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The Small Bottlers Mexican Bottling Works, Gallegos Bros. Bottling Works, and Their Bottles
Mexican Bottling Works (1915-1917)
Carlos Gallegos Medina & Company (1916)
La Mexicana (Mexican Bottling Works) (1917)
Two surviving bottles link the three listings (Gallegos Brothers Bottling Works, Carlos Gallegos Medina & Company, and La Mexicana) as a single company. The first bottle (see Chapter 12b - Bottles of El Paso's Small Bottlers) contains both the company name (La Mexicana) and the proprietors (Gallegos Medina Hermanos). The second bottle was used after Torres Saldaña took control and Anglicized the name to Mexican Bottling Works. Although the management was clearly unstable (by 1917, the Gallegos Medina brothers were gone), the firm lasted at least three years before Torres Saldaña moved. Manuel Torres Saldaña (from the Memoirs
of Enriqueta Torres Quihuis, daughter of Manuel Torres Saldaña)
Torres Saldaña's once-wealthy family
had an extensive history in Mexico and were pioneers who brought cattle
from Argentina to Veracruz, Mexico, in the early 18th century. One
of his uncles was a former governor of Durango. Prior to the Mexican
Revolution, Torres Saldaña had traveled quite a bit in southern
Mexico. An educated man, Manuel worked for the government.
It was during this period when he met Guadalupe Najera Briones who worked
at a post office. Manuel had eyes for three women at the time and
considered all three as prospective brides. He proposed to the closest
one first, and was wed to Guadalupe, his first cousin, on February 7, 1907,
in Topia, the place of her birth. Born on July 11, 1885, Guadalupe
was ten years younger than her husband, and the couple made an ideal match
as their marriage lasted at least 18 years.
The couple moved north to Chihuahua in an attempt
to avoid the bloodshed of the revolution and there their daughter, Enriqueta,
was born on December 5, 1910. After two of Torres Saldaña's uncles
were killed by Pancho Villa's raiders, the family migrated from the revolution-wracked
country to the United States on December 18, 1912. Along with many
others fleeing the revolution's destruction, the Torres Saldaña
family passed through Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, Texas, and began
the naturalization process to achieve US citizenship. Two more daughters,
Emma Antonia (born October 19, 1913) and Refugio "Cuca" (born July 4, 1915)
soon followed.
Torres Saldaña bought the Mexican Bottling
Works in El Paso and renamed it Lone Star Bottling Works before selling
out and moving to Calexico, California, in 1918. There he opened
a Tortilla shop called El Metate and later went back into the soda business
with Gay-Ola Bottling Works in Mexicali, Mexico [although Enriqueta remembered
the plant as being in Mexicali, Torres Saldaña's business card located
it in Calexico]. Finally tiring of running two businesses, Manuel
sold them both and the family moved to Hurley, New Mexico, where Mama Chonita
ran a restaurant for miners. By 1923, the family was back in El Paso
for a year and then was off to Miami, Arizona, where Manuel opened another
restaurant for miners, this one called El Original Chile Colorado.
When Enriqueta fell in love with a boy her father did not approve of, Manuel
closed the restaurant and again moved the family–this time to Phoenix where
he opened a tortilleria that he called El Metate (named after his shop
in Calexico). The shop was on 5th and Madison, and business was great.
After a move to 4th and Jefferson, Manuel renamed the shop EL Superior
Tortillas and Tamales, and the local people soon called him el viejo del
mitote (old man trouble maker).
Enriqueta remembered:
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