🫔 Tamale tias who make Christmas 🫔

Meet some of the women behind the tamales that make Christmas a little more New Mexican. From Rosa Ortega, who makes thousands of tamales every Christmas, to Maria Estrada, who is growing her tamale business, these women are a part of a thriving Christmas industry.

Open the corn husk, spread the masa, fill with chicken or beef, add the cheese and fold.

Rosa Ortega, 73, repeats these actions hundreds of times with her sister, 71-year-old Angela Ortega, as she spends her morning making an order of 200 tamales, fresh and ready to eat. The order is just one of thousands she will fill before Christmas Day rolls around. Ortega believes throughout her life, she has made roughly 500,000 tamales.

Look on almost any corner in the South Valley around Christmastime and you’ll see tamale stands. Tamales are a staple in New Mexico. Tamales originated in Mesoamerica as early as 8000 BC, making them one of the world’s oldest foods still eaten today. The ancient Aztecs, Mayans, Olmecs and Toltecs are all believed to have eaten tamales, according to Cocina, a food website. Packed inside corn husks — though Guatemalans have also been known to use banana leaves — they were originally baked in open firepits, though now they are typically steamed since the Spanish introduced pots and pans.

Perfecting a recipe

Ortega started making tamales when she was 17 as a way to make money while she was pregnant with her first child. “I needed to stay home with the children and back then there was no FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act), so I had to do what I had to do,” Ortega said.

“I would make a whole week’s worth of tamales and then on Friday night and Saturday night, there was a nightclub that would let me sell the tamales there on the weekend,” she added. “I never went in because I was underage, so I would just take an ice chest full of tamales and people would come out and get them.”

At one point, Ortega’s tamales were so popular she was getting requests to overnight ship them across the country, sending her tamales from Albuquerque to Chicago to help people get their tamale fix.

Ortega learned to make tamales from a woman she worked with when she was younger. But she believed she could perfect the recipe: she began developing her tamale recipe, changing it four times before landing on the one she continues to use today.

To make her tamales, Ortega uses fresh green and red chile grown by her brother Manuel, along with her masa recipe. Masa is a dough made out of ground corn and the outer edible layer of a tamale.

Ortega has several variations of tamales, from beef and red chile to green chile and chicken, cheese and chile for vegetarians, and more.

“I make everything fresh and that’s what makes the difference,” she said. “It’s all homemade and homegrown.”

Though Ortega says age has slowed down her tamale-making process, she has no plans to stop anytime soon, and she hopes to teach her family the recipe to keep the tradition going.

“Before, I used to make 400 dozen (4,800) for Christmas and now it’s closer to 40 dozen (480),” she said. “I’ll be so sad the day I can’t make them anymore... I’ll keep making them if people continue to ask me.”

Mexican tamales in New Mexico

In Mexico alone there are estimated to be more than 500 kinds of tamales, from the classic pork-filled tamales of Veracruz to Oaxaca’s sweet and spicy tamales, according to Cocina. Maria Estrada draws on that Mexican tradition, she learned to make tamales from her grandmother in Durango, Mexico, when she was 6 years old.

Estrada, now 57, has lived in New Mexico for the last 15 years and runs a tamale food truck and catering business.

“It is tradition to make them (tamales) for Christmas,” Estrada said in Spanish, her native and only language.

She never planned to open her own business, she said it just happened little by little. With family, and later nieces and nephews, asking her for tamales, eventually granting her the nickname “Tia de Tamales.”

It wasn’t until she went to the South Valley Economic Development Center, which offers professional kitchen and equipment and application assistance to aspiring small business owners, that she even considered starting a business. “I was interested when they told me their story and I couldn’t help but think, ‘Why not me, too?’” Estrada said.

From there, she started going to events and eventually purchased her food truck. “I can stop looking for customers and instead have customers look for me,” Estrada said.

Her favorite compliment is when people tell her that the tamales she made were spicy. She makes her tamales by herself in the SVEDC kitchen and having her own kitchen space makes her feel like a professional. “I have an upcoming (food and safety) inspection that I know I will pass,” Estrada said. “I used to be scared of them because they ask a lot of you but all of these obstacles felt easier and easier with SVEDC’s help.”

She aspires to hire employees eventually but said she still has a lot to learn before then. “I often think, ‘I know I am in the right place,’ because here I keep climbing and climbing and climbing,” Estrada said.

Why tamales for Christmas? Each one is like unwrapping a tiny, delicious gift for your mouth. So even if Santa brings you only coal, with some tamales, you’ll always be richer for taste.