Eugenio Amézquita Velasco
Our birthday present from Metro News and Guanajuato Desconocido, for Don Toño
Translation: Metro News Mx
-Don Antonio Landín Valle is recognized as the ultimate authority on grafts and fruit trees in the region of Orduña de Abajo, Comonfort.
-The expert brought techniques from the United States that generated massive growth in the quality of the Guanajuato creole avocado.
-He relates that on the banks of the Laja River there were avocado plants with an estimated age of up to three hundred years of life.
-In his childhood, Orduña was a single street of adobe houses and dirt roads where time was measured by the bells of Mass.
-The creole avocado of the area stands out for unique varieties such as the butter one, with yellow flesh and exceptional flavors.
-Don Antonio remembers having seen trees so thick that two people were needed to be able to embrace the trunk completely.
-Before grocery stores, the community subsisted thanks to a natural orchard of magueyes, peaches, nopales, and prickly pears.
-The Mexican maguey was so productive that a single plant could deliver up to twelve liters of aguamiel in a single work day.
-Born in 1935, Landín witnessed the transformation of Celaya and San Miguel de Allende, which previously functioned with inns for donkeys.
-During the 40s, crossing to the United States cost barely 40 Mexican pesos, a trip that Don Antonio made on twenty occasions.
-In Texas, working for a Polish nurseryman, he learned to reproduce plants using recycled oil cans as pots.
-The master grafter developed his own technique, holding the scion with his mouth to speed up the manual tying process.
-He demystified rural beliefs such as burying dogs or putting lead into trees, demonstrating that the graft is the key to the fruit.
-He achieved the feat of creating a multi-citrus tree with 16 fruits, including tangerines, lemons, limes, and grapefruits on a single plant.
-His fame attracted more than two hundred agricultural engineers who came to his house to study his successful production methods.
The history of Orduña de Abajo cannot be told without mentioning the calloused hands and the brilliant mind of Don Antonio Landín Valle. This man, who as a child walked kilometers along dirt roads to get to Mass in Chamacuero, became the bridge between the ancestral tradition of creole avocados and modern technification. With the simplicity of someone who has crossed the Rio Grande forty times, Don Antonio relates how observation in the fields of Texas and his return to Guanajuato in 1961 unleashed an unprecedented boom in the quality of the region's fruit trees.
Don Antonio not only brought knowledge, but an amazing capacity for innovation. In an era where nursery bags did not exist, he recycled metal oil cans and designed tools to give life to thousands of plants. His mastery is such that he achieved what many considered impossible: grafting 30 different varieties on a single avocado branch and creating a citrus tree that produces 16 different fruits, earning the nickname of the Jumex tree. Despite the rural myths of burying animals or driving stakes, Landín demonstrated that the secret of agricultural success resides in meticulous care and the science of grafting.
Today, at 90 years old, his legacy lives in the orchards that cover the hill and the banks of the Laja River. His story is that of a peasant who, with pride, transformed the landscape of his village, attracting hundreds of agronomists from all over the state to learn from the one who learned to graft holding the scion with his mouth. Don Antonio Landín Valle continues to be the guardian of four-hundred-year-old trees that, thanks to his intervention, today show the vitality of a young plant.
The complete interview conducted with Don Antonio Landín, by the journalist Eugenio Amézquita Velasco
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
I am with Don Antonio Landín Valle. I want to point it out very clearly, for me he is quite an authority not only in the avocado orchards here in Comonfort and specifically in Orduña, in Orduña de Abajo, but also in this simplicity that you can observe and that we are here precisely in his house and that I want to thank him for the invitation and for allowing us to interview him. But he, like many from Comonfort, was in the United States, learned techniques and brought them to his village to apply them and that generated, I say it and if not they will refute me, a kind of boom in the matter, in the matter of quality of products from the field, specifically fruit trees. Don Antonio, thank you very much for receiving me here in your house and you were telling me, Don Antonio, that plants already existed here in Comonfort that possibly had up to three hundred years of antiquity. Yes, where were these plants located?
Antonio Landín Valle:
These plants were, they were on the edge of the river, that is, on the bank of the Laja River. Well, look, we here Orduña, at that time Orduña I knew it as the congregation of Orduña and we are where my grandfather lived, who was the first from here who lived starting the ranch. We were more or less four kilometers from the head, that is from the municipality. Because when on Sundays we went to Mass, there was first Mass at five in the morning, we got up early and at five in the morning we were ready. When they gave the first bell let's go walking to Comonfort and when they gave us the second on the way, the last one entering the parish, here to the parish of San Francisco de Comonfort. At that time they called it Chamacuero. It means that Chamacuero. That is why I tell you that the congregation of Orduña covers five kilometers, it was a single street. The houses were made of adobe at that time, there was not one of material.
