CULEBRA ★ MEAT MARKET
A San Antonio tradition,
four decades in the making
Four decades. One family. Thousands of carne-asada Sundays. This is the story of Culebra.
Founder · photo from family
It started with one man and one promise.
Don Ezequiel Ramírez was born in 1932 in San José del Resplandor, León, Guanajuato. He was sixteen when his father taught him the trade that would define his life — how to read cattle, buy honest, and sell fair. He worked as a cattle broker until he was thirty, then built a second career in construction, moving his family to San Antonio in 1968.
But the trade never left him. More than twenty years later, he returned to his true calling and opened the first Culebra Meat Market — alongside his sons.
His wife, Sara Ramírez, was the backbone of it all — the steady hand behind the counter and the heart of the family. Together they raised thirteen children, every one of whom has, at one time or another, helped run a Culebra store. That's not a marketing line. That's the business.
Forty years, one family
The owners today
Built by the second generation, for the next.
Today, Culebra is carried forward by Víctor Ramírez and his wife Sandra Arias de Ramírez — who grew up in these aisles and now lead the family business into its next chapter. Pastors in San Antonio, they bring the same faith, family, and care for the community to the new Culebra on Potranco: bigger, brighter, and built for the neighborhood that grew up on Culebra — without ever losing what Don Ezequiel started.
"We grew up behind this counter. Now it's our turn to take care of the neighborhood."
More than a store
From youth sports sponsorships to back-to-school drives, the Ramírez family gives back to the neighborhood that made them — because in San Antonio, familia and community are the same word.