It's a crisp, clear, early autumn night, and I'm with a group of friends at City Field in Queens, New York. We're watching the Mets play the San Diego Padres. I'm not that into baseball, but it's a playoff game, so I know it's a pretty big deal. The stadium lights are all on, illuminating the bright green field. The crowd is loud and fired up. There's a light breeze. My friends and I chat between innings, sipping on giant plastic cups of beer and eating overpriced concessions.
How many nachos with beef bass?
That's okay? All over City Field you can easily buy nachos, you know, the round do chips that come with a little tub of cheese sauce in a cardboard box that opens up into a tray on your lap, and find vegan nachos at a vegan food stand tucked away in a lone little corner of the stadium, all the way in the back. City Field is also equipped with these big nachos only concession stands. There's eight of them. The smell of warm cheese surrounding them is like a siren call.
And that's where my friends and I went where we could get all the toppings we'd ever.
Want, sour cream, blacamole, beans, cheese on Jolopeno's, and a little pigoda gayo.
That's all.
Now, nachos are a big business. Waiting in line, I spoke to some of the workers manning one of these tricked out nacho stands. They sell two options. The difference is the kind of plate you can get your nachos on. Out of curiosity, how many of these do you sell?
Usually are a lot.
Yeah, we'll go through more than a hundred of these, more than one hundred of the plates.
More than a hundred of them. Wow. And that's like a busy right, like tonight. So well, that's like regular as in maybe a regular season game that isn't sold out, but on a busy night when City Field gets to capacity, holding nearly forty two thousand people, maybe more than two hundred of eight. On the field, the pros swinging bats and stealing bases take center stage, but in the stands, well, nachos to do a pretty good job of stealing the spotlight.
That wasn't always the case, though, the very first nachos weren't served in a crowded stadium in New York City. They were made in a mostly empty restaurant in Mexico along the border, and they weren't designed to be a big hit, But nachos would end up bigger than anyone could have ever imagined.
From Futromedia and PRX, It's Latino Usa, I Maria nor Rosa and who's in the movie food for some nachos. Today we're serving up the history and the legacy of this iconic snack food, nachos. You can already taste them, hm hot melted cheese on fried corn, dortilla chips, or as we call them in Spanish, to torpos. All of that topped off with a familiar kick of prickly calapagno.
We often consider nacho's part of a family of classic quote unquote American fast casual foods, but something that many of these dishes have in common is their foreign roots, like, for example, pizza, which was brought to the East Coast by Italian immigrants, or hot dogs, which is basically a riff on German frankfurters.
Nachos are no different.
The dish itself originated in Piedras Negras, a small town in the Mexican state of Gualuila, right next to the southern border of Texas.
Time for detour back down the Rio grand to Piros Negress, Mexico to explain the exact moment in history.
But a nacho was created?
How and for who?
But even with some high profile figures like the late Anthony Bourdain exploring the roots of nachos, the vast popularity of the dish still overshadows its border town origins. People tend to overlook that the classic natural flavor profile all comes from Mexican food. Each time you bite into a tortilla chip with that gouey cheese sauce, it's kind of like gesso fundido, right, So you're actually eating an appropriation of this cuisine, the result of someone else's pursuit of profit.
What's more, in our pursuit of a delicious snack, we forget that someone had to actually create this dish. Nacho's didn't just materialize one day at a concession stand, and its birth is still largely unknown to the crowds of people who fill their bellies and wallets thanks to natchos. Today on Latino USA, we're bringing you a story that we originally ran in twenty twenty three. It's all about giving credit where credit is due, and I'm going to give you just a hint. Nacho isn't just the name
of a popular snack. It was first the name of a man, and his biggest impact isn't actually at the ballpark. It's back home with the family he provided for. His descendants are living in Texas preserving his legacy. Producer Alejandra Salasad actually grew up with some of those family members, so she's going to take this story from here.
It's summertime in San Antonio, Texas. The late July heat floats off the asphalt in front of my parents suburban home.
Thanks to chat.