But yes, there were already avocados all along the bank of the river and big plants, big plants that barely I think between two we embraced the trunk because there were plants, I still got to see plants, not all because there were many medium, thin, but the thick ones I got to see one in this in Rinconcillo that is here a bit ahead, which belongs to Comonfort, that in a single cut they cut thirty boxes more or less of twenty-one, twenty-two kilos and of creole. Of creole here in Orduña we had pure creole, there was no other. But among the creole there were bitter ones, there were bony ones, fibrous ones and why not say it?, of milk and of water and yellow flesh of butter. Aha, then when we started, that is that I when I had the use of reason my father already planted like that nursery of avocado and peach plants because there was much peach here, much. All this stretch was what nopaleras, there were of many classes of tuna. The one that was there most was we name it here pelona, there are of two classes and we had large apastillada, small apastillada, white peach, yellow peach, prisco and of red bone.
So here it means that when I had use of reason all this place was, there was much to eat, it was an orchard. There was a magueyada, very big magueyada of pure Mexican maguey. There was one or another jilote and verde only, of those three classes there were. And as I was telling you, I don't know if already that you have noted it, but here in Orduña all the houses were of adobe and the road of earth, of dirt road. And in that time let's say, no, here in the ranch not a single candy was sold. There were no stores, not one grocery store, nothing nothing nothing, nor anyone who sold candies let's say. Then what there was already since that time were three pulquerías because there was much maguey. Look, I knew the Mexican maguey that in one extraction, because the maguey you extract the aguamiel in the morning, at midday and in the afternoon, three times you extract the aguamiel. And what do you believe? They had a huge bowl like this that in one extraction they gave a pitcher of aguamiel of twelve liters.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Hold on a bit Don Antonio, we are going to a break and we return to this talk that not only is about the theme of the avocado but also much of the history of the mid-twentieth century of Orduña de Abajo here in the municipality of Comonfort. Don't go away, I am Eugenio Amézquita and this is Guanajuato Desconocido.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Well then we are back and follow me commenting let's see these huge bowls of aguamiel of those where they extracted the Mexican maguey.
Antonio Landín Valle:
Yes I was telling you that they were some very big magueyes, sorry. And each extraction they extracted twelve liters from the magueyes. In that time I had some uncles who sold my mother magueyes and they gave them to her at fifty pesos.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
What was your mother's name?
Antonio Landín Valle:
My mother was Remedios Valle and her father Reyes Landín. Look, that is why I was going to present myself, well now I am going to present myself. I am Antonio Landín Valle.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
What age do you have Don Antonio?
Antonio Landín Valle:
I was born on the twenty-first of December of nineteen thirty-five. Nothing more. And that's why I talk to you that I knew many things. I knew that both Celaya as well as San Miguel de Allende didn't have baths, they were inns. They were inns to tie up donkeys and horses and there they gave them to eat. He who wanted more paid more. What now are parking lots.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
I wanted to ask you something, I don't want to get out of the theme but it is something of the core about the theme of the avocado. You went to work to the United States.
Antonio Landín Valle:
Yes.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Where exactly did you go to work?
Antonio Landín Valle:
Look, I went many times, I went, I have much history, I would need to talk to you from the beginning but right now we are going to skip. Yes, I went in nineteen, it would be in the years forty, forty-eight. But for us like going to the United States was like going to Comonfort in that time. With forty pesos one arrived there, one jumped to the Rio Grande and still one had about twelve Mexican pesos left over. Look at that. And then, in that time there were passenger trains, two passed, one at one forty-five for the north and one returned at two, two or two fifteen, because then they found each other here in Rinconcillo or in Comonfort. So they were two passengers by day and two by night. And the first time I went, I went with my father and with other uncles and we arrived at Alamo, Texas, and it's near the river. There we picked cotton. Then we lasted three months and the cotton ended. We came and then in the feast of the Remedios, that is in November, I went again with some cousins and we were there in, ah caray, I got mixed up.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Don't mind, don't mind.
