A Legacy of Betrayal: the hidden truth of the Sembras Family
There is a stretch of river that runs the length of the central Chiapas Depression that shimmers a little brighter than you’re used to. The banks of the Grijalva were once home to a diverse ecosystem of flora and fauna, and sheltered within the dense wildlife lies the only entrance to the original site of the famous Sembras Family Distillery. Miles from the current site that is visited by thousands of tourists weekly hoping to pay respects to the beloved ancestral site, the once-vibrant village sits idle in ruins, and keeps a secret no one talks about.
The first barrel of tequila celebrated by the Sembras family and friends was uncorked in the spring of 1803. Mateo Sembras had cracked the code in the first batch. He praised the rains and the love from his community, but he had some additional help. His father had passed down his own words of wisdom, after spending a lifetime studying the land — that land of course passed on to Mateo as well shortly after his fathers passing — in the form of detailed diagrams and notes in a journal he kept secure on his person at all times. The journal was by no means a secret itself. The language found within was a hybrid of local dialects from transcribed interviews and his father’s own scribbled handwriting. The numbers and tables were carefully, but somehow casually, scripted amongst the drawings of agave and hog-nosed skunks. Yes it was not a secret journal, but it was also gibberish. That is, it appeared gibberish to everyone but Mateo.
The story held within the journal was a recipe for success. Mateo’s family had always been farmers, but business and trade were a hard equation to solve in those days. The way Mateo saw it, his father spent a lifetime deciphering a code for the next generation of Sembras. A sacrifice that is not lost on Mateo and his family. It was packed with meaning and emotion, just as it was packed with tangible information on how to brew the perfect spirits. Mateo’s father set him up for success, which is why he felt so proud that one day he would be able to pass it on to his own sons, Marco and Rodrigo. The book of Remedios, as they called it, was in many ways the glue that held la familia Sembras together.
Marco and Rodrigo, appropriately referred to as los hermanos Sembras, were twins — but despite looking exactly the same, these two brothers could not have been more different. Sure they were like every other brother dynamic we are used to hearing about (read: contentious and problematic), but these boys had a rivalry that lasted well into their adult life. Their mother died when they were very young, so Mateo did the best he could to raise the two on his own while still evolving his business — a business that by the time the boys were young adults, was thriving and supporting a new lifestyle for the Sembras family. Mateo involved his twin sons early on in the distillery operations; he wanted them to learn young and master the techniques for when they became the directors of the business themselves. They grew to monopolize the spirit game in the area, so the competition wasn’t even much of a concern. However, the competition between the Sembras brothers grew hard and fast as Marco and Rodrigo constantly tried to outdo one another in wild acts of one-upmanship. They wanted to prove themselves to their father, and of course felt they had to compete like any other brothers would for attention and praise. But the two boys brought their activity to such a level that Mateo eventually banned the two from the premises, and ultimately found the two leaving the community all together, not to be heard from again…not until their fathers death more than a decade later.
When Marco and Rodrigo gathered together from their separate lives to mourn their father’s passing, the rivalry between the two seemed to have faded into a mutual respect and understanding. They both moved on to start families and run their own farms, and made a decent living despite being cut from the family operations under Mateo’s watch. Middle-aged and sun-drained, the two rekindled their love for one another and brought their families together to join forces and run their family farms together. After all, Marco had strengths that Rodrigo didn’t, and vice versa. Marco had a problem with patience, that was always true, and Rodrigo was close to blind. Rodrigo still had his brilliantly-bright glass eye that they put in after the old accident caused by Marco in the fields all those years ago at their father’s farm. Even after all this time, the glass shone as strong as a prism, to the point of needing to cover it on weathered days. They both appeared to need each other, and formed a seemingly-great union.
It wasn’t until much later that a delivery came to them on their new farm, it was the long-forgotten book of Remedios, left to the two of them from their father. Stunned and delighted, the brothers used the book to reminisce over some of their father’s old tequila. As the night progressed, and the drinking evolved, the brothers became more and more determined to take the book for themselves, thinking it was the way out they needed to be on their own again and get rich. After a game of cards turned into bickering, they settled on the best way to determine who would get possession of the journal. A drinking contest.
The two brothers, now surrounded by friends cheering them on in the shared field barn, drank until the sun came up. Marco and Rodrigo took turns taking shots of tequila, until Marco passed out on the ground. Drunk and overjoyed, Rodrigo took the book as his prize and left to go home to his wife and kids and pass out in his bed after an exhausting night of games and gambling. But alone in the fields off the broken path from the farm, Marco suddenly jumped Rodrigo and started an intoxicated fist fight that would last mere minutes, ending abruptly after Rodrigo fell and hit his head on the rocks hidden in the brush. Shocked and confused, Marco panicked and took his brother's body to the river and dumped him quickly into the raging waters. He then took the book, donned an eyepatch to cover the same eye Rodrigo would sometimes cover to shield others from his glass eye, and went home in his new persona: his twin brother.
After a complicated cover-up resulting in his and his brother's families leaving town, Marco—now posing as Rodrigo—explained how Marco died from alcohol poisoning and took control of both families’ operations. He renamed the business Sembras Family Distillery to honor his lost brother and now-passed father, moved to a new location leaving all traces of his old self behind, and began his new life as Rodrigo Sembras, now with a recipe book for total market domination.
Some say when you overlook the Grijalva river today, you can still sometimes catch a glimmer floating downstream from the glass in the eye of the real Rodrigo Sembras.