Oh, that is a dead cicada and with my mom, her name is my Lina. We just stepped over a shell of a cicada on our way to our car. More cicadas hidden in the trees sing their dog day music, breaking the sleepy afternoon silence. Hika, my microphone is on. I think this is the first time my mom has ever seen me at work in the field holding a long shotgun mic with a tangle of wires and big over ear HEADPHONESMI the mic has to be close to your face to get audio. No, we're driving now, on
our way to my the e Cristina's house. The Cristina is actually the reason I'm working on this story. Gristina isn't technically a blood relative, but she and her entire family might as well be. Gristina and my mother have been best friends since they were young teenagers. They're both from the same border town of Eagle Pass, Texas or Igle Pass if you're a local. My mom and pretty much all of her friends grew up with their lives
split across the Rio Grande. Mommy started going to school in Eagle Pass when she was in the third grade, but her family home was still on the Mexican side, in a town called Pierre's Negras Squaw.
Cross the border every day to go to school every day, twice coming from and then going back.
And then.
I mean, it was just it was no big deal crossing, you know. It was just like I and annoyance Cariacolla Cali. But other than that, it was like, eh, not, like now that makes such a big deal that go, Oh my god.
Christina and my mom met when they were in high school and the friendship took off from there. Both women grew up falling in and out of touch until they both settled down and reconnected in San Antonio. They had children who they treated as each other's family. Dia Cristina is actually my youngest sibling's godmother. I remember visiting Dia Cristina and Dio Felix's house when I was little, hanging out with their kids. Our dads watched Spurs basketball games
and our moms shared cheesemath at the kitchen table. Their bond turned out to be a lifelong one.
And never got tired of her, and she never got tired of me. And she's pretty much the closest thing I have to a sister.
I don't remember when my mom first told me about Christina's paternal grandfather, Ignacio a Naya. He was more commonly known as Natcho to his friends and family, Ignacio Nacho a Naya, and his story has stuck in my head ever since. How can you forget something like that? See, Gristina's grandfather is Natcho be natural a culinary inventor behind well nachos. Yeah, plot twist. It took me a second to let it sink in too. To be totally clear,
the whole natural thing isn't central to Mythia's life. When I asked her for her blessing to do a story on it, well it didn't seem like that big of a deal. Just another day at brunch, you know. After a half hour drive through the San Antonio suburbs, Mammy and I arrive at Christina's house greeted by a dog, as usual, Pristina and her family have always been animal lovers.
Hello.
Hello, Christina is smiling. I haven't seen her in a few months since her daughter's wedding last March, and she gives me a big hug. She's wearing a casual navy Maxi dress, her hair pinned back away from her face, and half updo. She's always dressed nicely whenever I see her. A couple of cats linger outside, and an older boxer, Roxy is in the living room. A novela plays on the TV fun fact. Mammy and Christina were born on
the same day, exactly one year apart. Both women are in their mid fifties now, and their dynamic is the result of decades of messing with each other. They both talk very fast, and they're both very funny. They're always laughing. Eventually, we sit down at Christina's dining table, squeaky clean and wrapped in a plastic cover. I set up a little mic stand for my idea. Could you just tell us just to your name, your age, and originia right now.
My name is Christina Losantos and I live in San Antonio. I am one of the granddaughters of the inventor of the Nacho Signacio Naya, my grandfather, daughter of Ignacioonaya Junior.
Res My Rest in Peace de los Santos is Christina's married name. Her maiden name is Anaya. I want my thea to feel comfortable in front of the mic. She hasn't been interviewed about her grandfather before, and definitely not in English. She says, her dad did some interviews years ago, but it's not like a lot of people come calling to asktianayas about Nacho. In fact, Christina had to reach out to some relatives to make sure she remembered the
entire story correctly. The first thing she mentions is not work. By the time Christina was born, her grandfather already ran his own restaurant, Natcho's Restaurant in Pierre's Negres. He'd opened it after decades of working all jobs in the industry. He liked cooking and always gravitated towards the kitchen. But first and foremost, he was a businessman.
