La Casa Mexicana: Mexico's Maguey Plant

Mexico's wonder plant called the Maguey plant, also known as Agave and the Century plant, is a hearty succulent which survives southern Mexico's long, dry winter by storing liquid in its heart. Many people in the region depend upon the Maguey plants for their livelihood. Many products are derived and created from the entire Maguey plant.

IXTLE… An organic and natural resource used by Mexico's ancestors for 5,000 years… it involves tradition because the people of Villa Progreso still use the antique techniques they learned from their grandparents and parents to extract the fiber of ixtle of the maguey and make scrubs, handcrafts, and art out of it.

We are proud to offer a piece of México to the world. We want you to have a closer look on how the maguey products are made, how the maguey is processed and all their parts are utilized. Nothing gets wasted, even the thorns of the maguey are used as needles and the flower is cooked and eaten with a delicious tortilla.

The work starts in the field by collecting the “pencas” (leaves) of maguey after it finishes the production of agua miel, honey water in English. Agua miel is the juice extract of the maguey’s heart called quiote or moyolotl, that becomes pulque when it ferments. The heart is also used as sweet desert. Once it is time to collect them (8 or 12 year old magueys), the pencas are carefully toasted on slow fire in order to soften the pulp. The maguey has only one flower during all it’s life and it is also a beautiful sight of more than 3 meters high.

The pencas rest for 8 days to make them easier to handle. Once they are dry, the pencas are put upon a piece of wood called in Nahuatl “tlazimalhuapaletl” and are scraped with a small piece of wood with metal encrusted called “tlaximaltetl” to free the ixtle fiber from the pulp. The ixtle is washed in water with natural soap, then it is left to dry and ready to be used.

The ixtle gets cleaned first…

Cleaning the Maguey Fibers