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"...From produce to faux ostrich leather wallets and plastic dinnerware with the image of the Blessed Mother, consider El Paisano Food Mart the definition of a one-stop-shop..."
-The Reporter
"...This small chain of Mexican markets has all of the hard-to-find ingredients you'll need for a Mexican feast. Try the raw tortillas for some take-and-bake action; it's the closest you'll get to homemade on a busy weeknight."
-The Reporter
"...Out of the corner of my good eye I spot a rack filled with an insane selection of pan dulce—Mexican sweet bread. I resist as best I can but a concha gives me the come hither. Nopales don’t fail me now..."
-The Reporter
"...Now, the real thing can be hard to find. Having spent a good deal of time trolling the greater metropolitan area of New York City in search of this elusive sandwich, I know this to be true, at least in the northern enclaves; the cries of the revolution haven't quite made it to Queens. Is the taco to the torta as NYC is to Santa Fe? At any rate, here one can easily find the ripe rumblings of a torta underground.The first satellite of the uprising is El Paisano, an emporium of Mexican products on Cerrillos Road..."
-The Reporter
"...'You know where I can get piñón nuts around here, the brown, brown, brown kind?' El Paisano has them,' he tells me. 'It’s a Mexican store down that way.' ...Maybe it’s a good thing that I had to search far and wide for the nuts. It’s a good thing that they haven’t been commercialized yet. They seem more, how shall I say, 'lovable.' And leave it to a Mexican grocery store to give me what I want at a very late hour. They’re underdogs, like the Cubs."
-The Reporter
"The sautéed beef cubes are spiced just right. A decent amount of broth engulfs the meat, just the right amount for dipping the fluffy flour tortillas. The fleshy, grill-marked prickly pear strips are the perfect complement. An ancient food staple dating back to the Aztecs, nopales are still used widely as garnishes, in salads, or as the main dish. Lauded as a natural remedy for everything from diabetes to hemorrhoids, though regular cactus consumption hasn’t really caught on stateside, in Mexico the yearly average is 6.4 kilos (14 pounds) per person. Here, they’re downright heavenly. For good measure, I throw in a chicharrón en salsa verde (green salsa-smothered pork rind) burrito. It tastes just like it should and the gumminess of the smothered pork rind mixed with that of the tortilla makes for a unique culinary experience."
-The Reporter
"Mexican-owned businesses in American cities such as Los Angeles and New York are reaping the benefits of the Trump piñata business, while piñateros in Mexican cities try to keep up with the demand of making and shipping them to the U.S.In Santa Fe, El Paisano, on Cerrillos Road, with a second location in Española, may be the only store in town to sell the Trump piñatas, said Andre."
-The New Mexican
"The first 50 Trump piñatas he bought were from a different piñata maker than the one he currently does business with. Andre didn’t like the look of them because, as he said, “they look like a Ken doll in a suit.” Those sell for $35 and are about 3 feet tall and wear a black suit with what’s supposed to be a red tie. He found a differentpiñatero who made him a second batch of 20 Trump piñatas. Those sold out within three weeks, Andre said, because of how closely they resemble Trump.Those sell for $25 and are about 2 1/2 feet tall, wearing a blue suit with a red tie. Andre recently ordered another 20 of those piñatas, he said, because customers are asking for them."
-The New Mexican
"You won't find the best Mexican food in Santa Fe in a restaurant. It's at El Paisano, a grocery at 3565 Cerrillos Road. "
-The New Mexican
Untitled
David Gray of the Journal North
"You won't find the best Mexican food in Santa Fe in a restaurant. It's at El Paisano, a grocery at 3565 Cerrillos Road. At a lunch counter in one corner of the store, fresh food is prepared instantly. Such good food is due to not only the cooking, but also to co-owner Carlos Andre's attitude.
'There is a lot of variety in Mexican food, and I want to promote new, authentically Mexican dishes that are fresh,' Andre said.
The family atmosphere at Paisano is apparent. That's on purpose, according to Lucia Andre, who is a co-owner.
'We're trying to get people to understand that even though they're not in Mexico, they can still go to their favorite little stand; it's not like being in a restaurant,' she said.
This family atmosphere explains the success that the store, which opened in April 1996, enjoys. A year ago, the Andres opened a second Paisano at 5984 Airport Road.
'And next month, I'm opening a third one in the old TCBY Yogurt, also on Cerrillos (Road). That store, to be called El Mexicano, will have drive-through service,' he said.
Service matters most to Andre. 'The main point is to have all of the services from tortillas to meats without having to get out of the car,' he said.