He passed away when I was like eighteen seven or eight, and what I remember of him, it was just being in business all the time. I remember getting to the every day there to the restaurant.
He was always busy. Natural Naya was a serious looking man, with a light gray mustache and thick dark hair that he liked to brush back. Christina always remembers him wearing a suit jacket with a button up shirt and a tie. Rarely did he wear short sleeves or t shirts out of the house.
My grandfather was a really elegant man. I'm going to show you a picture.
In one picture, he said, bar of his own restaurant, reclined on a stool, holding up a drink and a toast with a group of other sharp dressed men, A small smile lingers on the edge of his mouth. I had never seen these photos of Natcho until Pustina shows them to me at her dining table. Chances are that you, dear listener, haven't either, because a lot of the photos of Nacho that you can find online aren't of Natcho
at all. Thenia's joke about it, but still frustrating and kind of sloppy, like the people who document and share our history didn't really care about getting the details right. A few years ago, Natcho was commemorated with a Google doodle for his one hundred and twenty fourth birthday. For a whole day, an animated drawing of a round faced man assembling Nacho's popped up on the side's homepage. But the image that came up when you looked up Ignacio Naye,
that wasn't him. Guisina was surprised that no one ever reached out to the family to get a curate photos, not Google, and not any of the websites hosting images of Ignacio, And like, what the heck is this?
I asked my son to can you change the picture? Can you tell them that this is not your great grandfather? And he tried, he tried, He sent them to Google and he got it to change the picture. I think it lasts a lot, even like fifteen twenty minutes.
I put it back.
Yeah, I like that's a lot much.
Hya.
Yeah, Wikipedia at least has an accurate photo up as of this taping, and it seems like the Internet generally gets the broad strokes of Natural's story right. He was born in eighteen ninety five in Mexico in a small town named Manuel Benavides in the state of Chihuaua. It's pretty close to the border on the west side of Texas, about fifty miles from Big Bend National Park. After losing his parents at a young age, Natcho decided to move to the US when he was just a teenager, around
fourteen or fifteen years old. He hopped around small towns in Texas working odd jobs landscaping, bussing, waitering, until he settled on the border in Pierre's Negres, opposite the Rio Grande from Eco Past Texas. And that's where he made history based off of how your family has like preserved the story and how you tell the story or remember it now, because you kind of walk me through the story of how the natchal was invented.
Whenever someone tells the story, they always changed something on the story. That's what I've been noticing. Even they publish things, and they always change something in the story, but what I know it was that my grandfather was working at Club Victoria.
Glue Victoria, that used to be a swanky restaurant right near the river at the border on the Pierre's Negra side. Natchal was a waiter there at the time. He also used to work at a nearby spot called Blue Moderno, and some write ups claim that it was that restaurant where this all went down the Anayas though insist it was Clue Victoria. The year is nineteen forty three.
The story was that he was working there and what I knew that the restaurant was closing when the group of ladies he was like around ten to twelve ladies that were wives of military men and or generals at the Air Force base over there in Ego Pass and they went to visit to have dinner something in Pierrol Negas.
So they show up to.
The restaurant and my grandfather welcomed them in, but the chef of the place at that time he was gone.
If that chef had still been in the kitchen, who knows what would or would not have happened.
He was trying to, okay, what can I prefer since the kitchen was close already. They just asked, no, just not an appetizer.
That's it.
We don't need anything else.
Oh.
He went out and start cutting the tortillas, fry them, and get the cheese.
The original Natural recipe has been lightly disputed over the years. Some records say Natural used Colby Longhorn cheese to create his bass. Christina, though swears it was shredded Wisconsin.
And he put them in the oven and bring them to them and they loved it.
That almost feels like an understatement. Naturals were a hit. The textures of the cheese and the jalapenos were just right, with an added crunch in each bite. Each to topo was compact, a self contained delivery system for flavor, and it was so convenient to share in a group.
