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The Taste of Navidad, the Stuff of Memories

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Mary Helen Ponce is a Sunland writer

They’re almost gone. The tamales, that is. If I don’t get one I’ll surely die. I’m at a Los Angeles-based fund-raiser to benefit maquilladora workers and got here late. The food is almost gone--which is why I’m about to push forward in line.

The tamales are lined up in aluminum pans of beans and sopa de arroz, Spanish rice. They are of beef, pork and what I most lust for: green chili and cheese, a rare (to me) combination that is said to have originated in Oaxaca, Mexico. The tamales were made by the female members of the various unions represented here. Most work in sweatshops for minimum wage, but in solidarity with the people have donated their time and energy for the cause.

Tamales are an important part of a Latino Christmas. In fact, Navidad, as it is called in Mexico, would not be complete without them. Be they of beans, cheese or meat, they are a staple of this holiday feast.

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I know something of tamales. For years, each Christmas I made them by the dozen for my family. I loaded up on beef and pork roasts, cornhusks and, early on, to ensure that I would not be left in the lurch, ordered masa preparada (ground-corn dough) from a San Fernando market; during the holidays it sold like hot cakes. I then went at the job with zeal. I rarely made my own chili--Las Palmas chili was good enough. The sugar tamales were made in direct proportion to those of meat (at least five dozen). If some years the meat tamales lacked flavor, those of sugar--with a trace of anise--were sure winners.

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Grandma Pepita, my children’s paternal great-grandmother, was an expert at making tamales. For eons, each Sunday at the Iglesia Apostolica in Delano she attended, las hermanas of the parish made tamales to raise funds. They were huge tamales, stuffed with chunky beef or pork, large olives and smothered with chili. One day Grandma was replaced because she was putting too much meat in the tamales. Profits were down! But, in Christian charity, she forgave the penny-pinching director--and rejoined the group.

I got my first taste of Oaxacan tamales one summer in the mid-’70s while camping in Baja. They were sold by a Mexican woman who walked two to three miles from home to the campground. Trailed by several little kids, she lugged a blue enamel pot chock-full of tamales up and down the wide beach. Those of pork and beef sold for 25 cents each; the sugar tamales my children fought over cost a nickel. When meat was scarce, she made the Oaxacan tamales--with Jalapeno chiles--I began to crave.

In conversations with la senora, who I realized was a still-youthful woman, she told how on tamale day she rose at 3 a.m. to grind corn, cook meat and make chile from scratch. She steam-cooked them, then tucked them between snowy-white dish towels in the pot, and off she went. Folks at the campground, especially women tired of cooking on Coleman stoves, rushed to meet her; she sold out on the spot. When in late afternoon she trudged home, her shoulders looked a little less bent.

As children, Joey, my brother, and I fought over the sugar tamales (with raisins) made by my mother, with the help of Dona Luisa, our adopted grandmother; they tasted of anise. Joey hated raisins, so spat them out. At times I hid tamales for later, then forgot about them until I came across a dried one in my socks drawer.

Sometime back, when at the Telfair Avenue Elementary School book fair, I saw where the nuns from Guardian Angel Church in Pacoima were in the school office selling tamales. I was appalled to see the professional women in their dark tunics--who taught at the parish school--selling tamales door-to-door. It bothered me to know they raised funds in this manner. But they did not think it demeaning. Rather, they went about the job with the same dedication I assumed they brought to teaching.

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The event is over and I am stuffed.

Before exiting the hall, I approach a food server to ask to buy any leftover Oaxacan tamales; all but one are gone.

“Take it,” he says. “It’s the last one.”

Quickly, before he changes his mind, I wrap it in a napkin and skip out the door.

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