In addition, next month marks Paisano expansion to Espanola, where the Andres are opening a fourth store. Such expansion could make a businessman nervous.
"It's risky; there's no doubt," he said.
It seems the demand does exist. 'There are a lot of people who come from Espanola, Truchas, Pojoaque, Chimayo and Penasco,' said Andre, "and they get mad because they have to drive all the way to Santa Fe to get their favorite Mexican products. That's why I decided to open a store in Espanola."
To call El Paisano a grocery store is to ignore the many services they provide. Aurora Jimenez, a customer at El Paisano on Cerrillos Road, said she is grateful for the wire service at El Paisano where she sends money to Mexico.
'There are many ways to send money,' she said, 'but with Paisanos there is no risk. Sometimes someone may not have their papers, but here the money always arrives,' Jimenez said.
Jimenez has been in Santa Fe one year and said she brings her business to El Paisano for many reasons.
'You can communicate more with people who speak Spanish and you can get products from back home.'
Jimenez, accompanied by her son Juan Carlos, 3, said Paisano differs from chain grocery stores in the variety of items available.
'Well, I know I can buy ruda in Paisano's. It's a medicinal herb that you cook like tea and drink. It's for sore throats.'
Juan Landeros, another Paisano's customer, agreed. 'My mom is Mexican and my dad is Indian, so I like to come here to buy real Mexican food. They have stuff from Juarez. Besides, you meet more people; there is a lot of stuff that other stores don't have,' he said.
El Paisano stocks scores of herbs for both cooking and treating illnesses.
And, 'We make pinatas,' Carlos Andre said. 'A customer can draw for me what they want the pinata to look like, and a week later, they have it. I pick them up in Ciudad Juarez.'
With more than 2,680 different brands in its inventory, El Paisano is a sort of one-stop-shopping store. Even an Anglo notices the feeling of connection to Mexico, from 'El Diario' of Juarez on sale in the doorway, to the detective comics in Spanish, to the cuts of meat in the butcher shop that look distinctly odd to the non-Hispanic eye.
The Andres endeavor to represent a range of products, not just those from one region. 'I have shipments from Guadalajara, Monterrey, Torreon and Ciudad Juarez,' Carlos Andre said. 'And customers from Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala who come here. There isn't much difference between Mexican products and those of Central America.'
The Andres started out selling imported products to stores like El Paisano. Born in Torreon in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, 'I used to distribute merchandise, wholesale groceries and sweets. One day, I gave my 9-year-old daughter Alicia a box of candy. She began selling candy out of the apartment, and she was selling a lot. That gave me the idea to start my own shop.'
He said the memory "makes me sentimental, because my grandfather ran a grocery store, and later my dad.'
And now Carlos Andre has his own chain. 'I saw that demand was increasing,' he said, explaining the expansion.
And while he notes that 'at least 350 people a week come in here to send money home,' his wife Lucia thinks that another, even more basic reason explains her family's success. The Paisano on Airport Road has two enormous machines that make tortillas.
'There are flour tortillas and cornmeal tortillas,' she said. 'They are completely different. And not only Mexicans, but also New Mexicans they all like to stand in line waiting for their hot tortilla.'
The "Torta Revolution" The Santa Fe Reporter By Zane Fischer
There's more to the authentic Mexican quick-bite than the taco. And I'm not talking about a burrito. Heck, south of Monterrey if you ask for a burrito the most you'll get is a baby donkey. No, amigos, prepare yourself for the coming of the torta sandwich.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good taco as much as the next chowhound, but with the recent rise around here of the panini, the torta's distant, frou-frou cousin, I intuit a general upswing of the specialty sandwich (would this process be called paninization?). Who knows, the long, hard and mostly crunchy reign of the taco may at last be in its decline. Tortas are ubiquitous in Mexico and here, according to all clues on hand, it's just a matter of time: The moment for a torta revolution has arrived.
Now, the real thing can be hard to find. Having spent a good deal of time trolling the greater metropolitan area of New York City in search of this elusive sandwich, I know this to be true, at least in the northern enclaves; the cries of the revolution haven't quite made it to Queens. Is the taco to the torta as NYC is to Santa Fe? At any rate, here one can easily find the ripe rumblings of a torta underground.
The first satellite of the uprising is El Paisano, an emporium of Mexican products on Cerrillos Road. There, Pati Lozoya and Socorro Ferrer prepared me an astonishingly savory torta de carnitas ($3.75). The carnitas-shredded pork-were doused with a little bit of green salsa and nestled among avocado, onions, lettuce and tomato. But expertly applied ingredients aside, one thing made my heart leap: the bread.
