For my father, Saturday mornings began before dawn.
I would wake up to the sound of an ax splitting orange tree wood. I could hear him hauling and cleaning the large, galvanized tubs that would soon be filled with water and corn and set on the fire pit. I would listen for a while, then roll over and go back to sleep for just a little longer, knowing that soon my mom would come and wake me up, reminding me that we had a long day ahead.
We lived in Fillmore, in a Craftsman-style kit house that my grandpa Abundio Sanchez bought in 1929 from a white man fleeing the barrio that was encroaching on his neighborhood. The two-lot property was wide and deep. Past the house was a freestanding garage; behind that, my uncles had built a brick-and-mortar fire pit dedicated to cooking dried corn in those large, galvanized tubs that my dad wrestled with every Saturday morning.
"We are making nixtamal," my dad would say. The corn would be boiled, rinsed, soaked in water treated with calcium hydroxide (known as cal), then ground into masa that turned into tortillas that my Grandma Concha sold locally. That was her side hustle after my grandpa died in the 1940s.
Concha Sanchez, holding her daughter Guadalupe, and Abundio Sanchez, 1910, El Paso, Texas. Courtesy of Anna Bermudez
My grandparents, Abundio and Concha Sanchez, came to the United States from Silao, Guanajuato. They crossed the border into El Paso in 1907 with six children by paying 3 cents for the whole family to ride on the El Paso Electric Railway. Abundio found work as a traquero, which took him to Clearwater, Kansas and back to El Paso. But in Texas, Abundio had an accident and suffered a dislocated shoulder. With her husband unable to work, Concha turned to making and selling tortillas "a mano," to support her growing family.
She didn't do it alone. My Tio Dolores (Lolo) was only 10 at the time but he was a hustler. Taking samples of the tortillas with him, he came home with orders for tortillas every day — not only from neighbors, but from the small Mexican stores in the area. That's how Concha kept the family fed until Abundio was able to work again.
While he healed, Abundio decided to head to California. His cousin, Pedro Romero, told him there was plenty of work in the citrus orchards of Riverside. But when Abundio and his family left El Paso in 1911, Riverside was just a stop on the way to Fillmore, where his compadre, Don Paulino Rivas and his family lived. My grandparents arrived in Fillmore towards the end of 1912, just in time for the birth of their ninth child, my mother, Maria (Mary).
Abundio and his sons worked hard in the lima bean industry which soon gave way to groves of orange trees. By 1923, they had saved enough money to buy a piece of land and build a small grocery store. It was called Sanchez Brothers Mexican Mercantile and sold products that catered to the tastes of "la gente". With the modest income from the business, Abundio bought the Craftsman on Santa Clara and Clay streets.
Carlos and Arnulfo Sanchez in front of Sanchez Brothers Mexican Mercantile, 1923. Courtesy of Anna Bermudez
My uncles and Abundio built an apartment attached to the garage that consisted of a bedroom, a bathroom, and a square center room,that we called, "El Cuartito." That room was used mostly for storage. By the time Abundio died in 1943, the store had gone bankrupt because of the Depression, and Concha worried that she would not have enough money for food and bills. My Tio Arnulfo, who owned a small grocery store in Piru, knew that his mother was an excellent cook and had made tortillas for sale in the past. So he purchased a tortilladora (tortilla-making machine) and encouraged her to make and sell tortillas once again.
Her workshop was in El Cuartito: The molino, the machine to shape the dough, the tortilladora, and a comal. There was an altar to the Santo Niño that you could see through the doorway where my grandma would pray that the nixtmal that was turned into masa and tortillas would be blessed with flavor and goodness so that customers would continue to buy. While the men made the nixtamal, the women made the tortillas: my mother, my tias and my prima Irene. The tortilla business continued for years and when my mother Mary married my dad, he took over the nixtmalization process while my mom, my cousins and I, and my Tia Cuca helped with the tortillas.
Every day followed the same ritual. The first batch of corn was ground coarser, for the customers that wanted masa for tamales. My job was to wait until my mother weighed the masa then I would wrap the masa in pink butcher paper and paper tape that my Tio Arnulfo brought us from his store. Once the masa orders were filled, the comal was turned on and the stones reset for a fine grind for the tortillas.
The tortilla machinery was large and took up all the wall space in El Cuartito. It was actually three separate pieces of equipment that consisted of the molino to grind the corn, the tortilladora that shaped the tortillas and readied them for the griddle, and a comal so large that it spanned most of the longest wall in the room. The machinery ran on electricity and the comal used gas burners that my uncles rigged up to the existing gas line. At my young age, the whole operation was frightening, but my usual metiche self wanted to watch, so I peeked through the back door to see it come to life.
The tortilladora turned on with a deafening roar that took me time to adjust to in the age before ear protection. With time, the roar soon became a hum. I leaned on the door to feel the familiar vibrations and watched as my mom turned on the comal. The heat was intense coming off that griddle but as the tortillas cooked, the aroma of the masa embraced you with its deep, earthy, delicious smell.
