Juana Marta Sánchez Macías was born February 8, 1947, to María Francesca Macías Escalante de Sánchez. Her mother died in 2006 at the age of 103; her father, Severiano Sánchez, a policeman, died in 1985 at the age of 89. She was the ninth of 11 brothers and sisters, although two died early. She and her three sisters finished primary school, but none of the boys did.

When she was five she started helping at the family nursery: watering, potting seedlings, propagating, and selling plants on Sundays at the “plant market,” which became known as the Tianguis in the 1980s. The family raised chickens at their ranchita on Volantín Street, and she helped sell eggs, too. In those days she remembers the polancas (yokes with large square tin cans) that carried water to the houses. She remembers in the mid to late 1950s when the church bells rang every evening before 9 p.m. as a signal to the children to get off the streets and go home.

During Marta’s childhood families bought rice, beans, masa for tortillas, and petroleum for lamps. She remembers being sent to la Plaza Alameda mornings at 4 a.m. to buy meat, which was displayed on big hooks over makeshift tables. Sometimes the meat wouldn’t arrive and her trip would be in vain, and at other times she would get only bones for making soup. She hated those early errands because she had to pass the church where many owls nested; they would hoot and screech at her in that dark hour before dawn.

Clay pots and crock pots for cooking food and storing food and drinking water, came from Uvalama outside of Álamos. Starting at Age 8, she helped different ladies sell groceries at the little store in a home in La Colorada, and she worked four hours daily for nine years. All of these jobs gave her experience in sales and handing money, which she still does today--selling plants, crafts, embroidered clothes, and her husband’s carvings at the Terracota shop. Her mother, sister, and her school teachers taught her embroidery stitches; even before she learned to stitch herself, she used to help her older sister sell cross stitch embroidery.

In 1970 Marta met Elizabeth Nuzum. Elizabeth sent Hilde Aragon to teach Marta some basic English, sometimes in small classes with other Mexicans. Marta has continued to this day to take classes and improve her English. In 1972 she and Elizabeth started the store, Artesanos de Álamos, in the building owned by Ana María Alcorn on the Plaza de Armas, which had been a casino. Before closing in 2004, the shop had four different locations near the Plaza. Occasionally Marta would go to Navojoa with Elizabeth, or take the bus by herself, to buy material for embroidered clothes and framed scenes. She also took the trambilla to Navojoa in the 1960s and 1970s, a type of van holding four to six people; those trips on the dirt road would take two or three hours one way, and it would never be attempted in the rain!

In the early days of the shop, many Mayo and Seri Indians would bring their ironwood and necklaces to Marta, so in the shop she sold a mix of these crafts and her own embroidered clothes and loose pieces. She made and painted the frames of many pieces that she sold. Elizabeth Nuzum helped her with the designs, materials, and colors, and later Marta taught many young women the art of embroidery. Now Marta sells her wares at the Terracota Tiendas and estimates that about 30 percent of her business is from Mexicans and the rest from American residents and tourists. She said it has nearly always been that way.

Marta has also helped with the Amigos de Educación and the library, both of them projects which Elizabeth Nuzum was instrumental in founding. All of Marta’s financial training was put to good use in 1973 when she collected checks and cash from a book sale on the plaza, the first fundraiser to start the library. The library was later opened in 1974 in an upstairs room in the Palacio (city hall), then moved to where Polo’s restaurant is now, then moved to its location on Comercio Street. For two years a teacher of anthropology, a Mr. Taylor, gave lectures on the indigenous tribes of Sonora, and the admission fees from these lectures went to the library. Marta always sold the tickets.

When the house tours begin in 1975 to raise money for Amigos de Educación, Marta was again the ticket seller from a table in the Nuzum portal. She did this for 24 years and enjoyed meeting the many generous people who took the tours. After the tour, Marta helped serve coffee and cookies and stayed to answer questions and solicit extra donations. She is surprised that coffee and cookies are not served anymore, since during the social times many extra donations were received! Marta was also a valuable resource to the Amigos board in selecting the children most needy of scholarship assistance.

Marta was not married until Age 38. She married Porfirio Bustillo Borquez, a builder and sculptor in wood and stone. Their only child, Benjamin, was born in 1986.

Marta served as a bridge between the foreign and Mexican communities in Álamos in many ways. She enjoyed the days when Álamos was filled with tourists, when she could be of service to both native and English-speaking visitors by selling items and sharing her knowledge of the community with them.