The most important part of any torta-and what makes it so darn hard to find-is the bread. A flat, round roll called a telera, slathered with mayonnaise and gently toasted on a grill, is the torta's key ingredient. As providence would have it, Santa Fe has at least two bakeries, Panaderia a Zaragoza and a second El Paisano location in the form of a supermarket on the other side of Cerrillos, that bake telera along with its smaller, less assuming relative, the bolillo. El Paisano supermarket also carries some of the more obscure fillings for an honest-to-goodness torta, like carne adobada or colita de pavo (yes, turkey rump)....
"40 Favorites"
The Santa Fe Reporter By Zane Fischer
As is tradition among Mexican carnicerias and tiendas, there’s more than one El Paisano, but the little grocery’s iteration on Cerrillos Road, next to Big Lots, has earned a special place in our hearts.
It’s not just the central Santa Fe location with the snazzy and inexplicably good paint job of everything from produce to cattle layered on the front windows. It’s not only the paradigm-shifting selection of piñatas available for purchase each and every day. It’s not confined to the unreasonably large selection of tamale pots and tortilla presses. And it is definitely entirely unrelated to the dashboard-sized pig skins available for afternoon snacking. No, our passion for El Paisano is wholly focused on the fabulous food counter, where one may find tacos, tortas, burritos and gorditas in flavors ranging from the expected asadas and barbacoas to the significantly less gringo-friendly offerings of colitas de pavo and lengua desebrada.
After paying at the standard check-out counter, one takes a slip to the food counter and begins the dizzying and English-less process of ordering and specifying ingredients. Spanish a little rusty? Just ask for the carnitas tacos—you won’t regret it. When the next barrage of questioning occurs, smile and say, “Con todo, por favor.” Spanish in good shape? Don’t forget to request some salsa picante, lest you be left with the watery stuff reserved for white boys.
Chow Down: "In the mood for some down-home Mexican grub? Head down Cerrillos way"
Enrique Limon of The Reporter
From produce to faux ostrich leather wallets and plastic dinnerware with the image of the Blessed Mother, consider El Paisano Food Mart (3140 Cerrillos Road) the definition of a one-stop-shop.
What passerbys heading to the neighboring Jo-Ann Fabrics or Big Lots might not know is that inside the mini-market, a lunch counter ripe with some of the tastiest food in town (at some of the best prices) awaits. Bustling during peak hours, the counter serves up everything from tacos (all the standards, plus barbacoa, tripitas and more at $1.75 a pop); a hefty burrito selection ($3.99 each); and no less than eight types of gorditas including carne asada, tongue—and about the only meatless option on the menu, bean and cheese—for $2.99 and under.
On the weekends, El Paisano also dishes out both “rico” menudo and slow roasted lamb shoulder, barbacoa.
“We make four pork dishes a day, three beef and two chicken,” Mercedes Ruiz, who’s in charge of putting together the daily menu explains. “Also, we have about five vegetarian ones, including beef stew.” I try to correct her, but she quickly brushes it off. “Well, it has vegetables.”
Ruiz says enchiladas and tamales are some of the counter’s biggest sellers, and among gringos, chicken fajitas reign supreme. “They ask for them topped with guacamole and cream to try to kill off the spiciness,” she says.
Also popular are their housemade chicharrones (deep-fried pork cracklings).
“We have pork rinds whichever way you like them,” Ruiz says with Bubba Gump accuracy. “Big, small, even pickled.”
Based on her recommendation, I opt for one of the dozen or so guisados (plates du jour), carne con nopales—a hearty, stewed beef and cactus meal accompanied by a side of rice and beans and homemade tortillas for $6.99.
“Wait!” Mercedes frantically screams and dashes over as she sees me take my camera out before taking the first bite. “It’s all about presentation,” she says, wiping of the rim of my [sadly, non-deity-emblazoned] plate.
The sautéed beef cubes are spiced just right. A decent amount of broth engulfs the meat, just the right amount for dipping the fluffy flour tortillas. The fleshy, grill-marked prickly pear strips are the perfect complement. An ancient food staple dating back to the Aztecs, nopales are still used widely as garnishes, in salads, or as the main dish. Lauded as a natural remedy for everything from diabetes to hemorrhoids, though regular cactus consumption hasn’t really caught on stateside, in Mexico the yearly average is 6.4 kilos (14 pounds) per person.
Here, they’re downright heavenly.
For good measure, I throw in a chicharrón en salsa verde (green salsa-smothered pork rind) burrito. It tastes just like it should and the gumminess of the smothered pork rind mixed with that of the tortilla makes for a unique culinary experience.
