The Women Reshaping Mexico’s Bars

When Claudia Cabrera established Mexico City’s first all-woman bar team at Kaito del Valle in 2016, most women bartenders in the country weren’t exactly valued for their mixology skills. “At that moment, in Mexico, you could find women working in bars, but usually it was a way to bring in more men and get them to drink more,” says Eli Martínez Bello, co-owner of Tlecān Mezcaleria in the Roma Norte barrio of Mexico City. “It was very sexist and, I think, very sad. Claudia Cabrera changed that.”

In the few fleeting years since Cabrera flipped the script, there’s been a small explosion of women-led bar projects in Mexico—and not all of them in the relatively cosmopolitan and progressive haven that is downtown Mexico City. Some have concentrated on creating queer-friendly and safe spaces, and many also focus on sustainability and/or the revival of ancestral drinks and indigenous ingredients. Just by virtue of existing, though, female-centric bars help promote women in a country where women drinking—let alone working—in a bar is still sometimes regarded as taboo.

“It can still be hard for me to find girls to work in bars, except at Kaito,” says Cabrera, who also runs the bar program at Sod Cocktail bar in the La Condesa neighborhood. “I think sometimes women don’t feel as safe as they would in a fully female-staffed place because, if an assault happens, legally speaking, it doesn’t usually get taken seriously.”

Biased legal systems, gender violence, and restrictive abortion laws aren’t unique to any one country. In Mexico, concerns that femicide rates would increase during the pandemic helped spark what Tlecān’s Martínez Bello calls an “awakening.” Activism is on the rise. In fact, the day after we spoke earlier this year, a 180,000-strong International Women’s Day demonstration shut down large parts of Centro Histórico.

All the cultural institutions that perpetuate machismo are being seen through a new lens, including the country’s cantinas, many of which didn’t admit women until the 1980s. In some regions, women still aren’t welcome at the cantina. “Most of those bars weren’t safe spaces for anyone, though,” explains Martínez Bello, who, formerly, was head bartender at the award-winning restaurant Pujol. “If people get drunk at the cantina, they throw them out. But when people get drunk, it’s actually the fault of the bar.”

Tlecān Mezcaleria is her answer to those bars. Instead of gleaming bottles of imported European and American spirits behind the wood, the bar pays homage to ancestral Mexican food and drink. Save for the occasional splash of Campari in a cocktail, there are no brands. Distillates are listed by region, plant species, harvest date, and the name of the maestra/maestro. No- and low-alcohol fermentations, such as tejuino, pulque, and tascalate (corn, aguamiel, and chocolate, respectively) are on offer, both in concoctions and on their own, since caring for guests’ well-being is the hallmark of hospitality to Martínez Bello.

At nearby Café de Nadie, a women-led cocktail and listening bar, creating a safe space and sourcing locally are also key pillars. There, Mapo Molano forges relationships with farmers from Xochimilco, an area south of the city devoted to building a sustainable food system. A short walk from there is Bar Las Brujas (witches), where members of the all-woman team make cocktails inspired by las curanderas—female shamans who made traditional medicine, often by infusing alcohol with herbs. “If I was sick, to cure me, my mother or grandmother would give me chamomile, ginger, or different teas for cough or tummy,” says Leslie Hernandez, a bartender at Brujas. “And if I misbehaved, they gave me a bitter tea with wormwood. And now I make cocktails with it.”

The tradition of la curandera is also the inspiration for Condesa Gin, founded by maestra destiladora Hillhamn Salome, who uses ceremonial and medicinal herbs, such as myrrh, sage, and palo santo as botanicals for her small-batch gin. Unsurprisingly, it’s a gin that makes its way onto many lists at these groundbreaking bars, including Oaxaca’s Selva, where co-founder and beverage director Alexandra Purcaru showcases many spirits made by women.

And in San Miguel de Allende, Fabiola Padilla has made an art out of sourcing nearly everything for her bar, Bekeb, from female producers—and, whenever possible, locally. “Every day, I go to the mercado and talk to the girls and the old ladies and make recipes out of their ingredients,” she explains. “I want to build this big community where everyone is winning and making some money. Not a lot of money, but we’re working on this and making sure every cocktail is based on that idea.”

Padilla also relies on modifiers such as fino sherry and vermouth for a few cocktails, but her wildly original drinks are based on indigenous ingredients—pumpkin or xoconostle (prickly pear), for example, which are then mixed with Mexican spirits. Casa Dragones tequila, made by San Miguel’s own Bertha González Nieves, is well represented on the menu, as are less well-known women-owned brands, such as Eterno Embrujo raicilla. And some of the pulque is fermented in-house, sometimes from aguamiel that Padilla herself extracts from the plants at Rancho del Sol Dorado, because she is, well, a badass.

Given all this, it looks as if the future really might be feminista. There’s still plenty of machismo to deal with, though. “Even now, we are breaking the rules,” says Padilla, who attended law school and then took an internship at the United Nations in New York City before she started tending bar in Manhattan. “I am from a very small town, and everyone was talking badly about me when they learned I was working as a bartender in New York. You need to be prepared for that kind of thinking, especially from your hometown.”

Much of that negative thinking has subsided now that Padilla has garnered global recognition. The tide is also turning in her new hometown, San Miguel, where, until recently, men had a monopoly on the bars and, at first, dismissed women entrepreneurs. “They said we were just silly girls,” says Padilla. “And now they’re like, ‘Oh, they’re taking over.’ And they’re right. All the girls that are doing something interesting in the spirit world, in this industry, we are doing something great. We are getting together.”