A long-tended dream is open for business

SANTA MARIA AYOQUEZCO, MEXICO —  The sweet music that drew tears Friday turned out to be the drone of machinery rather than the nortena band hired to play old favorites at the grand opening of a cactus processing plant here.

It took six years, $1.4 million and the collective determination of 160 local women to finally start the wheels turning at this factory, which is expected to can 20 tons of nopal for sale in California and possibly other states.

The idea is to make money selling the Mena brand nopal to expatriates who miss the tang of chopped Mexican cactus leaves in a vinegary marinade. But cofounder Catalina Sanchez said Friday that more was at stake for her and her partners.

If the business survives, there’s hope Mexicans can figure out how to keep some of their people home, she said. Sanchez and others came up with the idea after seeing husbands and sons leave home to seek jobs north of the border. They hope that other entrepreneurs will figure out how to create more local jobs with the potential for profits.

“This is celebration for us, a party,” said Sanchez, next to green and white balloons and tables of food and drinks that welcomed the state governor and other dignitaries. “I never lost faith, but imagine: It’s been six years of waiting. The first years were total uncertainty, sacrifice, fights with husbands.”

Nearly a quarter of a million dollars of investment money was saved from remittances sent home by family members working abroad. An additional $900,000 came from federal development funds, $230,000 from private foundations and $60,000 from the Oaxaca state government.

Mexico hopes to invest in similar enterprises with some of the more than $20 billion it receives each year from workers abroad.

But it’s a tough sell, given that many families need the money for such basics as food and clothing, or the TVs, radios and cellphones that pass for luxuries in many small towns.

The saving of money and the tending of cactus fields fell to Sanchez and other women left behind. “This is proof that it can be done, that women together know how to work,” said Odulia Avendano, 63.

Her colleague, Leovigilda Perez Cruz, said she started work on the project to bring home six grown children from the United States. “We hope this business brings everyone home,” she said, echoing the dream of many others at the party.

The Mena factory will employ 40 people. A conveyor belt passes the flat, oval cactus leaves through a machine that plucks the spiny needles. Workers cut the sheared leaves by hand into small squares for bottling farther down the assembly line.

Two hundred more people will gain work in the nopal fields, which are owned by the women and their families, and in transportation and distribution jobs.

“It’s been 12 years since I left for California, and I never intended to stay,” said Felix Cruz, who is seeking distribution outlets for the jars of nopal in Los Angeles, San Diego and Salinas. “I don’t want any more people from my town to have to go there. I hope they have a different destiny.”

sam.enriquez@latimes.com

Sanchez reported from Ayoquezco and Enriquez from Mexico City.