Mimi Finan, that's the lady that was with that group, and I believe she used to live She was the one that brought them over there, but I did she used to live around in Piero Neros or Eagle Pass or something. So she was the one that asked him, what is the name of these dishes up? Since we like it, he said, Ah, I don't know, I just I just did it. Right now, and I just created right now, and I don't have a name for it.
So she was like, well, so what's your name. He was like, my name is Signacio Nacho, and she was the one that say we're gonna call him Nacho specials.
Ignacio Naya remained in the restaurant business for the rest of his life, and he kept making nachos Clue. Victoria eventually added the dish to its menu, and in nineteen sixty one, almost twenty years after creating his namesake platter, Ignacio opened up his own restaurant. It was on Avenida Caranza, the main street of Pierre Negres, just a couple of miles from the Border bridge. The Anaya family home was right next to the restaurant, connected by a door in
the kitchen. When she was a little kid, Christina would go spend time at Nacho's restaurant after school. He used to have a chef.
His name was Margharrito, Don Margharrito, and all my and that he was like super nice, super sweet man.
Nacho had mentored Margharito since the latter was a kid. After he found the boys selling knickknacks on the street to make cash, Margharito became family NATO's right hand man. Thanks to him, Christina made her own contribution to the restaurant menu.
I didn't like cheese back then, so the nachos had cheese in the round of kalapenno. And I will always say no chice on the nachos and no jalapeno's now spicy. Can you make me just the ta papos with beans? And he was like, you are you always want to change my recipes, but he will spoil me and make me my bean nachos.
By the time Christina was experimenting in NATO's kitchen, Mexican restaurants all across South Texas were already offering their own takes on the dish, directly competing with her grandfather. His restaurant proudly declared itself home of the Nachos Special, but this had become bigger than that. Early on, Christina made the decision to just roll with.
It, realize on that it became popular. He was, you know, yeah, whenever started getting older, probably when I was in.
Middle school, high school.
But he never was like something like, oh my god, this is my grandfather's invention. And I wasn't saying anything because people will say, yeah right, you know, don't believe it, so what for? So instead of telling everybody feeling like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no I was, I better don't say anything, just enjoy it whatever.
Natcho was offered the chance to take Natcho's Special to the big time by patenting the name or even starting a chain of restaurants around it. Several sources, including the NIS, corroborate that he had a small window to patent his invention and potentially profit from it in the late nineteen forties and fifties, but Nato opted not to go through
the trouble. In an interview with the San Antonio Express News in nineteen sixty nine, when Nacho was already in his seventies, he said that he had no idea just how big this snack would become. For the longest time, he thought it just wasn't a bet worth making a tourdlla with cheese on it. You mean, like the kind of foodie as a kid.
Really introducing Comble's new Nacho cheese souped in it turns anything not soo zippy into Nacho zippy.
It's Christina's father Ignacio and Aya Junior did try to revisit the question of patents in the nineteen eighties and nineties, but it was too late. By then, Nacho's were already in the public domain.
Are you missing that Taco Bells knew nachos cheese?
Tried Nacho cheese doritos? Did they taste as good as they crunch?
You couldn't patent it even if you tried. Nacho and his family never did directly profit off of the Nacho's widespread success. Nacho's restaurant isn't even there anymore. Nacho died in nineteen seventy five, but his invention would live on, and just a year after his passing, one savvy San Antonio based entrepreneur would take Nachos to the big leagues.
Coming up on Latino Usa.
Nachos take the world by storm, but their skyrocketing popularity obscures.
The Nachos real origin story.
Stay with us, Yes, hey, We're back. In nineteen forty three, Ignacio Nacho Anaya invented his namesake dish in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras, Guauila. When we left off, Nachos had already become a popular appetizer dish all over South Texas. But nachos would become even bigger than their inventor ever anticipated, thanks to an enterprising concession's food business headquartered less than two hundred miles away in San Antonio.
So here's producer Alejandra Salasad with the rest of the story.
