Spanish (page 22)
Beginners’ Spanish I (SPAN 201): Making Food
I chose to make Tamales, with my friend’s mom, who is from Chiapas, Mexico. Tamales are a food that carries a rich history and heritage throughout Latin America. The origin of tamales can be traced back to 8,000 BC. Tamales have been traced back to before the Aztecs and Mayans, to the Olmecs and Toltecs. Tamales were typically carried by warriors and hunters on long journeys and hunting trips, tamales were made by women for festivals and rituals. The preparation of Tamales over time has remained relatively the same.
While making the tamales, I was struck by the amount of community it required, and how quickly
everyone knew exactly what role they were to fulfill. There were many people involved in the
process, and as soon as the process started, they knew exactly what jobs they were meant to
be doing. I was placed in charge of rolling the masa into balls and ensuring that they were
portioned evenly, while there were people rolling out the masa and people filling the masa with
the fillings and people wrapping the tamales in corn husk. The way that everyone instantly
knew what to do, struck me as something that I hope can be an experience I share one day.
The amount of joy and community found in the kitchen while making the tamales was something
that I found truly wonderful as well. There was music playing, people laughing and talking and
an overall sense of joy and patience. I was speaking to my friend after we had made the
tamales, which I said was an intensive process that required a lot of work and took a very long
time with eight people working on it. And he mentioned that years ago, his mom would make
dozens of tamales all by herself to sell them. I found this truly remarkable, seeing as with eight
people working, it took us hours to finish making them and it was rather tiring work.
Hearing so much Spanish spoken was really interesting for me, I was given directions in
Spanish, spoken slowly with a lot of demonstration, I found that I didn’t understand very much of
the Spanish, but with the demonstrations and some help from my friend to translate I found it to
be decently easy to do what was expected of me. The Spanish was spoken very fast and there
was quite a bit of slang used, making it rather difficult for me to understand, however, there were
still small amounts of Spanish that I did recognize and understand. Simple sentences, such as
¿Cual es tu nombre?, ¿Cuántos años tienes?, and ¿De donde eres? It was easy for me to
understand, and I was able to give simple responses in Spanish. I was also able to recognize
different verb conjugation patterns if I heard them. I found that there was a language barrier
between some of us making tamales and trying to get directions. Sometimes it was a little
difficult, but after a demonstration or brief translation, it became much easier.
The brief descriptions of Mexican culture that we had in class made it easier to connect with the
people I was making the tamales with and gave me easy things to ask questions about and
learn more about Mexican culture. Being able to use the small amount of Spanish that I have
learnt in class so far, made it easier to connect with the people I was making the tamales with.
Sources
https://www.torrancememorial.org/healthy-living/blog/tamale-traditions-of-latin-america