Postcards from the Chihuahua Border by Daniel D Arreola

Author:Daniel D Arreola [Arreola, Daniel D]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS025000 History / Latin America / Mexico, HIS036130 History / United States / State & Local / Southwest (az, Nm, Ok, Tx), PHO019000 Photography / Subjects & Themes / Regional (see Also Travel / Pictorials)
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2019-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

Distilleries and Breweries

Bourbon whiskey manufacture in Ciudad Juárez started in 1904 when an Arizonan recognizing the availability of local corn organized a small distillery. While Mexican product was able to undercut the price of the equivalent American spirit, El Pasoans apparently preferred the better-known brands regardless the added cost. When national Prohibition ensued, American spirit manufacturers and liquor distributors were given until January 16, 1920, to ship stocks out of the country. Kentucky distillers alone possessed an estimated thirty-nine million gallons of whiskey valued at $400 million and stored in warehouses. Two months following passage of the Volstead Act, some three thousand railroad cars awaited loading in Louisville and other distilling centers. Ciudad Juárez, proximate to the rail center of El Paso, proved to be one of the international locations where liquor could be shipped and stored. Over a two-week period in December 1919, U.S. customs officials at El Paso counted 741 barrels (one barrel equals fifty gallons, which equals two hundred quarts) and 5,507 cases of whiskey valued at close to $3 million ready for transshipment to Ciudad Juárez by truck and wagon.3

Merchants in Ciudad Juárez moved quickly to capitalize on the windfall of spirits being warehoused in the city, and several, such as Julian Gómez, Antonio Bermúdez, and Louis J. Morris, were said to have reaped fortunes in the new spirits trade and eventually became entrenched in the distillery business. The importation of liquor also made it possible for bars, cafés, and cabarets to open for business, and several Mexicans and Americans, such as Severe González, Harry Mitchell, and Jimmie O’Brien, launched establishments that proved especially lucrative.4

On January 15, 1922, just two years after Prohibition began in the United States, Juárez Brewery (Cervecería Juárez) opened on the southeast outskirts of Ciudad Juárez near the hipódromo (fig. 7.1). The $200,000 venture made use of El Paso Brewing equipment that was relocated to Juárez, where plant capacity soon exceeded sixty thousand barrels a year, twice the capacity of the former El Paso operation.5 Also, during the early 1920s, the original bourbon whiskey distillery that opened in Ciudad Juárez before Prohibition was sold to American Frank O. Mackey and a Mexican partner, Luis Dominguez, and infused with capital by Louis J. Morris, a naturalized Mexican citizen.6 The new operation was named D. M. Distilleries, and it boosted production from eighteen to forty barrels daily of what it called “Straight American” whiskey (fig. 7.2).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.