when raicilla was not a fashionable cocktail ingredient but a contraband survival economy.

His story is not just about production. It’s about lineage, danger, resistance, and pride.

What follows is a narrative adaptation of his interview—cleaned, organized, and told in his voice and memory—preserving the spirit of a man who lived the history most of Mexico has already forgotten.

Listen to the full raw interview in Spanish here.

An Interview Don Francisco Estrada Rodríguez of Ixlahauhuey

1. A Childhood Shaped by Fire, Wood, and Fermentation

Don Francisco cannot remember a time when raicilla wasn’t part of his life.

His father had a taberna tucked in the hills, and as a boy of eight, Francisco’s job was simple:

“I would take my father lunch at the taberna. My brothers worked. I was little, but that’s how I learned—watching.”

The early lessons weren’t technical. Nobody used thermometers, hydrometers, or stainless-steel equipment. Everything was intuition, practice, and respect for the process.

“This isn’t technical work,” he said. “It’s rustic. You must learn it with your body, with your eyes. If not, nothing gives you yield.”

What today would be called “craft” was, in his youth, simply life.

2. The Water That Makes the Spirit

Raicilla begins long before the still.

Long before the fire.

Long before the agave itself.

It begins with water.

According to Don Francisco, la Jeringa—a spring-fed site in the mountains—was legendary:

“The best raicilla came from there. The water was good—cold, clean, alive. In other tabernas, the spirit never came out the same.”

The old raicilleros would hike, ride mules, or wander the hills searching for the best water sources. Some stayed in the same place for generations; others moved their tabernas whenever the water changed.

To them, “terroir” wasn’t a marketing slogan. It was survival.

Maestro Raicillero Paulo Rodriguez Lorenzo ties agave to a beast of burden.

3. Making Raicilla the Old Way

The traditional process he describes predates modern mezcal and tequila methods. It is raw, physical, and deeply tied to the land.

Harvest

Agave was cut, loaded onto pack animals, and carried down narrow mountain trails.

Cooking

A stone-lined pit was dug. Oak and local hardwoods were burned beneath volcanic rock. The oven was sealed with palms and dirt. The agave cooked for three days until sweet, smoky, and collapsing.

Milling

No tahonas. No machines.Only wooden mallets called palos mazo.

“We crushed everything by hand. Canoas made of parota wood were our fermentation vats.”

Fermentation

In the humid Sierra, fermentation was half-science, half-mysticism.

Francisco explains how the tuba, a mix of fibers, cooked agave, and water, would evolve: sweet, bitter, sour, and finally, a subtle acidity that signaled completion.

Old men checked fermentation strength not with tools but with coconut shells:

“You open the shell. If the liquid closes it again—it’s good. If not, it isn’t ready.”

Distillation

Stills were crude but effective—copper pots sealed with mud and fired from below. A raicillero needed to hear the boil, smell the vapor, and taste the cut.

There was no margin for error.

Maestro Paulo Rodriguez Lorenzo tending his horno.

4. Raicilla Was Born Illegal

To understand raicilla, you must understand one thing:

For over a century, it existed ONLY as contraband.There was no legal raicilla.

The government sent inspectors from Guadalajara to seize equipment and destroy stills.

“They came to shut us down. We hid the stills in the brush. It was a dangerous time.”

Because raicilla had no legal place in the economy, the entire distribution network was forged in secrecy.

5. The Smuggling Routes of the Sierra

This is the most cinematic part of Don Francisco’s memory.

There were three major “bajaderos”, or descent routes to the ocean:

1. Ixtlahuahuey → Tecomata

2. Chacala → Yelapa

3. El Refugio → Chimo

   
   

From there, raicilla traveled by rowing canoes, sometimes with a stitched-together sail made from cloth.

They moved only at night, steering their canoes toward places whose names now sound almost mythical: La Cruz, Conchas Chinas, Sayulita, San Pancho, Monteón, La Peñita, Las Varas, even as far as Compostela. The journey was unforgiving—black water, rough seas, the risk of police waiting on the shore, and the constant fear of losing everything to a sudden inspection. Some nights they rowed for two days without rest. Other nights the surf was so violent they had to leap into the ocean, swimming damajuanas to land under the cover of darkness.

“When the sea was bad, we swam the damajuanas to shore. One under each arm. It was dangerous. But people were hungry.”

Police—especially in Nayarit—often seized raicilla and sold it themselves. Sometimes they took guns. Sometimes they beat people.

But in Ixtlahuahuey?

“The soldiers and police never came here. We were united.We are all family in this town.”

6. Indigenous Roots & Forgotten Ancestors

Don Francisco speaks of origins that reach back further than anyone alive can truly trace. Long before the word raicilla existed, the elders told stories of two ancestors—Francisco and Blas—who founded the pueblo and shaped the first traditions of the craft. In those early days, mezcal wasn’t fermented in wood but in cowhide, hung and tied in ways only the old ones understood. Life revolved around the land: the springs that never failed, the mountains that sheltered them, and a quiet spirituality woven through both.

But knowledge was never given freely. The elders guarded their methods with a certain jealousy, passing them only to those they trusted, and sometimes not at all. What remains today are fragments—half-remembered techniques, whispered stories, and traces of a pre-industrial world where alcohol was not commerce or culture, but survival and ceremony.

A world nearly gone.

Young worker prepping wet palm leaves to put over underground pit oven.

7. The Collapse of Agave Tradition

Government intervention in the 1980s–1990s devastated mezcal culture.

Politicians pushed cattle programs instead of agave cultivation. People abandoned mezcal and took government loans for livestock.

Don Francisco calls this:

“The worst mistake we ever made.”

Many agave fields were cleared. A plague attacked the plants. Young people moved to Vallarta. Communities hollowed out.

The tradition nearly died.

8. Raicilla as Medicine — And Mischief

Raicilla wasn’t just alcohol; it was remedy.

For coughs, flu, stomach pain, fever.

“I had an uncle who never took a pill in his life. Only raicilla. And it cured him.”

Don Francisco laughs as he tells stories of drinking puntas, getting lost, sleeping in a tree, waking up freezing at 3 a.m.

“Raicilla is for men. If you can’t handle it, it will throw you off a cliff.”

Despite the danger, he swears by its purity:

“Raicilla is better than tequila. Tequila has chemicals. Raicilla is natural. Clean.”

9. The Present: Water Shortages, Aging Elders, and Vanishing Memory

Today, his village faces a new crisis—not alcohol, but water.

“We have more than fifteen days without water. Imagine that. In a place full of springs.”

Most elders who carried the oral history are already gone.

Only a handful remain.

“We are disappearing. Four or five of us left. Soon the pantheon will be our second home.”

He laughs, but it’s a painful truth.

Greg Rutkowski of Finca 18 pours raicilla for maestro raicillero Paulo Rodriguez Lorenzo

10. A Message to the Future

Before the interview ends, Don Francisco looks at the camera and says:

“Record everything. What I told you is true. Go to Chimo. Go to El Refugio. Go to Sauceda. Talk to the old ones before we are gone.”

It is both a blessing and a warning.

A call to preserve a culture that has endured more than most people will ever understand — a culture that survived colonization, decades of criminalization, deep rural poverty, political abandonment, and the slow, quiet erosion of time itself.

This is the heart of raicilla.

Not bottles.

Not cocktails.

Not branding.

But people. People like Don Francisco who carried the tradition on their backs, through jungles, along cliffs, across seas, and into a future they never imagined.

Conclusion

This narrative is more than an interview. It is a fragment of a cultural universe, a window into a craft that existed in the shadows long before the world cared about “agave spirits.”