It's the turn of the twentieth century. An Italian boy from a small Sicilian province moves to the United States. He's fourteen years old and alone, arriving in New Orleans in eighteen ninety, decides to build a life in this land of opportunity. He opens a grocery store. He gets married and starts a family. They moved to Texas in the early nineteen hundreds, eventually permanently relocating to San Antonio. The grocery business comes with them, now renamed after the family,
Liberto Market and Grocery One. Liberto son Enrico inherits the business, and in the decades that follow the store shifts its focus to selling concessions roasted peanuts and popcorn, candy and bulk, and Rico trains his son Frank to take over next.
My grand parents had my dad and they're like only child. That's it.
So my dad got to take the business over by himself. He didn't have any brothers and sisters.
This is Tony Liberto. He's the fourth generation to run the family business. The company, though, isn't called Libertos anymore. In this story about namesakes and nicknames, Frank eventually renamed the company after his father, Rico Rico Rico's Products Company. As the company's current president and CEO, Tony oversees a business that has expanded to all fifty states in the US and fifty seven countries worldwide. You've probably seen their
products at movie theaters and stadiums. They're even selling their snacks in grocery stores now.
When it started from my great grandfather, and then you know a few years ago, we have business in Dubai, we have a business in Korea. And when I fly over there and I see those products on the shelf in those countries, and then I sit back and think about my grandfather at fourteen came over here.
Just gives you chills.
Rico's growth really took off under Tony's dad, Frank Liberto. The way Tony tells it, Frank was a concession's visionary. He expanded the business across Texas to movie theaters and select stadiums in Dallas. In Houston big gets, but his biggest move came to fruition in his hometown.
He to a restaurant here in San Antonio called Metta. This is in the early I guess seventy three, seventy four, and he ordered nachos and he's like, man, this is a good thing. If I could figure out a way to sell nachos in a concession stand, we could probably make some money.
Nacho's original formula and the elegant simplicity of it to topos, melted cheese and jalapago convinced Frank to make his own version of the dish, one that could be sold on a mass scale. He made deals with the riet chip producers and jalapeno growers in Mexico. He found a company that made cheese sauce, and in nineteen seventy six, Frank called up Arlington Stadium, where the Texas Rangers used to play. He convinced them to let him debut his new concoction
at a baseball game. Frank and his family made little carts to sell the nachos tables with red and white stripes running down the sides.
We built nine carts, and I was in high school and I was making these carts with him, and we put him up there and it went off like wildfire. People were standing in line, ten people deep in the concessions this little cart, and you'd hear the crack of the bat, you hear the stadium roar, and nobody would leave the line.
They wanted to get some nachos.
Nachos spread fast. Within a year, Rico's set up shop in Texas Stadium, then home to the Dallas Cowboys football team. On September fourth, nineteen seventy eight, Hot Shot Monday night football commentator Howard Cosell gave nachos his approval on a live broadcast, which boosted interest and sales.
Then the movies came calling, and Dad said, no, no, no, no, this is a stadium item.
You have velvet seats, you have carpeting.
You're going to be calling me and telling me I got to clean your theaters because you've got stains all over your seats.
But Frank's concerns were drowned out by the wide demand for nachos across the country. People could not get enough. By nineteen eighty, just four years after making their stadium, dabut You, nachos had already become a popular theater concession, along with heavy hitters like popcorn, hot dogs, and soda.
So then we put it in you not a artists theaters who now is regal theaters and then other theaters General Cinema AMC. At one point we had about nine eighty five percent of the theater chains across the United States using our product.
What Ricos did with nachos isn't just a matter of market dominance. The concession nacho is a cultural force. There's a sizable chance that you, the person listening to this, know what nachos are because of Ricos.
Hi, folks, I'm Rico.
Oh he's peppy.
See. You can find us at the concession stand, in.
All the fig round dortilla chips, the unsettlingly artificial yellow cheese sauce, the concept of nacho cheese existing separate from cheese. That's all things to Ricos. Remember, folks, we are the new star at the snackbar KOs nachos. Would I tell people, O, yeah, I'm doing sure with the nachos they have like a vivid idea of the nacho in their mind, which is the repos right.
