established his business in
Mexico to be close to areas
heavy in candelilla growth. In
these early years of candelilla
exploitation, the majority of
large factories were located in
Mexico but owned by
Americans. The largest of
these, in the Monterrey
Consular District, had an out-
put of some 650 pounds of
wax per day, representing
around 30,000 pounds of can-
delilla plants.
One of the earliest large
wax factories to be established
on the U.S. side of the border
was the factory at Glenn
Springs, begun in 1914 by
W.K. Ellis and C.D. Wood.
The presence of ample water
made for an ideal factory loca-
tion, and soon there were some
50 Mexican families living in a
thriving village there, with a
general store and complex sys-
tem of hoists, boilers, large pro-
duction vats and smokestacks.
Glenn Springs was the site
of the infamous attack by
Mexican raiders in 1916, when
in spite of the presence of U.S
Calvary troops, four people
were killed, several buildings
burned and the store looted.
Despite the ongoing tensions
along the U.S-Mexico border,
the operation continued until
the end of World War I.
Prior to the end of the war,
there were numerous large fac-
tories scattered throughout the
region. Ellis and Wood ran an
earlier operation at McKinney
Springs. The Lowe factory was
established in 1911 at Double
Mills south of Maravillas
Creek, where a large natural
water hole provided the means
of production. Near Lajitas,
the Fisher wax factory was in
full production in 1916. In
Fresno Canyon in Presidio
County, H.H. Harris and J.L.
Crawford ran a large produc-
tion facility.
After the war, the demand
for candelilla wax waned con-
siderably, and most of the
aforementioned
factories
closed or greatly reduced pro-
duction; yet, the product still
sold for between 12 and 20
cents per pound. In 1923 the
Fresno Canyon wax factory
alone shipped over $100,000
worth of wax. In the years after
the war, wax production revert-
ed to small roving camps of
wax workers, known as cereros
or candelilleros, who would
harvest the plant, extract the
wax and sell it to buyers for
large-scale refining.
Wax production in the Big
Bend continued throughout
the 1920s and 30s in spite of
the drop in demand and was
revitalized in the 1940s with
the advent of World War II.
Those wax entrepreneurs who
kept their operations flexible
stood to gain considerably dur-
ing this time.
One example of just such a
success story was that of Eulice
and Elba Adams. The
Adamses began producing wax
on their ranch late in the 1930s
and had up to 150 workers har-
vesting and processing candelil-
la at various times. During
World War II they produced as
much as 25,000 pounds of
unrefined wax per month. In
later years, Eulice’s son David
Adams added refining and
marketing to the family busi-
ness.
No efficient method of
mechanized harvesting or culti-
vation was ever employed suc-
cessfully for candelilla, and
even today the wild plant is
harvested by hand by cereros.
It takes approximately 50
pounds of the candelilla plant
to produce a single pound of
wax, and though the plant is a
perennial, which will re-grow
from its rootstock, it is general-
ly pulled out by the roots dur-
ing harvesting. Needless to say,
once an area has been exploit-
ed for wax production, it can
be a very long time before it
can be exploited again. This
means that cereros must con-
tinually travel farther and work
harder to maintain a steady
rate of income.
In the 1920s Mexican labor-
ers working for a large factory
such as that at Fresno Canyon
would earn $1.50 per ton of
candelilla harvested. In other
factories, workers would be
paid a dollar a day for their
labor.
In 1936, the Union de
Credito de Productores de la
Cera de Candelilla was formed
to help improve the lot of
cereros and their families. The
union, in concert with the
Banco Nacional de Comercio
Exterior, managed to pass an
export tax on candelilla wax in
1937, placing control of the
wax industries in the hands of
Mexican companies and great-
ly improving the working con-
ditions for wax workers.
While these efforts helped
those cereros in the legal wax
trade, it also opened up a num-
ber of smuggling operations in
the Big Bend region. U.S wax
refiners and retailers would pay
a pretty peso in cash for unre-
fined wax smuggled across the
Rio Grande, and tales abound
of clandestine nighttime meet-
ings between cereros and wax
buyers, including the story of
one nervous buyer who, dislik-
ing the idea of traveling with
20,000 pesos in cash, had it
sewed up in a bundle and
transported by a light plane.
When the transaction was
complete and the wax found
satisfactory, the buyer signaled
the plane to drop its load, and
buyer and sellers spent the rest
of the night searching for the
bundle on the rocky slope
where it had fallen.
When Lady Bird Johnson
made a visit to Big Bend
National Park in April of 1966,
she was taken on a float down
the river. Four Mexican nation-
als on the banks shouted greet-
ings to her and cheered as the
flotilla went by. The former
First Lady graciously returned
their greetings, never suspect-
ing that the men were conceal-
ing a pile of unrefined candelil-
la wax in burlap bags, ready to
smuggle across to a buyer.
The history of candelilla
wax production in the Big
Bend is ongoing, with transient
camps common throughout
the sparsely populated areas of
Northern Mexico. Though it
is an industry born barely a
century ago which thrived only
briefly before settling down
across our border, it remains an
example of the gains that can
be made through hard work
and ingenuity and the re -
sources hidden in plain sight
even in the harshest of environ-
ments.
Quilts
Etc.
by
Marguerite
Made in the Big Bend
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17