For Fort Worth Latino families, tamale making gatherings represent culture and Christmas
Lisa Olmos Maldonado prayed the first time she cooked Christmas tamales after her mother and grandmother passed away and said this: “Para a ti, amá/For you, grandmother.”
After biting into her debut tamale, she smiled, knowing her grandmother Concepción Esparza and mother Candelaria Esparza-Olmos would have approved.
Maldonado inherited a tamale-making process from Mayans and other Mesoamerican Indians dating to 7000 B.C. Mexica warriors and hunters ate the cornhusk-wrapped tamales in the field, while priests and priestesses offered specially prepared tamales to their gods.
After Spanish monks converted Mayans and Mexicas to Christianity in the 16th century, Latinos throughout the Americas perpetuated the Christmas tamalada tradition (tamale making gatherings). Instead of heating tamales in hot ashes, Mexicas learned to steam them from the Spaniards.
Esperanza Padilla Ayala, 92, remembered participating in tamaladas since 1938 in the kitchen of her grandmother, Emilia Phillips Felan, on Fort Worth’s Northside. Esperanza taught the Christmas tradition to her daughters Teresa Marie Ayala and Dolores Ayala Rios when they were 5 years old. Although an arduous day-long process, that involved preparing meat, milling masa (dough), pasting masa to cornhusks, cooking tamales, the work transformed to a festive family celebration. Some men and boys helped with the cooking and lifted heavy vats, but the work fell mainly on women.
Like hundreds of Latino families throughout Fort Worth, the Ayalas gathered on Noche Buena or Christmas Eve at Esperanza Ayala’s home and cooked throughout the day and night. As they listened to Jorge Negrete and other Mexican artists crooning from 78s on a Victrola record player, the tamale makers sang along to Solamente Una Vez, Ella, and Mexican carols. After a while, wine poured, jokes erupted, and wistful talk of deceased tamaleras (tamale makers) flowed. At midnight, the Ayalas attended Christmas mass at All Saints Catholic Church and then returned to finish cooking 50 to 100 dozen tamales they shared with family and friends.
A 5-year-old Susie Olmos-Soto assisted her grandmother in tamale making at her home in Gonzales, Texas. She and her older sister Lisa Maldonado weren’t sure about their chore in masa preparation but in respectful deference they followed their grandmother’s instructions. As she grew older, Olmos-Soto realized her grandmother, well-known in Gonzales for her cooking, prepared a variety of Mexican food year round for extra income.
Olmos-Soto’s father Pete Olmos Sr., who enjoyed cooking, invented a tamale/sausage maker to ease the process.
Maldonado continued the Christmas tamale making in honor of her mother. She said, “It’s a passion. Every time I make them I feel closest to my grandmother and mother.” Olmos-Soto and Ayala recalled the smells, laughter, voices, and faces seated at the tamale table as multiple conversations filled the air.
In December, 2015, Rita Utt, retired Fort Worth Latina attorney, invited several female friends to rekindle the familial tamaladas. Eva Bonilla, life-long Fort Worth resident, hosted the tamale making at her spacious home in Linwood. With Maldonado guiding the cooking process, highly-educated women and their daughters ate breakfast, exchanged gifts, and then gathered into the traditional assembly line around the kitchen table.
Maldonado observed: “Tamale making is a safe space for children, sisters, friends .... It shows the empowerment of women. We need to know where we’re from to know where we’re going.”
To gift a cultural legacy, confident Latinas taught daughters how to prepare tamales befitting deceased tamaleras, joyous families, and the Nativity.
Author Richard J. Gonzales writes and speaks about Fort Worth, national and international Latino history.
This story was originally published December 26, 2020 at 7:00 AM.