Yeah, Well, because if you think about it, they're experiencing our product. And Dad always said, you know, as a concessionaire is someone who sells product, food and beverage to people who didn't come to his place to buy food and beverage. They went there to watch a ballgame or movie or you know, basketball game, but the food and beverage experience was part of it.
So it's kind of a nostalgia thing.
How did nachos end up at so many formative movie or sports events of our youth? The most obvious answer is that they're tasty. No one is going to say no to cheese flavor and salty corn chips. But nachos were an extraordinary business opportunity for Ricos. Frank didn't invent the foundational flavor combination or even the concept of nachos. What he invented was essentially a hyper efficient delivery system mind for an environment where people are naturally very short on time.
Dad knew that concession sells is about transaction time. Grab the chips, hand to the next person, ladle the cheese over it, bill the peppers, on and collect the cash so you could serve somebody in about fifteen seconds.
Nachos became a dream for vendors bottom lines, a way to make the most bang for your buck. Start with the cheese sauce. At the time, real cheese would go bad too quickly behind a concession stand, and it was too tricky to measure and melt fast. The trick was to emulsify US cheese, concentrate and mix that with water and juice left over from cannedarrabagos. That was part of the brilliance of frank small park nachos. Every bit of the ingredients went to use. Rico's still uses a similar
formula for their package Nacho Cheese today. Today nachos are Rico's top selling item. On average, the company sells nearly one hundred million pounds of cheese sauce per year. Early on, in reporting this story, I noticed some similarities between Nacho's Nachos and Rico's nachos. They share immigrant roots, and they've both become smash hits in the US. Yet ever since the beginning, they've served distinct purposes. One was a strike
of lightning, the other a shrewd business call. So it makes sense that everyone I spoke to for this story, including and especially Ricos, emphasized that what Ricos sells are not the original nachos. This is not what Natchoa and Naya invented.
Dad never claimed that he started nachos. He always claimed he originated the concession nacho, which he did the ballpark nacho.
And Toni says that Ricos has always deferred to Ignacio and Naya as the creator of this dish. Still, they've gotten some blowback about it before, and they probably will after this story airs too.
People have kind of.
Called us out on our website, So, you guys didn't originate the nacho. It was originated by the Ania family, and we politely say, we know, you know, we're not claiming that we originated this actual dish.
While nachos are now mass produced concession items, they also continue to be served as Nacho created them, freshly made straight from the kitchen. Many Mexican restaurants in the US offer nachos as a staple appetizer that you sit down to enjoy. For example, remember Mitierre, that San Antonio restaurant or Frank Roberto first tried nachos the restaurant still sells them today too, piping hot with cheese melted over a
layer of brief fried beans. Yet the fact remains that Ricos and the Libertos built an empire off of nachos, and the man who conceptualized the Nacho and his family didn't. Nacho's restaurant struggled to stay afloat after his death, eventually shuddering for good in the nineties. Unlike Rico's, there's no beautiful office in prime downtown San Antonio. For the anis no millions of dollars in natural sales. Ricos couldn't patent their product either, but they do hold valuable registered trademarks
on their cheese, sauce and other items. So how does that square.
If they could have patented, they would have all been very very happy with that for sure, And people can take that concept. You know, other restaurants here can take that concept and do the same thing. So it's the fact that they couldn't patent it, I think is where way they could benefit as a serve it to as many notch of restaurants as they could. But we as a company are serving too, you know, large national chains and there's a lot more volume. I guess you're obviously
going to see more sales in that environment. But since you know Ignacio couldn't patent it, I mean, I don't know how else they could have benefited.
You know, it's a food product.
Have there been any efforts to kind of retouch them or to work with.
Them or no?
But you just thought, just give me goosebumps, babe. We should, you know, try to get back together and you know, have recognition together for what our families and our forefathers have done for us.
Yeah, that would be neat.
From what both Tony and the Anayas can remember. The last time their families interacted was back in the seventies, right when Frank Liberto was poised to debut the concession Nacho. He went down to Eagle Pass to speak with Ignascio and Aya Junior, Gisina's father. Both men have passed away since nobody I could speak to knows what was said or agreed to in that meeting.
