To celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary, Robert and Angelica Saldana left their home in Austin and drove 80 miles south to visit Market Square.
Beneath branches of shade trees and strings of colorful papel picado, the couple strolled along a red brick plaza. They moved past vendors and a band playing ‘60s music until they arrived at an antojitos stand serving a Mexican specialty.
One bite of a picadillo gordita brightened Angelica’s dark eyes. The corn masa pocket stuffed with ground beef, papitas, shredded cheese, lettuce and tomatoes stirred a childhood memory.
“This reminds us of back home, of Monterrey,” Angelica said on a recent Saturday. “Ever since I was a young girl, like 5 years old, I remember my aunt making gorditas on the street. The masa, the picadillo and all the trimmings. It’s exactly like Monterrey.”
The woman behind the gorditas stand, Estela Saenz, 57, is a spiritual descendant of the chili queens, working-class Tejana and Mexican entrepreneurs from a bygone era. The vendors, mostly women, sold chili con carne from rows of open-air tables in downtown plazas from 1860 until 1943.
Saenz learned the craft from her late mother-in-law, Queta Gomez, a native of Nuevo Laredo, who ran the Market Square gordita stand for more than 20 years. Gomez called gordita-making “an art.”
“When I hand that gordita to a customer, it must be perfect — shape, texture and taste,” Gomez told the San Antonio Express-News in 2001. “Gorditas are mas laboriosas (very labor intensive). You can’t rush them.”
Gorditas — Spanish for “little fat ones” —trace their roots to the Aztec empire. The practice of slicing open one side and filling the pocket with ingredients was popularized in 19th Century Mexico.
Elio Maltos, 61, savors the historic dish at Market Square, also known as El Mercado. A regular at the gorditas stand for more than 30 years, his ventures to the plaza include visits to neighboring vendors for mini tacos and agua frescas.
“We come here all the time,” Maltos said. “We have to get the gorditas. We have to get the tacos. We have to get the Mexican drinks. You just can’t go wrong.”
Under the watch of Saenz, the owner, a small, rotating army of (mostly) women runs the gorditas stand. Like the chili queens, they create their magic in the open air: molding corn masa by hand, frying it until it puffs like a small balloon, creating a slit and filling the pocket with ground beef, chicken, chicharron or bean and cheese, then adding lettuce, tomatoes, shredded cheese and guacamole.
The smell of sizzling ground beef on the grill attracts customers. Between bites of a picadillo gordita, Maltos explained the appeal.
“You go somewhere else and the gorditas taste a little different,” he said. “People try too hard to make them really delicious. But these are homemade. These are my wife’s favorites. These are my favorites, too.”
There appears to be no clear historical link between chili queens and gorditas.
According to the book “Chili Queens, Hay Wagons and Fandangos,” author Lewis Fisher details a range of food, in addition to chili con carne, prepared by 19th Century vendors in Military Plaza: “frijoles, tamales, enchiladas, chiles, rellenos, menudo, goat meat, tongue and fried eggs topped with chili sauce.”
The earliest mention of gorditas in local media appears to be in a story from a March 21, 1941 edition of the San Antonio Evening News.
An unnamed reporter described a dish that bears little resemblance to a modern day pocket: “Mexican restaurants appear to be selling gorditas nowadays: they are small round thick tortillas with grated cheese or mashed fried beans spread on top … Yum yum.”
Two years later, the city forced the chili queens out of business. According to the San Antonio Light, health inspectors found a range of unsanitary conditions where the women worked at Haymarket Plaza, today known as Market Square. Among them were meat “kept over 24 hours without refrigeration” and a “cat sitting in the cart calmly chewing on the coming night’s menu.”
Foot traffic all but died in the plaza during World War II as produce wholesalers moved to a new market on Zarzamora Street. In the 1960s, merchants who remained in the plaza persuaded city officials to study reviving the area.
Under the guidance of architect Boone Powell, Historic Market Square was reborn 50 years ago. Dedicated on Sept. 30, 1976, the renovated plaza opened with pedestrian malls, stone fountains and food stalls, one of them a gordita stand.
An annual Gordita Cookoff launched in Market Square in 1982. Gorditas were included in “The Return of the Chili Queens Festival,” which kicked off in 1985 and lasted for years until the festivities became part of Market Square Memorial Day Weekend.
“Somehow gorditas at Market Square during fiestas became a staple,” recalled former Market Square City Department director Bob Tagle, “and many folks looked forward toward eating them.”
Rachel Rodriguez began working with Queta Gomez at the gorditas stand in 1985. At the time, Rodriguez recalls, gorditas sold for $2. Now they sell for $12. The size of the masa pocket, she says, remains the same.
“We used to pay our employees $50 a day,” said Rodriguez, who runs her own catering business. “Now they want $160 a day. If you have three or four employees, that’s $500 or $600. Rent is another $500 to $600. And the booth they set up for you, that’s $75 a day and you still have to buy all your merchandise. You make some money but not a lot anymore like we used to.”
Market Square vendors say they have yet to recover from the Zona Cultural Project that tore up surrounding streets. Foot traffic remains slow, even on weekends.
And yet, the 21st Century chili queens remain upbeat and grateful. Rodriguez married at 15 and did not finish high school. But she earned a GED and used income from selling gorditas, mini tacos and agua frescas to help put three children through college.
“I love to do what I do,” said Rodriguez, 68. “I have five grandkids and I’m still going to Market Square. Right now the money is not good because of the economy. But we struggle and stay there trying to make it.”
This story first appeared in the San Antonio Report.
