By MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ
Managing Editor
editor@sbnewspaper.com
SBFD Operations Chief Raul Zuniga
When Raul Zuniga isn’t busy carrying out his duties as the chief of operations for the San Benito Fire Department, he enjoys eating tamales. Who doesn’t?
The Lozano native and 29-year veteran of the SBFD may not have as colorful a history or tradition when it comes to making tamales, like most do from the Rio Grande Valley, but Zuniga doesn’t apologize for that, especially since he’s always been aware of the process.
“I don’t have any stories like that,” Zuniga said laughing, referencing the Dec. 9 San Benito News article about San Benito CISD Board Vice President Anna Cruz, who shared a charming anecdote about how she came to realize where tamales came from when she was informed as a child that her pet piglet had been slaughtered in order to make the yummy Mexican dish.
“I knew since I was a little kid what they were for,” Zuniga further remarked about piglets like La Chata, the name Cruz had given to her pet before it went to slaughter. “We butchered hogs specifically for that purpose [to make tamales]. We knew where they were going. We raised hogs and goats and cows and everything else, and my mother and grandmother made tamales for years.”
Zuniga may not have a story like Cruz’, but his awareness as a child of the gruesome process associated in making tamales can be just as interesting.
As a man, Zuniga hasn’t changed much. “I have a daughter, and she raised animals for the stock show, but she never knew where they were going,” Zuniga said. “Right now, I have a piggy being fed out until the next couple of weeks, when I can butcher it.”
It wasn’t until recently that Zuniga said his family began buying their tamales after decades of his mother preparing them.
“It is a seasonal thing, buying tamales. Although I might wait for this contest to decide where we’ll buy from,” Zuniga said laughing. “Once my mother got a little older, and my father and sister passed away a couple of years ago, we just stopped doing it [making tamales] and started buying them. But I remember mother’s tamales were the best. I guess it’s always a mother’s touch that prevails. For years she would chop the meat by hand, because when we would go to other people’s houses, they would use a meat grinder. With my mother’s, we had more meat than masa.”
Zuniga, along with Cruz and others, will serve as one of the judges in the San Benito News “Best Tamales in Town” Contest, slated for 12 noon Friday, Dec. 21, at the News office, located at 356 N. Sam Houston Blvd.
For more information on how to enter the contest, call (956) 399-2436.
Read this story in the Dec. 12 edition of the San Benito News, or subscribe to our E-Edition by clicking here.
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