“It tastes like…fat,” says ace reporter and official SFR food taster Joey Peters.
Meche, as Ruiz is known by her coworkers, brings out a sampler of chile relleno for good measure, adding to my Augustus Gloop-worthy feeding frenzy.
Out of the corner of my good eye I spot a rack filled with an insane selection of pan dulce—Mexican sweet bread. I resist as best I can but a concha gives me the come hither.
Nopales don’t fail me now.
(Articles Written by Locals of NM about our company)
The New Mexican
Traditional celebration: Customers flood local businesses to prepare New Year's tamales by Sandra Baltazar Martinez
Program gives market-goers a dose of prevention by Sandra Baltazar Martinez
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/program-gives-market-goers-a-dose-of-prevention/article_d02daa73-812e-5656-8ae8-b68ebcf959c6.html
Local immigrant advocates want Arizona boycott by Sandra Baltazar Martinez
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/local-immigrant-advocates-want-arizona-boycott/article_bad3b95f-239e-5bd2-a294-
Días de fiesta: Las ventas en los negocios locales varían desde el menudo hasta las piñatas by Sandra Baltazar Martinez
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/el_nuevo_mexicano/d-as-de-fiesta-las-ventas-en-los-negocios-locales/article_e86507d1-341e-559c-9b76-2ce8d69b93c8.html
The Reporter
Restaurant Guide: Where to Eat What to Eat 2011-2012 by Zane Fischer and Alexa Schirtinger
http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-6370-sfr-restaurant-guide-where-to-eat-what-to-eat.html
The Torta Revolution by Zane Fischer
http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-3368-the-torta-revolution.html
In the mood for some down-home Mexican grub? Head down Cerrillos way by Enrique Limón
http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-7903-chow-down.html
Shell Game A Cubs fan goes on a quest for the perfect game-night nut by Thomas Ragan
https://www.sfreporter.com/news/2015/10/20/shell-game/
Devour: Shop Local
http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-2504-devour-shop-local.html
Chow Down
"In the mood for some down-home Mexican grub? Head down Cerrillos way"
Enrique Limon of The Reporter https://www.sfreporter.com/food/2013/11/26/chow-down/
Stop, Shop and Cook
Local chefs take SFR shopping and share recipes for homemade meals
By Alex De Vore, Julie Ann Grimm and Riley Gardner
https://www.sfreporter.com/news/coverstories/2022/07/20/stop-shop-and-cook/
Stop, Shop and Cook
Local chefs take SFR shopping and share recipes for homemade meals
By Alex De Vore, Julie Ann Grimm and Riley Gardner
Chef Fernando Ruiz beats me to the El Paisano Supermarket at Cerrillos Road and Calle del Cielo, but I suspect it’s because he’d told me by phone a few days earlier how he “totally loves that place.”
Ruiz grew up in Arizona and spent summers at his grandparents’ ranch in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico where he was butchering goats by the time he was 10 or 11. El Paisano reminds him of his time in Mexico, and as we wander the aisles picking out ingredients for our meal, he points to particular cooking contraptions, piñatas, wheat snacks and even shaved tamarind as things you can’t likely find in just any old store.
“My grandma had this huge tamarind tree on the ranch, and we’d eat those kind of beans that came off it,” Ruiz recalls. “Tamarind is one of the main ingredients of Worcestershire sauce. See, this is the kind of stuff you’ll see in Mexican grocery stores, and I love it. Because I like to look around, you know? I don’t know what I want to eat tomorrow or next week—I want to walk around and see what looks good now.”
Ruiz came to cooking while in prison in Arizona. Working in the kitchen, he tells SFR, he realized “this is cool...this is what I want to do.”
Once free, he worked his way up through the ranks to eventually become the executive chef at Santacafé. He also toppled celebrity chef Bobby Flay on his own Food Network show, Beat Bobby Flay; and Ruiz won the channel’s competitive cooking show, Chopped, in 2016.
He chooses a number of thin-sliced pork steaks, two chayote squashes, a couple serrano peppers, a fistful of green onion and cilantro, a few green tomatillos and a package of corn tortillas.
We head next to a house owned by a friend of Ruiz’s who has kindly allowed us to use her kitchen. Once there, Ruiz washes his veggies and sets about slicing them into manageable pieces. The tomatillos—which Ruiz says are not quite ripe because it’ll add a brighter flavor and color—go into a blender with the cilantro and one and a half serranos, salt and pepper and, surprisingly, a few ice cubes.