Antonio Landín Valle:
Look, is that the first time we went in November. Already we went in November, we were there December, January, February and March. And in March we came already. And already after I went in June, that to pick cotton also to Alamo. Yes, to Alamo. To Alamo I went three times because I went twenty times look, wet. That Rio Grande I think I crossed it at least some thirty, but I think they were like forty times that I crossed it. Anciently they said it was the Rio Bravo. The Rio Bravo was this one from here of Orduña, the one of the Laja River, because that one rose, filled up and entered the orchards and it was when we liked to enter to bathe when it brought water.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Well, don't go away. I follow with this talk with Don Antonio Landín Valle, one of the pioneers of the already more technified cultivation, if I can say it, of avocado and of other plants and of citrus also here in the zone of Comonfort in Orduña de Abajo. Don't go away, I am Eugenio Amézquita and this is Guanajuato Desconocido.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Well we are back with Don Antonio Landín Valle. I can say it with all clarity, quite an expert in grafts, in work with avocados and fruit trees here in the zone of Orduña de Abajo. And he is commenting to me that in the time that he went to the United States he arrived to work at a place where there was a Pole. He was the owner of that place.
Antonio Landín Valle:
Yes.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
You don't remember his name?
Antonio Landín Valle:
No, I don't remember his name.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
What did they do in that place? What was it that he, in what he specialized, in what he worked?
Antonio Landín Valle:
He had a nursery and there we worked in that nursery. There we taught ourselves to reproduce all type of fruit, forest and ornament.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
All by graft?
Antonio Landín Valle:
We started to make, let's say, the... I don't know from where they would make the plants, but the boss brought them and there already only we transplanted them. Because in that time not even in the United States was there bag. Then what we did was to go to the gas stations and we brought ourselves about twenty boxes of quart oil cans. You see that before the oil was sold by the quart and in metal cans. Then we sharpened them and they lit the matches so that the boxes would burn, so that all the oil would burn. And then we holed them, they made the three holes and we took the lid from the top off. The boss had a little machine, and never I brought myself one of those, but he had it on a post and only we gave turns like this, look, and already it opened it, it took the lid off the can. And below with an opener of those of sodas they made three holes to the cans to there transplant all the plant that he brought us. Because sometimes he brought us about a thousand of hibiscus, of papaya, of mango, of all, and there we transplanted them ourselves. And there he had even plants of banana, of papaya, already big plants giving, only that when the frosts fell they were finished.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Well yes, they burned.
Antonio Landín Valle:
Then working, I worked four years with that boss that I went and came. As I was telling you, I went many times, sometimes you won't believe it, but sometimes I worked fifteen days and I went to the cinema. And already I knew that upon leaving the cinema they were going to grab me, the police were going to grab me because there were those of the border patrol. They locked me up, that night they locked me up, they threw me to the Reynosa bridge. And if I brought those of two weeks, well there I came to my village, I came here. I was a week here pouring beer, my money finished, I only kept for the fare and let's go again over there.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Well yes, boy.
Antonio Landín Valle:
Well yes, I was a... how should I tell you? I smoked, I drank beer and well. Is that what I haven't told you is that I was born in Orduña but here I spent it until the age of twelve years taking care of... well, from five years I started to take care in the hill. And after that, at the age of twelve was when already I went for the north. And when I returned already I didn't stay here, but that I stayed with my grandparents there in Comonfort. As if there I spent now indeed already the youth in Comonfort. That's why when I was there with the boss, then sometimes he ran out of plant and said: Let's go for plant. We went to Harlingen or to Brownsville and there in Brownsville was where I saw how they grafted the orange tree, because all Texas, if you knew of Texas, was pure orange tree.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Don't leave me, wait. We follow in this interview through Guanajuato Desconocido with Antonio Landín Valle. I am Eugenio Amézquita, don't go away.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
We are returning again to the interview with Don Antonio Landín Valle and I reiterate it, one for me and for many one of the experts in grafts here in the zone of Orduña and in Comonfort. We were commenting in the final part of the other segment that it was precisely in some orange groves in the state of Texas where you observed and knew how the grafts were made.
Antonio Landín Valle:
Yes, when we went to Brownsville I tell you that there in that nursery one was grafting some orange trees and I said, ah caray. And as we went ourselves to bring this bougainvilleas, and as they were big bougainvilleas, I think I passed like some sixty times turn and turn and each that I passed I looked and that's how it stayed. But it didn't pass until when I married in sixty-one, I married the twentieth of November of sixty-one. Then in that time here a worker like me, because I was a peasant and I am a peasant, so it is and with much pride, in that time they paid us five pesos a day from seven to three. And there was work with my uncles because they had orchards. In that time already let's say, already when I married already all my uncles had orchards and already it wasn't as I told you before that only on the edge of the river. Then they started to put for this direction, for the side of the hill. Orchards had an aunt who had six hectares, had another aunt who had one hectare, another uncle had like another hectare, my brother had another hectare and so they started, it started to fill with avocado. And then I started to work, as I tell you I married the twentieth of November of sixty-one. Don't mind, don't mind, this for our followers that is very understandable.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Well and then already in the orchards of your uncles you started to work.