The story of the Nacho is really a story of the loss of an apostrophe. It's Nachos Special and that's the original name, and it continued to be called Nacho Special there, but over time the agency of NATCHO was erased.
Adan Midrano is a chef and food writer. A born in Reisdejano from San Antonio's West Side, Adan is dedicated to preserving and elevating the cuisines of Texas Mexican communities, the food of South Texas and Northern Mexican regions, which have a shared culinary history that reaches back centuries before
the US Mexico border was ever established. Just to be clear, Texas Mexican food isn't an extended term for tex mechs, which is a wholly separate thing, an adaptation of Mexican food by white settlers in Texas in the early nineteen hundreds. Though tex mechs does represent what happens to a lot of Mexican cuisine in the US.
They simply took it upon themselves to call tex mechs the real thing, even though it's an appropriation of our food.
And that's kind of what happened with nachos two. In twenty nineteen, Adan published his cookbook Don't Count the Tortillas, The Art of Texas Mexican Cooking. It is his latest effort to reclaim the region's culinary history from misinformed authors, many of whom are often white or possess little understanding of the region.
In my book, I make reference to the Huffington Post story that says that the nacho was born because there was no chef and a waiter just threw things together. This is how food writers have erased the voice of our culinarians and the agency. By agency, I mean the creative power that we have to create beautiful food.
Over time, nachos have become part of a pantheon of quote unquote American foods. In many ways, its origin story has been eclipsed, flattened down, and swallowed whole by American myth making. To create his dish, Natcho had to draw from the culinary history of the US Mexico borderlands. He worked on the fly, Yes, but it wasn't at random, pairing corn, tortillas and cheese with some chile for heat. That was a deliberate choice, inspired by the gesadillas and
salsas of his youth. It's an instinct that comes from inherited culinary knowledge and a lifetime of eating the specific foods and flavors of your people. In the case of Texas, Mexican cuisine, which isn't typically taught in formal classroom settings. A lot of this food is archived by home cooks, often women, and passed down between generations at the dinner table. These are the kinds of details that avan worries will get lost if local histories are not properly documented.
Food narrates our history and also narrates our identity. When my mom hands me and I'm four or five years old, the tortilla beautifully done in the traditional way, that's the memory of our history and of our ancestry. That's how food it works. For example, in Ninchilada, everything about in Ninchilada speaks to our ancestry, our ancestry as indigenous people, the corn being indigenous, the salt being indigenous, and the
chilis this is the original esthetic. So every time that I eat and make this in Chilada, I'm reaching back into history to our indigenous character.
A dish like the modern day in Chilava also nods to the introduction of European colonists in Mexico, cheese being a quote unquote old World food brought over in the years following the violent conquest of Latin America, but in taking a foreign ingredient like cheese, producing it with regional materials and resources, and combining it with indigenous staples to make now classic recipes. Mexican cooks created a new culinary language unique to them in creating natural special That's a
legacy that Ignacio and Naya contributed to as well. It's a big reason why Avan is especially fascinated by naturale. The dish provides an avenue to excavate the histories of the region, from the lasting impact of colonialism up to today's fraught immigration politics. After all, as the borderland creation, nachos are a glaring reminder that political divides our artifice. In this way, An argues, food is a more honest guide than any map could ever be.
It's the power of food and our gathering in family and in community that have maintained our cohesiveness and the coherence of who we are, and that our ancestry goes back ten thousand years on this land, this Texas land. When you say nachos cannot be explained by because they came over from Mexico, nor can they be explained that they were born in the United States. They can only be explained by understanding that region as a landscape. Food
does not have nationality. Food has roots, and so worldview that people have that Mexicans came over and they're all immigrants is simply put into crisis when you go into the origins and the beauty of the Nacho's special dish.
I'm back with my mother at the Cristina's house. This time Christina invited her sister Marcella over. Marcella's daughter and grandchildren are here. Calisi and the dogs are back as well. We sit down again and early on I mentioned that I've spoken with folks from Ricos. Both women looked surprised that I went to them for a story about nachos, and Marcella loves.
