The Aztec brewery operated in Mexicali throughout the 1920s as a legitimate business in Mexican territory, serving both local customers and American tourists who crossed the border for the goods that Prohibition had made unavailable at home. ABC Beer won a gold medal at the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition in Seville, Spain — a distinction that required the beer to compete internationally and prevail. The murals that José Moya del Piño painted on the Mexicali brewery walls depicted pre-Columbian imagery and gave the brand a visual identity that its competitors in the borderlands could not easily replicate. When Prohibition ended and the brewery moved north, the murals could not come with it. They were eventually relocated to the Logan Heights Branch Library in San Diego, where they remain — brewing history translated into neighborhood art.

The post-Prohibition San Diego operation ran until 1953, when Aztec Brewing Company closed after three decades of production. The closing followed a pattern common to smaller regional breweries in the mid-twentieth century: the consolidation of the American beer industry toward a handful of national brands made it increasingly difficult for regional operations to compete on price. Aztec's story seemed finished. The equipment dispersed, the recipes went to archives, and the brand became a footnote in histories of San Diego commerce and Prohibition-era entrepreneurship. The gold medal from Seville, the Mexicali murals, the border crossing — these were anecdotes rather than ongoing concerns. The story sat quiet for nearly sixty years.

In 2011, Aztec Brewing Company was revived in Vista, a few miles inland from Carlsbad. The revival coincided with the explosive growth of craft brewing in San Diego County, a region that by the 2010s had developed one of the densest concentrations of craft breweries in the United States. The new Aztec drew on the original brand's history — the Mexicali founding, the international gold medal, the unique immigration story — as a marketing asset in a market crowded with newer competitors. The murals at Logan Heights Library provided a tangible connection to the brewery's first iteration. Whether the revived operation carries forward the character of the original or simply its name is a question that every brewery revival must answer. Aztec's answer is that the story of a San Diego business making beer in Mexico until it could come home is worth retelling.