Antonio Landín Valle:
I started to work and earned five pesos. And already married, already with a woman, I said caray, well this... Then instead of working by day I told my aunt, that I worked with my aunt Catalina Landín Cruz Blanca, that she give me tasks. And she gave me tasks and I threw myself three tasks to weed and gather the trash and well already I didn't earn five pesos but that I earned fifteen. Then one day being talking there came because look, here in this region there was a cousin, a second cousin who had gone to Cuernavaca and that man was named Guadalupe Valle. And that according to that he went to work with some monks and those monks had of all the varieties of avocado there in Cuernavaca. And that cousin came and grafted an orchard for him, some twenty plants to a neighbor here. And as he came and grafted them for them and went, as he worked over there, not a single graft took for him.
Because the secret of the grafts is not so much the work, but that you have to be taking care of them. Because you graft an avocado plant and the first thing that comes out are sprouts of the same plant and those sprouts you have to remove them because if not they take the strength from the graft and they dry it. Then that's how it stayed and I thought, I say well, I saw how they grafted over there. And I grafted an avocado plant of corona that I had put about three weeks ago I grafted it and not a single graft took for me. Then I saw from some little sprouts, well in the sprout I put grafts. We could say that almost we took it here from our head because I held the scion with the mouth while I tied it. And I tied them and what do you believe, that two grafts that I put took for me.
They took for me and they were more or less this big. And one day being a cousin and the man that they had grafted talking that his grafts that they crushed his plants and that not a single graft took for him, and he said to him: How come for me they did take? Really you know? Well look, let's go see them. Well let's go see them. Already I passed them to my house, I had a little orchard in that which my mother had given me, ten meters. There I made my house and in that land were three big avocado plants, only there were three plants but I started to plant more. And in those that I planted were those grafts and already I showed them to them, well still they were tied. So it passed like at three days that I went to see my grafts because for me it was a novelty, what damned grafts!, already they were broken. They grabbed them like this look, and they did like this.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
In other words, and with malice?
Antonio Landín Valle:
Yes.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Don't go away, I am with Don Antonio Landín. We are in this interview through Guanajuato Desconocido. I am Eugenio Amézquita.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
And well, did you realize at least who broke those grafts?
Antonio Landín Valle:
No, never I knew. But if it was an idle hand, right? A bad hand there. No, I thought, I said maybe they were... already my kids were biggish and, well, they were little kids rather, and I said maybe there it was them. Let's think kindly that it was the children. But I say, so it stayed. But I said, well, I had the fault. Then now I am going to dedicate myself to graft.
I set myself to graft. What do you believe I did? We had a big plant, they had... well, I had an orchard because, well I don't know, but they started giving me orchards on halves. And that orchard was of my grandfather and it had a big plant, it had a branch lying down like this and it went up over there, but here as it was on its side many sprouts came out for it here, all this stretch. That I put thirty avocados of different plants on it, that is, thirty different grafts of different avocados, that all are creole, yes, but they were different.
And already when I had them ready, I said well no, well now indeed. That man realized the one that I tell you that came as an altar boy and he said to me: Truly that you indeed know how to graft, he says, at how much you graft for me? I have two hundred plants in bag. Well I graft them for you at five pesos. Like that it came out from me. And five pesos was what one earned a day. And he says: Well graft them for me. Ah, and they are two hundred, geez, ten thousand pesos, no? What? Two hundred... one thousand pesos. Yes, one thousand pesos. And I went and I grafted them for him. In two days I grafted them for him. And as well after people started to occupy me and I started and passed through there that... well, who knows and you may have known him, he was Don Enrique Cuello and he had his orchard here a bit ahead of Virela. And I, hunter, through there I passed. So when I passed, well I reviewed the grafts how they were going and I was attentive of the grafts. Of those two hundred plants that I grafted for him some ten grafts dried up, but then as I saw them that already they were sad, right away I replaced them for him. So when he came, his plants for all the graft took.
And the following year he said to me: It is good that you graft for me, now I have five hundred but don't graft them for me at five. He says: I am going to pay you at three. He says: Why do you believe Coke is sold? Because they do propaganda for it. I am going to send you all the members of the cooperative to graft for them. And yes he fulfilled it. Look, why do you believe Coke is sold? For publicity. No well for me it started to rain work from one side and another, blessed God, and I grafted for any Tom, Dick and Harry and then well all wanted grafts because they saw the quality of the final product. And after that people started to realize, well I don't know, but I think that more than two hundred agricultural engineers came to visit me. On Sunday I had some five cars stopped, we lived down there.