“The blender can get pretty hot, so these ice cubes are going to keep the salsa from getting hot or kind of cooked,” he explains. “It’ll make it a little wet, too.”
This is the kind of salsa you could make in any blender, he notes, and within a few moments, his ingredients have meshed into a satisfying chunky sauce. It has a subtle kick from the serranos that just plain works, and the thought of it soon joining the rest of the dish is enticing to say the least.
“I only added one and a half serranos,” he cautions, “because you want the taste but you don’t want it so spicy that you can’t find the flavor.”
Outside, he fires up the grill before returning to slice the chayote squash, which he slathers in a little olive oil plus salt and pepper. I’m not wildly familiar with this particular gourd, but it resembles a pear in look and texture.
“It smells like rain,” Ruiz muses.
When the time comes to prep the pork steaks, Ruiz advises simplicity. Some salt and pepper will be enough, especially since we have the salsa, but, he says, one mustn’t under-season. Back outside, he plops the chopped green onion and sliced squash on the grill to cook first. After a few minutes, he adds the pork, which, in unison with the onion, smells dreamy. These are thin pork steaks and only take about three minutes on each side, so before I know it, we’re back inside and Ruiz has plated the food alongside a few stove-heated corn tortillas. All told, with prep time, it took about 40 minutes to make, and as I dive headfirst into the melange before me, fully ignoring how I haven’t eaten pork in, like, six or seven years, the power of food compels me.
“Simple, right?” Ruiz says. “People overthink it, but you don’t need to do that with food—a dish doesn’t need 30 ingredients. We had this ready in under an hour, and it’s the kind of thing you could take to a barbecue or a Super Bowl party, and people will just rave about it. Everybody’s always going to want a taco.”
Piñata offers insulted immigrants a way to take a whack at Trump by Uriel J. Garcia of the New Mexican
Donald Trump the Republican candidate isn’t popular among Mexican immigrants. But Donald Trump the piñata has become a hit at this Mexican immigrant-owned carnicería.
“Funny enough, he is bringing us business,” said Jose Carlos Andre, 26, the manager of El Paisano, a midtown Mexican butcher shop that started selling Trump piñatas about four months ago.
The Trump piñata business has been booming since the Republican presidential candidate made his infamous comments on Mexican immigrants last summer when he announced his candidacy. Now, the demand for Trump piñatas has kept piñateros (people who make piñatas) and sellers busy from coast to coast and south of the border. Many families buy them for birthday parties, but others are buying them just to ridicule Trump.
Trump’s unapologetic comments about Mexican immigrants being rapists and criminals outraged many Mexicans both in Mexico and the U.S. But it also inspired piñateros to make piñatas in his Trump’s likeness, including the candidate’s blond combover.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump, now a leading Republican candidate, said last summer, adding, “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
In the seven months since making those comments, Trump has continued with the harsh rhetoric, saying he wants to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, and have Mexico pay for it, to stop illegal immigration. Two former Mexican presidents and the pope recently spoke out against Trump’s proposed immigration policy.
And while Trump is the leading GOP candidate, a recent Univision-Washington Post poll shows that 8 in 10 Hispanic voters have an unfavorable view of him. Seven in 10 said they have a “very unfavorable” view.
Trump has the highest negative rating among Hispanic voters of any of the Republican presidential candidates, according to the survey, conducted Feb. 11 to 18.
Mexican-owned businesses in American cities such as Los Angeles and New York are reaping the benefits of the Trump piñata business, while piñateros in Mexican cities try to keep up with the demand of making and shipping them to the U.S.
In Santa Fe, El Paisano, on Cerrillos Road, with a second location in Española, may be the only store in town to sell the Trump piñatas, said Andre, whose parents own the business.
He didn’t want to disclose who is making the piñatas for El Paisano and whether he’s buying them locally or getting them shipped from Mexico because he fears a local competitor may note the name of the piñatero and cut into his business.
The first 50 Trump piñatas he bought were from a different piñata maker than the one he currently does business with. Andre didn’t like the look of them because, as he said, “they look like a Ken doll in a suit.” Those sell for $35 and are about 3 feet tall and wear a black suit with what’s supposed to be a red tie.
He found a different piñatero who made him a second batch of 20 Trump piñatas.
Those sold out within three weeks, Andre said, because of how closely they resemble Trump.
Those sell for $25 and are about 2 1/2 feet tall, wearing a blue suit with a red tie. Andre recently ordered another 20 of those piñatas, he said, because customers are asking for them.
