There's more to the story

As always, the images one sees on the street are powerful, but for me, these held some deeper thoughts.

"Without maguey, there is no mezcal."  Mezcal is very hot these days and there has been a proliferation of producers in response to growing demand.  And to make mezcal, one needs maguey or agave.  The plants can take many years to mature.  Some mature in seven years, others can take over twenty and Oaxaca, unlike other states, is blessed with many varieties of the plant.  Tequila from Jalisco is produced solely using the blue agave.  Now, it may be an urban myth, but I don't think so, however, whenever Jalisco runs out of piñas, the heart of the mature plant, they come here and snap up as many as they can find.  So when I visited my favorite mezcalero, Faustino, in Chichicapam a couple of weeks ago, that was the story I heard from his family.  Last time I was there he had a couple of thousand liters, but this time, he was down to eighty.  It will be four months until the next harvest.  Obviously, with the plants taking so long to mature there is a lot of planning and staggered crop planting involved, but seeing as though they have been making the stuff for a few hundred years, they have it down.  As Faustino likes to say, "Calmate."  Be cool, it will all be fine.

The juxtaposition of the poster for the missing girl with the ominous words above it.....