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\n Endangered barrel cactuses known as biznaga are seen growing inside the botanical gardens of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City.<\/p>\n
Rebecca Blackwell\/AP<\/p>\n
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Rebecca Blackwell\/AP<\/p>\n
MEXICO CITY \u2014 Even though it’s illegal, bars of acitr\u00f3n are stacked in nearly every stall at the Merced market in Mexico City.<\/p>\n
They look like lemon bars. But they’re pieces of barrel cactus that have been chopped up and then seeped in vats of sugar until they’re crystalized.<\/p>\n
Edith Hern\u00e1ndez Torres, who runs a shop here, wraps hers in cellophane. She says acitr\u00f3n is special, that it tastes nothing like the candied lemon or sweet potato or the pineapple she also sells.<\/p>\n
“It has a chewy texture,” she says, “like something roasted.”<\/p>\n The Mexican government began banning the sale of acitr\u00f3n in the early 2000s. That’s when they found that the biznaga cactus \u2014 a species of barrel cactus \u2014 was in danger of extinction due to overexploitation.<\/p>\n \n Acitr\u00f3n on sale at a stall in Merced market in Mexico City.<\/p>\n Eyder Peralta\/NPR<\/p>\n hide caption\n <\/p>\n toggle caption<\/p>\n Eyder Peralta\/NPR<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez knows acitr\u00f3n is illegal, but her customers demand it. When NPR asks if she doesn’t feel bad about selling something that’s going extinct, she shrugs.<\/p>\n “Our whole planet is going extinct,” she said.<\/p>\n As she speaks, Mar\u00eda Julia Gutiette picks up a bar of acitr\u00f3n. She does it gently, like she’s picking up a bar of gold.<\/p>\n Her husband and this nation were born on the same day: Sept. 16. So, every year, Gutiette buys the pears, the peaches, the pink pine nuts and the acitr\u00f3n to make the make chiles en nogada<\/a>, a traditional dish that is eaten from August to early October.<\/p>\n “Traditions are the salt and pepper of life,” she said. “They are that extra something that makes life extraordinary.”<\/p>\n When she says this, her eyes tear up. She never had chiles en nogada growing up because the ingredients were too expensive. But then, she studied, she became a nurse and moved to Mexico City.<\/p>\n “When you grow up and make your own money, you save for nice things,” she said. And so for Independence Day, she wants to treat her family to something special. And the chiles en nogada, she says, must be made with acitr\u00f3n.<\/p>\n “Cacti don’t grow like grass” <\/p>\n At the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s botanical garden<\/a>, there’s a whole section dedicated to barrel cactuses. It’s the kind of cactus that played an important role in Mexico even before the Spanish introduced the sugar that made it so sweet. The cactus appears in the Aztec codices and the name comes from a Nahuatl word that means a pot covered in spines.<\/p>\n “In Mexico, we have more than 150 species of biznaga,” said Salvador Arias, a biologist who runs the botanical gardens. Most of them are going extinct in the wild.<\/p>\n He points toward the golden barrel cactus whose spines make it look like a rising sun. Mexico built a hydroelectric dam, where these golden barrel cactuses live and in an instant their environment was destroyed and this species was almost wiped out.<\/p>\n \n Barrel cactuses bloom The Huntington gardens in San Marino, Calif.<\/p>\n Citizens of the Planet\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n hide caption\n <\/p>\n toggle caption<\/p>\n Citizens of the Planet\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n Some of the cacti are 40 years old and they reach to your thigh. Others are 8 years old and they are tiny, just the size of your fist.<\/p>\n “These cacti don’t grow like grass, because their metabolism is especially slow,” Arias said. “It’s so slow they might grow millimeters a year.”<\/p>\n This means farming the biznaga is neither practical nor profitable, so they’re harvested from the wild. That has left dozens of species on the verge of extinction.<\/p>\n “But I’m an optimist,” he said. “I believe that cacti have evolved in the past to thrive in contrasting environments. I think they can do it again.”<\/p>\n He walks toward his collection of nopales, the cactus that adorns the Mexican flag, the cactus that is an everyday staple in Mexican kitchens. But this species is thriving because of an evolutionary adaptation.<\/p>\n “The nopal is modular,” he said. It grows in a kind of chain, so unlike the biznaga, humans can cut off and eat the newest shoots without killing the whole plant.<\/p>\n “The Soul of Mexico” <\/p>\n The chef of the restaurant Azul does not use acitr\u00f3n. But his chiles en nogada are legendary.<\/p>\n They’re so important that when they begin serving them in August, the table cloths go black and the silverware goes gold.<\/p>\n “It’s a yearly ritual,” chef Ricardo Mu\u00f1oz Zurita said.<\/p>\n \n Chiles en nogada, a traditional dish that is eaten in Mexico from August to early October. Made from poblano peppers, stuffed with meat, pears, peaches, pine nuts and sometimes \u2014 but not in this case \u2014 acitr\u00f3n, and bathed in nogada, a walnut cream sauce, and garnished with pomegranate seeds and parsley.<\/p>\n Eyder Peralta\/NPR<\/p>\n hide caption\n <\/p>\n toggle caption<\/p>\n Eyder Peralta\/NPR<\/p>\n First, the waiters bring out a tray of poblano peppers topped with a green, white and red bow. And after they place one on the plate, they douse it with a creamy walnut sauce, as silky as melted white chocolate.<\/p>\n “This plate is the soul of Mexico,” said Mu\u00f1oz. “It tastes like the motherland, like independence. 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