Most of El Paisano’s customers are Mexican immigrants, who come in for fresh pork, beef, shrimp and other types of meat that are openly displayed behind a glass counter at the rear of the store. But Andre said that since he began selling Trump piñatas, a different clientele started showing up.
“We got some paisanos who come buy the piñata, but we’ve been getting a lot of Caucasians coming in just for the piñata,” he said.
Apart from meat, customers buy common groceries at El Paisano, which means “countryman” in Spanish.
Along the store’s aisles, patrons also find Mexican candy, such as de la Rosa Mazapan, a peanut confection, or Duvalín, a popular creamy frosting candy that comes in three flavors: hazelnut chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.
The first El Paisano store opened 20 years ago, at 3140 Cerrillos Road, after Andre’s dad, who is from Chihuahua, Mexico, saved up enough capital from selling Mexican candy. Andre said selling candy from their apartment was the first job the family had when they moved to Santa Fe from El Paso, where he was born.
Tai Ayers, 41, who lives near El Paisano, said she had never stepped into the butcher shop before Friday. She bought the piñata to celebrate her and her 4-year-old son’s birthday with a party Sunday.
She said she learned from a friend that El Paisano was selling Trump piñatas.
“I completely noticed the irony,” Ayers said as she shopped at Sam’s Club for snacks to fill her piñata. “It actually made me feel good buying this because this is exactly who I want to give my money to — a locally owned shop that services immigrants.”
Ayers’ son is too young to understand why she wanted a Trump piñata, but her friends will appreciate it more than her toddler’s friends, she said.
“When my friend texted me the ad, I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do with my friends — beat up Donald Trump,’ ” she said.
Sam Haozous, 46, a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts, also recently bought the piñata as a gag gift for his father’s birthday April 1, also April Fool’s Day.
In the meantime, however, Haozous has been parading the Trump piñata around town. On his Facebook account, Haozous has been posting pictures of the piñata at bars, restaurants and next to his sleeping grandmother.
In one picture, the piñata is sitting at Tortilla Flats’ bar with a beer, quesadillas and chips in front of it, with the caption, “Donald Trump is making Mexican food and beer great again!” — a play on Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
“Because I’m a photographer, a prankster and social malcontent, this gave me license to do my own photo shoots in local restaurants and public places with the Trump piñata making absurd statements about how great he is going to make everything once he gets elected,” Haozous said.
This isn’t the first time someone has made a public spectacle of a Trump piñata.
In July, a former treasurer of the Santa Fe County Republican Party, Ignacio Padilla, drove around town in his Triumph Spitfire convertible with a Trump piñata looking out from the passenger seat. A sign on the piñata labeled Trump a “racist.” Later, Padilla invited people to smash the piñata on the Plaza.
The antic got Padilla ousted as the party treasurer.
Padilla, 72, recently said he still has the piñata, now with a broken head.
“My whole point of view is that he insulted my race, and I don’t care which party you belong to,” Padilla said. “If you insult my race, I’m going to come after you.”
By Sandra Baltazar Martinez
of The New Mexican
A couple times a month, people stroll into a south-side Mexican meat market in search of more than dinner items. They come to get answers to their health-related questions.
Ventanilla de Salud, a preventive health education and referral service of the Mexican health department, operates out of a small space inside El Paisano market off Airport Road.
The Santa Fe program, managed by The University of New Mexico Cancer Center, is only staffed for three hours on the first Monday and Tuesday of the month. But it will soon increase its office hours, thanks to two grants from the Mexican government. The money -- $41,000 -- will be split between Santa Fe and Las Cruces, where the nonprofit Concilio Campesino del Sudoeste, Inc., manages the Ventanilla program.
The Mexican health department put up $25,000 and the Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior (the Institute of Mexicans Abroad, or IME) contributed $16,000 for the program in New Mexico. The Cancer Center and the Las Cruces nonprofit are the fiscal agents in the state.
The money will allow the Santa Fe program to hire a permanent part-time employee. According to Maria Otero, the Cancer Center's associate director for Hispanic Community Outreach, the center hopes to staff the Santa Fe office five days a week and expand to Espanola by May.
"This (service) is not just available for Mexicans or the immigrant population, but for the entire community," Otero said, because health issues affect everyone.
This is the first time the program opened an office outside of the Mexican Consulate, according to Julio Moctezuma, the IME's New Mexico coordinator. El Paisano is the first business to provide space for the program.