But well I don't know what, but here in the state of Guanajuato there were no more grafters than that cousin who was over there in Cuernavaca and I who here was. Now indeed at the foot of the cannon I started to graft for everyone. We grafted in Salamanca to Doctor Jiménez, there we made an orchard for him. But also I am going to tell you that in that orchard where I tell you that I put the thirty grafts in a single tree, also there we made a plant, right Toño? A plant of citrus that we put...
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
But wait for me, of that one I want that you talk to me in special in the following segment because that one they say that it was the Jumex tree. Don't go away, I am Eugenio Amézquita and we are in Guanajuato Desconocido.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Well then in the last segment we were talking about a Jumex tree because that's how I knew it, that's how they told me that there existed this, a citrus. Well, it had a heap of citrus, but let's see, how was that? And then a secret that it has around there, here it is going to be discovered. Go ahead Don Tonio.
Antonio Landín Valle:
Look, to a plant of sour orange we put of four classes of tangerine, we put of four classes of sour lemon, we put sweet lime, sour lime, we put white grapefruit and pink grapefruit; total that they were sixteen types of fruit what gave of citrus the citrus of a tree of sour orange. Yes, and then I indeed said to them when I showed them that one: This indeed is the Jumex tree, the one they announce here, because it had different citrus.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Well now, what is the secret? I know very well one of your sons to whom I have respect and above all I have come out in defense of him, that I say loud and soft because to a teacher the best he has is his good name. I respect very much the teacher, your son Antonio, Prof. Antonio Landín Moya, and I know that also he is one of the experts in matter of grafts in the region. You told me that he has a secret but that you are going to tell it to me. Let's see, how is that Don Toño?
Antonio Landín Valle:
No well is that I say, through the works that we did many secrets came out because I am going to talk to you this. As my grandfather Cecilio had two avocado orchards, but among those avocado orchards there were plants that didn't give and big ones. Or yes they gave, but some two, three avocados, imagine. It had an avocado plant that didn't embrace it, I believe barely between two they embraced it. And that plant was for it to give thirty boxes of avocado, but it only gave like three boxes and it didn't tie. Yes it flowered, it filled with flower but it didn't tie. That we had here only us, many people had plants that didn't give. Then in that time they said: No well that plant that doesn't give, put lead in it. They grabbed it with gunshots to put lead in it. That nail ocote stakes in it, they nailed ocote stakes in it. That nail track spikes in it, well nail track spikes in it. Well yes they put them in but no, the plant continued the same. And they told my grandfather: Bury a dead dog in the foot. The last thing my grandfather told me: Cut for me the mother root and you will see that like that indeed it will give for them, that they had told him that. And he sent us to that huge plant that I tell you that was that thick, and we dug it like three meters on one side and we got under. Well which he told him which would be the mother root, and the avocado gives the roots like that to find it, well here it is under the plant. We only read like a trunk like that but as if it were there only and the roots were like that. Well I said, that was the mother root, we cut it but the plant continued the same. And nevertheless we indeed knew how, I casually took it out, but that one I tell you later.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Well, then we leave in the following segment.
Antonio Landín Valle:
Then, I was not telling you that there in the orchard where he gave inheritance to Antonio there was a plant like that. And as I was telling you, as they told the priest, you know how many years it would have? Because that avocado plant was all holed. There lived tlacuaches, onzas, weasels; a nest. They ran through all the branches, it was holed through all the branches. It was like that and I already didn't want to climb, but better I climbed the boys so they cut the avocado, but I said, one day a branch is going to break and a boy is going to get spoiled. Then what I did was, better grafted. We cut it of that size and well, what would be the surprise? Well it was all all dry, already only on one side it had green. And I put grafts into all but only three grafts took. Three grafts, and then well time passed and there is that plant. The three grafts grew but already it is not a plant as I told you of the trunk like that, but that already it is another plant that is I believe thus of thick. But it is a plant that is thus of thick already, but as if it comes from the ground and goes up, but already the shell that it had already is not seen, there is nothing. But from there it pulled. In other words that it is the same old plant, but that plant must have its four hundred years, but there it is. And anyone who sees it will say that it will have a hundred years or less.
Eugenio Amézquita Velasco:
Don't go away, I am Eugenio Amézquita. We are in Guanajuato Desconocido with Don Antonio Landín, one of the best, perhaps I would say of the first grafters here in the zone of Orduña de Abajo, in the municipality of Comonfort.
