My adventure begins, as so many of my projects do, with an unplanned detour. On a quiet Sunday morning, just after sunrise, I found myself driving 45 minutes away from Puerto Vallarta, leaving behind the cobblestone streets, the cantinas, the rows of taco stands, and the early tourists walking the malecón.
My destination that morning was a first visit to the tianguis. In this sprawling, weekly pop-up market, hundreds of vendors fill the streets, transforming an ordinary Colonia into a busy, temporary shopping mecca, a cacophony of used goods. I wasn’t looking for a story. I wasn’t even looking for a bargain, though the tianguis is known for its piles of secondhand treasures. Instead, I was following curiosity, just as I always do when I have my camera with me. Over the years, I’ve learned to trust that curiosity, to stop where something catches my eye, and to stay a little longer when my gut says there’s more to see. Those instincts rarely lead me wrong.
The market stretched for blocks, in front of homes, shops, and doorways on every street. As a writer, I’ve learned to explore with all senses engaged, and that morning was no different. The smell of frying chicharrones, farm-fresh vegetables, and sweet churros was overpowering. Vendors shouted their prices backed up by banda music blasting from battered speakers. Everything imaginable was for sale: stacks of used clothing, mismatched shoes piled high, tools, toys, cooking pots, plumbing supplies, and bins of forgotten objects whose usefulness was a mystery.
I wandered slowly, camera in hand, soaking it all in. Then, at the farthest edge of it all—beyond the food stalls and the last tables piled with all sorts of items—I stopped.
What caught my eye first was a structure. What? A towering stack of deep, red adobe bricks was carefully arranged in a pattern so precise it reminded me of a miniature Mayan temple. Beside the stack was a makeshift shelter, more patchwork than house, cobbled together from mismatched wood, corrugated metal, and salvaged scraps. A pot of coffee was on a small grill outside, and a radio played loud music to no one in particular.
The scene was still, but not lifeless. It felt, somehow, like I had stepped into a pocket of time—slower, quieter, older than the busy market behind me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this place had a story, and I couldn’t leave until I understood it or at least had a lead to solve its mystery.
It took weeks of asking questions, first of vendors and locals, then of friends who had lived in Puerto Vallarta for years. What I discovered surprised me: the families in this Colonia were ladrilleros—adobe brickmakers—many of them carrying on the craft through three or even four generations. These bricks, I was told, were what I see in the buildings in old Puerto Vallarta. The bricks are the walls, floors and roofs of the houses, churches, and plazas before the city became a tourist hub.
Now, though, handmade adobe bricks are a relic. Developers prefer concrete blocks and poured concrete, which are faster, cheaper, and uniform. Only a handful of brickmaking families remain, scattered on the outskirts of town, clinging to a tradition that once sustained an entire economy.
One of those families belonged to Ramón Peña. Everyone calls him Charro, and as I would soon learn, his story—and the story of his family—was worth far more than the bricks they stacked.
I met Charro the way things often happen in Mexico: through a chain of several introductions, one person leading to another. I can’t even remember who first gave me his name. What I do remember is arriving at his brickyard one humid afternoon, shaking his hand, and feeling immediately that this was someone I wanted to know.
Charro has been making bricks nearly his whole life. He started when he was seven years old, learning the craft from his grandfather, who had moved to Las Mojoneras from the mountain town of Mascota nearly 70 years ago. Mascota was and still is a wonderful community tucked into the Sierra Madre, but Las Mojoneras offered opportunity: a growing city, better prices, and land to work. That decision became the foundation—literally and figuratively—of the Peña family’s life.
Today, Charro is a third-generation ladrillero. He lives in a bustling, multigenerational household with his wife, five children, their spouses, and several grandchildren. No one in the Peña family has ever considered leaving the Colonia. Their lives—work, meals, celebrations, struggles—are shared. His sons and even his eldest grandson have taken up the trade, working beside him in the same dusty yard, using many of the same tools and techniques their ancestors used.
For more than two years now, I’ve visited Ramón and his family almost every month, photographing their lives and their labor. Over time, I stopped feeling like a visitor with a camera and began feeling like a friend. They welcomed me not just into their yard, but into their lives—with visits to their home and too many text messages to count. Charro has taught me as much about resilience as he has about brickmaking.
The Peña family’s brickyard is as bare-bones as it gets. There are no machines, no permanent buildings, no paved roads. The kilns and many of the tools are handmade from salvaged materials—or from the bricks they shape and sell. Everything they do feels suspended in time.
The work is relentless. Clay-rich soil, water, and straw are mixed by hand and by foot until they form a heavy, pliable paste. The mixture is pressed into wooden molds, turned out to dry under the searing sun, and stacked into neat rows. Every two weeks, the family builds a temporary kiln from the raw bricks, sealing it with mud. Through the night, a fire fueled by scrap wood burns hot, baking the bricks into their final deep red. Someone—usually one of Charro’s sons—stays awake through the dark hours to keep the heat even. By dawn, the kiln is dismantled, the finished bricks cooled, stacked, and sold for 5–7 pesos each, about 25 cents.
It is exhausting, punishing work, done six days a week, through heat and rain alike. One of the family’s most reliable helpers is 73 years old, and his flexibility is extraordinary. Watching him work, I feel my own muscles ache just imagining it. There’s a rhythm to the labor, almost meditative, but it demands everything.
And now, all of it is under threat. The land they lease for the brickyard has been sold. Soon, it will be bulldozed to make way for condominiums and retail spaces, none of which will use a single handmade brick. When I visit, I can see the future closing in—the skeletons of new developments rising on the horizon. It feels as if gentrification itself is watching Charro work, waiting to claim his land and erase his trade.
Charro never rages against the change. He doesn’t curse the developers or the city. He simply shrugs and keeps making bricks. “I do this to take care of my family,” he tells me. “That’s what matters.”
What I found in Las Mojoneras was far more than a photo subject. Ramón Peña and his family have shown me the value of simplicity, the quiet dignity of work that much of the world has forgotten. With his patience for my awkward understanding of Spanish, I’ve learned about faith, perseverance, and the kind of strength that isn’t loud but endures, one brick at a time. We even discuss politics.
The Peña family doesn’t linger on what might be lost. They move forward, certain that life will unfold as it should. “Todo sale bien,” Ramón says. “Everything works out.” It isn’t blind optimism. There’s no blame. It’s a matter of survival, a wisdom passed down through generations of building—both with their hands and their spirits.
I am grateful for the detour that led me to them, and for the camera that gave me a reason to stay. What began as a casual visit to a market became a visit into the history, culture, and soul of a family—and a fading craft—that deserves to be remembered.
So I will keep following the roads that wind past the obvious, to the edges of towns and the end of the streets. Because, as I’ve learned, what waits at the end is always a surprise. More often, it’s something far richer: a story, a friendship, a glimpse of resilience that will stay with me long after the bricks have turned to dust.