Jose Guadalupe Castaneda, 55, said he inquired about medical coverage for his family several months ago and a Ventanilla representative directed him to La Familia Medical Center where he, his wife and children are now receiving regular medical attention. Castaneda is one of the more than 8,000 clients assisted in New Mexico in 2009. Of those, at least 404 people received some sort of medical attention. In Santa Fe, Ventanilla works with health providers such as La Familia, Woman's Health Services and Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, Otero said.
Fernando Casados, prevention specialist with the Southwest Care Center in Santa Fe, said his organization plans to partner with Ventanilla health educators to offer rapid HIV tests on-site. The rapid test is a finger stick, similar to a diabetes test, and the result is available in 10 minutes.
"We've had an unusual number of Hispanics or Mexicans testing positive," said Casados, adding that most of these recent AIDS cases have been people in advanced stages of the disease.
The Southwest Care Center is launching a Spanish social marketing campaign dubbed "Es mejor saber" or, "It's better to know."
The Latino community tends to see certain illnesses -- such as cancer and AIDS -- as taboo, and they don't talk about it, which causes more harm than good, Otero said. But, "The more we talk about it, the less scared people are going to be. Education is the power for a lot of things."
For Lucia and Carlos Andre, owners of El Paisano Inc., allowing Ventanilla to operate out of their businesses is a way of giving back to the communities they serve. They opened the first El Paisano in Santa Fe in 1996, a second three years later and by 2001 had opened a third market in Espanola. The Andres' provide the space and also pay the electricity and telephone bills.
"This is important to us because having good health, both physical and mental, helps us all as a community," Lucia Andre said. "If we can help our community, we do it as a way to pay back for what they've done for us. We do it out of generosity."
"Shell Game: A Cubs fan goes on a quest for the perfect game-night nut"
The Santa Fe Reporter by Thomas Ragan
A Cubs fan goes on a quest for the perfect game-night nut
I read somewhere years ago that if you can recall your very first sip of alcohol ever (not your first drunken episode, but your very first taste of booze), then there was a good chance that you were an alcoholic.
Of course, it’s probably all hogwash, written by some reporter who was drunk at the time, operating on deadline and coming across some survey.
But for some reason, it’s stuck with me, and without getting into whether I can actually remember or not, I’ll just say that I do remember eating my very first piñón, which, following that logic, would make me a piñón-holic.
It was about 20 years ago. I’d spotted them in one of those gumball machines inside what is now the Smith’s grocery store on Cerrillos Road just south of St. Michael’s. I was new to town, and they caught my eye, as they seemed to be staring back at me.
I stopped, threw in a quarter, turned the handle and then went where every dirty hand had gone before as I scratched a few nuts from within the tiny dispenser.
I studied them for about a second and then tossed them back, shells and all.
Already roasted, they were crunchy. They were also pretty “damn good,” like that milkshake John Travolta enjoyed in Pulp Fiction. Probably good because of the salt, and it wasn’t until a few months later that a good friend made me choke on one, screaming, “Hey, man, you’re not supposed to be eating those with the shells!”
They’re like sunflower seeds, he explained. They’re meant to be spit out, ya dummy. Yeah, hey, I eat what I want to eat and in whatever manner. I never had patience for sunflower seeds or the attention span for cartoons, so I eat what I want. It’s my call, my stomach, my intestinal tract.
And so it was with just an hour to go before the Chicago Cubs were to play Sunday night against the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series playoffs that I started thinking about piñón and about getting my fix on.
I knew it’d been a helluva crop this year because of the crazy wet spring we’d had. And bountiful crops don’t come around every year, kinda like the Cubs in the playoffs. This was the year of good and plenty, local pickers had told me out in Truchas.
So I took off in my truck, thinking it would be on par with a convenience store trip. I immediately headed for Santa Fe’s major arteries, hoping to catch a street vendor. But I had no luck.
So I steered for Smith’s, back to the scene where I’d first crunched that mouthful. It was my very first attempt to see if a chain was carrying them or if Smith’s had somehow miraculously commercialized this nut. It’s off the radar, to be sure.
The New Mexico Department of Agriculture doesn’t even keep statistics on them, in a state that has a long line of agricultural commodities, which amount to $4 billion a year.
It’s got to be just as popular as the chile, which ranks as the fifth most valuable commodity, and pecans, which are actually the fourth, but no statistics on the edible seed of the pine tree. Why?
Simply because it grows in the wild and is considered a natural resource. If it’s not planted or it’s not a part of livestock, then it ain’t a commodity. It’s not a pinto bean (11th) it’s not an onion ( 7th) and it’s certainly not cotton (9th). Hell, even mohair makes the list at Number 17.
