(Editor's Note: Throughout Hispanic Heritage Month, we will reprint occasional essays by the late muralist, poet and humorist Jose Antonio Burciaga, who through his art, essays and books helped define the Chicano to a national audience. He was often referred to as the Chicano Renaissance man and "a Will Rogers for Chicanos." Today, Burciaga's pioneer writings are required reading in many university literature and Latino studies courses. He died of cancer at age 56 in 1996. This column, one of Burciaga's first prose pieces, was written for Hispanic Link in 1980.)
My earliest recollection of the tortilla is my mama telling me not to play with it.
I had bitten eye-holes in it and was using it as a mask at the dinner table.
By biting holes, I learned to make many interesting designs.
My family claims that I owe my career as an artist and designer to the tortilla. That early, informal training, they say, provided me with the essential motivation and foundation, although sometimes I wore tortillas on my head, like yarmulkes, and never had any great urge to convert from Catholicism to Judaism.
As a child, I also used tortillas as hand-warmers on cold days.
For Mexicans over the centuries, this circular maize bread has been both versatile and sustaining.
It originated with the Mayan civilization, perhaps predating Europe's wheat bread.
For millions it has served as the spoon and the fork, the chopsticks, the sandwich and the
napkin.
There is much more to it than meets the Gringo eye.
Tortillas have a bottom and a top, a left and a right, an inside and an outside.
They can be paper-thin. These are used for flautas, a type of taco that is filled, rolled and then fried crisp. There are also gorditas, small fat ones; or sopes. These can be fried or baked and then filled with frijoles or meat, or both. Or eaten plain.
The most handsome of all tortillas is the handmade tortilla, using nixtamal, not instant masa harina. A connoisseur can smell the quality. It takes generation-to-generation experience to create one that is truly delicious, truly sabrosa.
But now machine-made tortillas are monopolizing the mercados. Handmade tortillas are becoming a rarity. Sadly, assembly-line tortillas never receive the individual tender slaps that give them character.
As a youngster living in El Paso, I used to visit a tortilla factory, near the open mercado in Ciudad Juarez, where all of the products were handmade. The factory was in an ancient adobe building. As you approached it, you could hear the rhythmic slapping of the masa between skilled hands, forming the perfectly round tortilla. They could barely keep up with the demand.
Years later, when I went back to visit, the factory had disappeared. My mother was buying her tortillas early in the morning from women who sat outside of the old market, parceling their handmade gems out of warm, protective wicker baskets.
In the mercado you could buy taquitos. To create a poor man's taco, you placed a warm tortilla across your left palm, sprinkled it with salt and, with the fingertips of your right hand, rolled it up tight. Then there were also left-handed people.
How did tortilla chips originate?
In Mexican homes it is the custom to save all the leftover tortilla pieces and day-old tortillas and fry them. Presto. You have tostadas, or tostaditas. That is why there is always a bowl of tortilla chips and chile in Mexican restaurants. This is not to say that they are made from yesterday's tortillas.
The tortilla has suffered from discrimination. A few years back a Padre was found guilty of celebrating the Holy Mass using a tortilla as a host, and discharged from his duties. Now what if Jesucristo had been born in Mejico? I must assume that some European would have been punished for using unleavened wheat bread.
The best way to warm a tortilla is over an open fire from a gas range. I remember amazing many a Gringo friend by sticking my finger into the fire and flipping the tortilla.
For best results, heat the bottom side last.
Try heating a tortilla on an electric range, and in two seconds it will burn and taste awful. You can solve the problem by dragging the tortilla slowly across the hot steel coils.
Our next-door neighbor swears by her microwave oven, but I find the heat too intense. So what we do at home is heat a pan and use it like a comal.
What is a comal?
Well, that's another story.
My earliest recollection of the tortilla is my mama telling me not to play with it.
I had bitten eye-holes in it and was using it as a mask at the dinner table.
By biting holes, I learned to make many interesting designs.
My family claims that I owe my career as an artist and designer to the tortilla. That early, informal training, they say, provided me with the essential motivation and foundation, although sometimes I wore tortillas on my head, like yarmulkes, and never had any great urge to convert from Catholicism to Judaism.
As a child, I also used tortillas as hand-warmers on cold days.
For Mexicans over the centuries, this circular maize bread has been both versatile and sustaining.
It originated with the Mayan civilization, perhaps predating Europe's wheat bread.
For millions it has served as the spoon and the fork, the chopsticks, the sandwich and the
napkin.
There is much more to it than meets the Gringo eye.
Tortillas have a bottom and a top, a left and a right, an inside and an outside.
They can be paper-thin. These are used for flautas, a type of taco that is filled, rolled and then fried crisp. There are also gorditas, small fat ones; or sopes. These can be fried or baked and then filled with frijoles or meat, or both. Or eaten plain.
The most handsome of all tortillas is the handmade tortilla, using nixtamal, not instant masa harina. A connoisseur can smell the quality. It takes generation-to-generation experience to create one that is truly delicious, truly sabrosa.
But now machine-made tortillas are monopolizing the mercados. Handmade tortillas are becoming a rarity. Sadly, assembly-line tortillas never receive the individual tender slaps that give them character.
As a youngster living in El Paso, I used to visit a tortilla factory, near the open mercado in Ciudad Juarez, where all of the products were handmade. The factory was in an ancient adobe building. As you approached it, you could hear the rhythmic slapping of the masa between skilled hands, forming the perfectly round tortilla. They could barely keep up with the demand.
Years later, when I went back to visit, the factory had disappeared. My mother was buying her tortillas early in the morning from women who sat outside of the old market, parceling their handmade gems out of warm, protective wicker baskets.
In the mercado you could buy taquitos. To create a poor man's taco, you placed a warm tortilla across your left palm, sprinkled it with salt and, with the fingertips of your right hand, rolled it up tight. Then there were also left-handed people.
How did tortilla chips originate?
In Mexican homes it is the custom to save all the leftover tortilla pieces and day-old tortillas and fry them. Presto. You have tostadas, or tostaditas. That is why there is always a bowl of tortilla chips and chile in Mexican restaurants. This is not to say that they are made from yesterday's tortillas.
The tortilla has suffered from discrimination. A few years back a Padre was found guilty of celebrating the Holy Mass using a tortilla as a host, and discharged from his duties. Now what if Jesucristo had been born in Mejico? I must assume that some European would have been punished for using unleavened wheat bread.
The best way to warm a tortilla is over an open fire from a gas range. I remember amazing many a Gringo friend by sticking my finger into the fire and flipping the tortilla.
For best results, heat the bottom side last.
Try heating a tortilla on an electric range, and in two seconds it will burn and taste awful. You can solve the problem by dragging the tortilla slowly across the hot steel coils.
Our next-door neighbor swears by her microwave oven, but I find the heat too intense. So what we do at home is heat a pan and use it like a comal.
What is a comal?
Well, that's another story.