No those are fake, it's another kind of.
Those are snacks. This is an appetizer. Marcella came out to talk about Nacho's nachos. She actually brought a large children's picture book with her called Well Nachos Nachos. It was published in twenty twenty by an author named Sandra Nicol. She was the first person to reach out to the Anayas in years, even traveling to Texas to meet some of the family. He lives in Switzerland, oh Switzerland.
Yeahno, yes, I was texting with her in Nasala comported.
Marcella is fifty nine, a couple of years Christina Senior. As Ignacio Andaya Junior's second oldest child. Marcella has a few more memories of her grandfather than Christina does.
That's the only game my grandfather played with us, Lotteria this because we used to play Guyina and Coyote, and I can remember how that game goes.
But he just liked to.
Sitting beside him watching us play. One time, he paints he's here, and he comes out red. He's here, He's here, And instead of getting mad, he went out and looked for friends and he started making faces and just showing his hair, his red hair. See, he was so funny.
Nachos des Sentences have made peace with the way things went down, with the natos global success and with their grandfather's decision to not capitalize on his.
Invention, because if the inventor of the nachos, they didn't do anything about it, like why will you?
Even if sometimes it still stinks. At one point, De Christina and mars Last start discussing it with my mom.
Better Better.
For the most part, though, they don't dwell on it, and they don't want to dwell on it wasting time and energy on this. And even if there had been any sort of natural related windfall, they think it would be kind of a logistical nightmare. Today, Natcho had nine kids, plenty more grandkids, and now great and great great grandchildren
are in the picture too. Christina and Marcella do not like thinking about the chaos that would have ensued within the family if their grandfather had decided to patent his dish, or if he decided to create some sort of national fast food chain like a Mexican Colonel Sanders KFC, but for nachos. Instead, his family got to build their own lives outside of the shadow of Nata, so special, instead of getting wrapped up in their patriarch's legacy, they were
free to create their own. A lot of that freedom, too, was a direct result of the work Nato himself put in to support his family, to provide them the kind of stability that precludes opportunity. So what can the an Ayas do now, really except make sure NATO's story isn't lost, Except make sure that people know the truth. And it really is a tremendous storymentar sisupiras, if only you knew?
And that was.
Every year since nineteen ninety five, typically in October there's been a festival in Pierre's Negres in honor of nachos. And yet Ignacio and Aya wasn't out to make history. He enjoyed his job well enough, but all said and done, it was a means to an end. He always liked.
To cook since little and probably that's why he always had in his mind like opening in one day his own place. But I mean to support his family maybe too. I mean nine kids, it's a lot.
Some of those kids went on to have their own families. They came to the United States and created stable lives on this side of the border. Today, the Anayas, both in the US and in Mexico, remain close. Christina still goes down to the border twice a month to visit relatives there. The family is growing and happy. And what greater legacy can one have than this? How does the story make you feel so proud of my grandpa?
So proud of him?
I feel proud, Yeah for him. I really thank everybody for recognizing him. Yeah, it's just a nice feeling, A nice feeling.
This episode was produced by Alejandra Salasad and edited by Andrea Lopez Cruzado.
It was mixed by j J. Carubin.
Fact checking for this episode by Elizabeth Loezo Torres special thanks to Malena Salasad and Ricardo Miguel Salasa. The Latino USA team includes Julia Caruso, Jessica Elis, Victoria Strada, Dominique In Estrosa Rinaldo Leans Junior, Stephanie LAbau, Louis Luna Rodiman, Martuez, Martin Martinez, Nor Saudi and Nancy Drujillo. Beni Lei Amidez is our co executive producer, along with myself and I'm
your host Mardiano Rosa. Join us on our next episode and remember to see us and look for us on all of your social media.
I'll see you there. Yes, that approximate.
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide, the John D.
And Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation, and the Heising Simons Foundation unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities more at hsfoundation dot org.
How often have you guys been interviewed about NATCHO like