I watched in fascination as the tortillas came off the comal. If I was quick, I could steal a tortilla to take in the house and eat with butter, but what I really craved were the tiny pieces of raw masa that didn't quite make it into a tortilla. They had this earthy, corn flavor and they were so good. If my grandma saw me pinching off a piece of the masa, she would reprimand me, "No! Te vas a empachar!" She thought I would end up with indigestion and then we would have to call the curandera who lived next door.
Mary Sanchez, Concha Sanchez and Irene Sanchez, circa 1940s. Courtesy of Anna Bermudez
The barrio in Fillmore continued to grow through the mid-1950's and having a local source for buying masa and tortillas was important. Although there were two Mexican markets in the barrio, tortillas were usually brought in from outside of the area, mostly from Los Angeles. If you wanted to order masa during the holidays, you had to order in advance from the tienditas who would order their masa from L.A. or Oxnard, where Don Teofilo Rodriguez — who sold pan dulce out of the back of his truck in Santa Paula — opened La Central Bakery in 1948, which still remains. But Oxnard was a trek from Fillmore back in the day, so having my grandma making the masa and selling tortillas locally made it much easier for everyone in town, especially for those living in the barrio who had no transportation and didn't want to pay higher prices.
As my grandma got older, the business opened only during the holidays from late November to mid-January and mostly for masa for tamales. The tortilla business was hard on my aging grandma, and my mother worked all week, so they decided to stop selling tortillas and eventually even the masa business came to a halt.
Grandma Concha died in 1963 at the age of 88. The tortilladora sat in "El Cuartito" gathering dust for several years. Then, in the late 1960s, my Nino Jaime decided to buy a small business in Cypress Park in Los Angeles. He asked my parents if he could take the tortilladora for his new enterprise, which would feature a carniceria and fresh tortillas. We didn't need it, and it was taking up room.
Starting a grocery business was not easy, and eventually, my Nino decided to close it. He put the tortilladora in his basement in Cypress Park, where it stayed for decades. It wouldn't be touched again until 2005, when my cousin Jaime Gonzalez wanted to remodel the house a decade after my Nino Jaime had passed. The basement needed to be cleared and the tortilla equipment needed to go.
Many of the cousins gathered in Cypress Park. The dust-covered equipment didn't seem so intimidating at first, but the memories of pinching off pieces of masa and the rumble that would make the wooden floors shake in El Cuartito came rushing back. I could almost feel the heat of the comal in that cold basement.
We all took photos, but while most of us wanted the machinery, no one had the room to store this much equipment. My primo Jaime finally brought it to our house and we started looking for its new home. It was a piece of Ventura County history, so I reached out to the Museum of Ventura County, the region's arbiter of what was part of its legacy.
They told me they had no storage for my family's tortilladora.
Luckily, one of the volunteers at the museum had retired from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and thought they might be interested. She connected me with Rayna Green, who was then the curator in the Home and Community Division. After a quick email and phone call, Rayna and her colleague, curator Steve Velasquez, flew out to California to see the tortilladora. We gathered family at our home in Ventura and my mom held court as she showed old photos and told the story of my grandmother's resilience.
Several weeks later, the packing company came out to pick up my grandmother's equipment.
Tortilladora, tortilla press belonging to Concha Sanchez. Courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History
We heard from Steve Velasquez that they planned to use the photos and tortilladora in a new exhibition, "FOOD: Transforming the American Table" that would open in November 2012. What a proud moment for our family to see our grandmother's tortilla press and molino on exhibit near Julia Child's kitchen!
Unfortunately, my mother did not live long enough to see the completed show.
As the Sanchez family historian and photographer, she was so excited to have the tortilladora going to this prestigious museum. You see, my mother was an activist. She fought hard to protect the rights of the mexicanos in our community and to preserve the history of our family and of the barrio. Having her mother's tortilladora at the Smithsonian was a very proud moment for her. And, she was the one who, at the last minute, remembered that we had my grandma Concha's apron and asked if they would like to have it. She has no idea how important this very personal artifact was in telling the story of my grandma's resourcefulness, because Concha always wore that apron. She made that apron and wore it with pride.
When we met Steve several years later in Washington D.C., for their annual Food History Weekend, he took us to dinner at Jaleo, Jose Andres' restaurant in DC. Steve presented my husband and I with a book titled Smithsonian American Women. It was filled with objects from the national collection along with stories about the women that used them. My grandma Concha's story is on page 127 and talks about her American journey. She shares space with Celia Cruz, Marian Anderson, and Dolores Huerta.
It didn't hit me until we were home. So elated that finally the stories that my mother shared with me were being heard. How unfortunate that my mother didn't live long enough to see this exhibition or read the story. She taught me how to be a chingona like she was. It is because of Her Story that I am who I am.
Anna Bermudez is an independent curatorial consultant. She was previously Chief Curator at the Museum of Ventura County for 15 years, where she brought a multicultural perspective to art and history exhibitions. She has co-authored three books on Mexican American baseball in Southern California. Her research focuses on the art, history and culture of her native Ventura County and the surrounding region with an emphasis on food history.