For 40 years, Don Ignacio Rosas Barrón has sold clay items in the Juarez Market. Although sales are no longer as they used to be, their pieces continue to cross borders.
Clay pots, bean jars, and deep plates for pozole are no longer sold as they used to be among local buyers. They are valued by Mexicans who live outside the country and by foreigners who find in the mud a piece of Mexico.
Today, those who seek them out the most are Mexicans who live outside the country and foreigners, attracted by the flavor, tradition, and art that these handmade pieces keep.
Cooking, drinking coffee, or serving yourself a plate of food in clay not only honors our ancestors and recognizes Mexican artisanal work; it also gives food an unmatched taste.
However, Mr. Ignacio Rosas Barrón recognizes that sales have decreased compared to previous years.
At what point did we stop valuing what, for generations, was part of our daily cooking?
In the Juárez Market, corridor 6, local 193, Don Ignacio has been dedicated to the sale of clay items for four decades.
The place is known as “Los Nachos“, an area that is not very crowded, but where customers always come by recommendation.
- “We don’t fool people here,” he says. Its affordable prices and the trust it generates have been its best advertising.
Whoever is looking for a large casserole to stew up to eight kilos of meat, chicken, or goat, can find it for 900 pesos.
For a family of four, there are casseroles with lids for 280 pesos, and Don Nacho is always willing to make a price depending on the pieces that are taken.
How much does it really cost to cook with tradition?
But in his place, there are not only casseroles. It also sells jars for cooking beans, from half a kilo to two and a half kilos; deep plates for pozole, menudo, or beef broth that cost just 30 pesos; as well as cups, pastry plates, jugs, comales, and the traditional molcajete to prepare a good Mexican-style sauce.
The pieces offered by Don Ignacio come from different states of the country, such as Michoacán, Puebla, and Guanajuato. For him, clay is not just a product; it is identity. That is why it is not surprising that those who live outside Mexico value these pieces more.
- “There they remember their land,” he says.
How about a plate of beans cooked in a clay jar, a roast pork prepared in a casserole and firewood, or a coffee served in a clay cup that costs just 30 pesos?
- What would Mexico taste like if we stopped cooking it in clay?
Don Nacho is a witness to how time passes, but also to how tradition resists.
His story is that of a man who, for 40 years, has defended artisanal work, hoping that new generations will once again look at clay not as something old, but as a symbol of what we are.
Buying and promoting what is made in Mexico is also a way to preserve our identity. And if it’s mud, so much the better.
Source: Posta
