On a chilly December morning in a nearby mountain pueblo, a number of people gathered at Deovijilda Lara’s tacos al vapor stand to get some warmth in their bellies. At 7 a.m., Deovijilda’s public market puesto seemed the first and warmest stand open. Dressed in several sweaters, wool knee-length stockings, faded flowered dress and an apron whose bulging pockets served as a minor pharmacy, a requisition center and a cash register, she presided over an assortment of steaming sartenes, cazuelas and ollas.
Deovijilda — a name that does not come trippingly to the tongue on early, chilly mornings — has many nicknames. Some call her simply “La Taquera.” Most commonly she is called Lupe, the diminutive of Guadalupe, her husband’s name.
Saying good morning, I slid onto the high wooden bench beside a large man in a hard-used sombrero and a faded wool serape. He had tortillas in both hands and was doing lusty justice to a plate of steaming frijoles, eggs and pork swimming in a heavy sauce of chile and tomato. Lupe grinned through the fumes seething from a broad pan of bubbling res con salsa (beed and sauce). “And what is it you wish, señor?” I ordered te de manzanilla, rice (which comes with salsa, whether customers want it or not), frijoles de la olla and an orange from the stack carefully arranged on the floor at the back of the crowded puesto. I got the orange first. Lupe sent it rolling down the counter with such precision that it missed the cluster of Nescafe jars filled with salt, pepper, piloncillo (blunt cones of brown sugar), the bowls containing sauces of various potencies, the topless Tecate cans sporting a few thin flags of napkins. At Deovijilda’s it was assumed that customers used tortillas as napkins, just as they used them — in centuries-old tradition — as forks, knives and spoons.
At the sink, Cuca, a skinny pigtailed girl in her early teens, hunched against the cold and slowly blanched several chickens in a caldron of smoky water, stirring the cut parts with a pale, immaculate chicken foot. While Lupe’s stand often blossomed with confusion and spillage, she abhorred uncleanliness. And the bane of Cuca’s life was cleaning everything — the counter, the tables, the sink, the many cooking vessels — several times before they met the proprietress’ approval.
As I waited for my order to be assembled out of the early morning rattle and haze behind the counter, my tea arrived. Lupe, who equates sugar with energy, pushed the jar of piloncillo at me, even though she knew I seldom ate sweets. She glanced at me as I blew on my unsweetened te de manzanilla. “Andale hombre. The sugar will help warm your blood on this cold morning.” She shrugged, taking my indifference to her advice as further confirmation that all gringos were locos.
Urchin enters
As Deovijilda turned to pull a spitting frying pan of eggs off the fire, a wizened boy of about eight ducked behind the counter and on tiptoe surveyed what was on the stove. His bony face plainly showed hunger. Though his hair was black, his pale complexion destined him to be called guerito (blondie) all his life.
“Lupe,” he called imperiously “frijoles for my lonches.” Pulling two bolillos (buns) out of the pocket of his jacket — which was a good three sizes too large — he thrust them at her. As she took the two white-bread muffins — she called them pan hueco — to the other end of the counter, the kid dodged around the side of the puesto, crawling up beside me on the bench to watch her. It was as if he didn’t trust her to do a good job on his sandwiches. Sure enough, as Deovijilda returned the split-open, frijole-ornamented muffins, the boy opened them more, and held them out. “Mas, Lupe, mas.”
With his tough face and skinny body, the kid had “urchin” written all over him. When Lupe had tucked some more refrieds into the buns, he examined them critically, biting his lower lip, then ordered coffee. Instead of waiting for the coffee, he jumped down and ran off to give the bean sandwiches to a man at a puesto downstairs. Lupe set a large clay cup beside mine.
“That’s his tio,” she nodded down the stairway to the vegetable stall below. “The boys mother and father live in Guadalajara. They left him here for his grandmother to raise. When she died about a year ago, he refused to go live with his parents, so his aunt and uncle took him in.” She raised her eyebrows toward the stairway. “They make very little money at that puesto.”
Tortilla hustler
The kid came bounding up the stairs, clambered onto the bench beside me and reached for the coffee. Carefully, he pooled out a tablespoon, blew on it, then noisily sipped, sighing grandly.
“The frijoles for your uncle are free,” Deovijilda told him. But the coffee is a peso.”
The boy dug a handful of old 100-peso coins from his pants pocket and slid them across the counter.
Lupe counted them. “Nine hundred, you rascal.”
When she turned back to the stove, he jumped down and, making sure no one saw him, filched a tortilla from the pile the tortilleras at the next puesto were busily producing. Back up on the bench, he flipped the hot corn cake from one hand to the other to cool it a bit, then dipped it into his coffee, As he sucked on it, he glanced in my direction with a sly, droll expression, but didn’t grin, didn’t say a thing. As he dipped up some coffee with his stolen tortilla, he frowned. “These ironing-board tortillas don’t taste as good as hand-shaped masa, do they?
He sounded so grown up, I blinked in surprise. He was alluding to the two wooden presses the people at the puesto next to us were using to shape their corn cakes.
“Well, few people make handmade tortillas these days,” I said, squinting at the kid.
“Pos, mi abuelita (grandmother) did,right up to the day she died.” The boy looked at me evenly. “She made the best tortillas in the whole state of Jalisco,” he declared firmly. The youngster turned back to his steaming cup, taking a cone of piloncillo between his teeth and sucking coffee through it to sweeten the hungry taste of the chill morning air.