Yet no piñón, which is what Smith’s employees also tell me. But, then one adds: There is an employee who sells them on the side, and “she’s making a killing!” Check back with her the next day, she says. Will do.
Now I’m hurtling down toward the Walmart Supercenter at the southern end of town. Ol’ Big-Box gotta have them, I thought. Ya gotta believe, the Cubs-fan mantra. Whoa. Strange saying that as I head for Walmart, monopoly of all monopolies. Wait. That’s the Yankees, the big box of the Major Leagues. The Cubs are about as non-commercial as you get. More than a century has passed since they won the World Series. Being a diehard is a part of the tradition.
Kinda like piñón. For centuries, Native Americans and New Mexicans here have either been shaking the nuts loose during harvest or merely waiting for them to fall on the ground. They’re so popular that the feds have put a visegrip on them along with the rest of their resources, and you pretty much need permission to harvest them before you start thinking about going outside that foul line and into BLM and US Forest Service land, where piñón trees grow in abundance.
But in the Walmart, that abundance hasn’t trickled down. No piñón nuts, reports Philip Martinez, 33, who works in the meat department. But he also just so happens to sell them on the side. Swing by the next day, and he’ll sell me a pound of them, raw, for $13.
So now I’m 0 for 2 on getting my hands on the nuts, but 2 for 2 discovering people who sell them. Crazy stats, and I’m out the door, headed for Albertsons up the street, near the Target off Zafarano Drive.
Inside, Jonathan, the clerk, says yes, Albertsons has them. I’d just hit a homer. I follow him back, and he points to a very tiny bag of already shelled piñóns, imported from China. Bummer, premature cheer. Thanks, China. Yikes, $3.99 for a few handfuls? Sounds like World Series tickets, relatively speaking; well, in indirect proportion.
“I don’t like the way they taste,” Jonathan blurts out. “They leave a sour taste in my mouth.”
Good to know. Now I’m booking back on Cerrillos and heading for the Giant across from Counter Culture. This time, I’m a Phil Niekro knuckler traveling in the low 70s. The game is drawing near.
“You got any piñónes?” I ask the clerk.
“No,” comes the automatic answer, followed by some rethinking: “Wait, let’s just double-check to be sure.”
There’s peanuts, almonds, pistachios, but no piñón. Then she points to Whole Foods, and it all dawns on me. I’m looking for the local kind, the kind in the shells, I tell her.
“Oh, you’re looking for the brown, brown, brown kind,” she says. There’s usually a guy out on Airport Road near the Auto Zone, she says. But he’s probably not there.
Thanks. I leave. I’m filling my tank at the pump when a kid approaches me and asks for a buck for the bus. I say I don’t have it, but then, like the clerk inside, I double-check inside the car door and score some loose change for him. He’s grateful.
“Hey, where you from?” I say.
“Santa Fe, bro,” he answers. Love it when I’m called “bro,” only because it’s one of those words that can either be an insult or affectionate, depending on how it’s said. I’m thinking his was more friendly now that I’d given him some money.
It’s crunch time. Maybe this is my last chance.
“You know where I can get piñón nuts around here, the brown, brown, brown kind?”
“El Paisano has them,” he tells me. “It’s a Mexican store down that way.”
He bums a cigarette, and then we part ways; he’s two dollars richer, but my info is priceless. The rosary dangles from my mirror like a gold neckchain as I steal down Cerrillos again, no umpires around.
Turns out the bro is right. There they are, inside a tiny bag, raw, ready to go. Just under $4, but popular as all hell. All I need now is to roast them.
I’m back home. Two minutes to game time. I turn on the oven, bring out the cookie sheet and then spray on the Pam; I think of a girl I once knew named Pam and then slide the pan into the oven.
I’ve made it. Maybe it’s a good thing that I had to search far and wide for the nuts. It’s a good thing that they haven’t been commercialized yet. They seem more, how shall I say, “lovable.” And leave it to a Mexican grocery store to give me what I want at a very late hour. They’re underdogs, like the Cubs.
And so hope springs eternal. I sit back, the nuts are in the oven, and I know I’m nuts. “Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must lead.” I think that was Charles Bukowski.
My thoughts turn to Wrigley Field, the diehards, the nuts, the store Nuts on Clark across the street. And I’m thinking, Peanuts! Get your peanuts!
The vendors’ call. It’s as much a part of my DNA as piñón picking in the forest is among Northern New Mexico locals.
I say to myself, “¡Piñónes! Get your piñónes, here!”
If the Cubs don’t make the World Series, I can still pine for it while eating a few of them here in Santa Fe. There’s always next year—to see what the season and the spring rains bring.