Don Antonio Rodriguez and his wife Doña Antonia, affectionately known as Mama and Papa Toña, opened La India in 1924, although their only product at the time was Mexican hot chocolate, made from the cacao that Mama Toña ground by hand on her metate. Papa Toña delivered the hot chocolate by bicycle to each customer’s door step.

As time went on, the couple started selling spices for chorizo and menudo and the demand for other spices, seasonings, and herbs rapidly began to grow as word spread of their high quality ingredients. Even local brujos and curanderos, natural healers in Latin culture, were attracted to the rare spices and herbs the business carried and soon became frequent customers.

As Papa Toña began to lose his eyesight, he spent the majority of his time and energy in the basement of La India, with the lights off, sawing large bundles of cinnamon sticks and packaging his products by hand. He would weigh the spices with perfect accuracy by touching and feeling the beams and brass weights of the scales.

Today, La India continues to sell spices in the same little building where the business began and is currently owned and operated by the Rodriguez's granddaughter, Elsa. On the main level, visitors can dine in the tasting room café, where homemade family recipes are prepared just outside on the grill or in a wood-burning oven. Under their feet, the basement is still where all La India Herbs and Spices are hand-packaged, the way Papa Toña used to do it.