ABSTRACT
“Honestly, I was afraid of cooking for the public. Yes, I would cook but only for my children,” says María Luisa Gonzales, owner of Gorditas Cecy, a puestecito (food stand) in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. 1 I have heard aspects of Gonzales’ story as a food entrepreneur as she and I have been sharing casual culinary conversations, or charlas culinarias, since October 2004. Usually our conversations take place while I sit at her puestecito savoring some gorditas de picadillo. 2 Gonzales’ development as the owner of a food stand began once she was laid off from her job as a housekeeper in a hotel. 3 Luckily, someone came to her rescue: “an angel, who had worked in the same hotel years earlier, already had a restaurant and she opened another. She offered to pay me 500 pesos per week to work for her cooking gorditas.” After three years, she left this job because it kept her from spending much time with her children. As she says, “I would go to work while the children were still sleeping; I would come back, the children were sleeping.” Eventually, she balanced the financial necessity to support her children with the desire to spend time with them by opening her own food stand, Gorditas Cecy, in 1992. Gonzales’ story of supporting her family by selling food is one that I have heard often while sharing charlas culinarias with working-class Mexican women. 4
