I don’t know Juana Reyes, a woman that has been making and selling tamales in Sacramento and is now facing deportation. What I do know is that there aren’t enough “tamale ladies.”
The best Sundays were always those when Carmen wasn’t inside the church praying but standing before the front doors with her big tamale pot. This was back when fasting overnight was part of the communion ritual; so, hunger was always present at church. But on the best Sundays, the tummies began to growl as soon as we saw Carmen and her pot. Our tongues were salivating by the time mass was over and we were standing in front of Carmen and her steamy pot of deliciousness. The five-minute drive home before we could inhale those tamales were always the longest minutes except for those that came with earthquakes and the aftershocks.
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