"Mexican barbacoa is still made in a smoker by a few Tejano barbecue enthusiasts, but commercial pit barbacoa is all but extinct in Texas. Vera's in Brownsville is one of the last restaurants in the state to use a real pit to make barbacoa. In the old days, Mexican ranch hands used to wrap cow heads up in canvas or maguey leaves and bury them in the coals. (In the movie Giant, Elizabeth Taylor faints when they unwrap the package and show her the head.) But health departments frown on such traditional barbacoa these days."