Text: Nayeli Reyes Castro
The old memories of Tepito still taste like escamocha, a stew of stews prepared by cooks capable of making edible leftovers from restaurants and inns in the Historic Center, where more privileged stomachs refused to leave the plate empty.
All those unfinished foods found a second chance in the hands of the escamocheras, who in 1921 for just five cents offered a preparation with cooked rice, pieces of meat, vegetables, chili, chickpeas, beans, drizzled with watery broth... everything That's what a reporter nicknamed "El Duende de la Basílica" saw in the casseroles.
That goblin from the newsroom wrote in EL UNIVERSAL ILUSTRADO that escamocha was a patented dish in Tepito, generally offered in stalls staffed by women willing to demand payment for their merchandise with punches, or rather, to feed them on credit:
“Those trusted in the escamocha eaters are religiously covered, because if not, woe to them!... all the escamochas would point their fingers at them and then they wouldn't have anywhere to go to satisfy their daily hunger”.
To the left is an escamocha stand in Tepito; to the right, a quesadillera. Photo: EL UNIVERSAL ILLUSTRADO (June 23, 1921).
Isela Hernández Robles knows Tepito well, her family has lived in the neighborhood for several generations. She no longer tasted that escamocha that today is part of distant casseroles, but her grandmother told her that the humble people who worked washing dishes in restaurants were the ones who brought the remains of food.
“They commented that they were residues, they put beans to cook, if they had they put meat in them, they stewed it with a bit of chile... my grandmother said that they almost always used guajillo chili, they added epazote and that gave it another type of flavor”, recounts in interview.
In the book True tales from Another Mexico, Sam Quiñones describes that some vendors from the area would go around the restaurants in the Center at night and pick up barrels of leftovers, they would sell them by the kilo in the neighborhood, then the women would take away the inedible, like cigarette butts, and they prepared the rest.
The reporter José Pérez Moruno also saw this stew in 1933, he said that it was made with hard tortillas that beggars collected in houses and sold to escamocheras, “the escamocha is the smallest thing, on the other hand, the belly, the menudo and the carnitas, even more expensive, are a dish for people with greater economic elements”.
The stalls of the Tepito Market in an image captured by Manuel Ramos in the 1930s. This space is known as Plaza Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. On the left side is the temple of San Francisco de Asís, which dates from 1734. Photo: Manuel Ramos Photographic Archive / Courtesy.
How much was five cents in those years? In 1919 they were barely equivalent to seven tiny tomatoes, it was not even enough to buy an ocote to light the fire, which was worth six cents, less could be aspired to a kilo of fat bayo beans, which cost 32.
The most difficult thing was going to a restaurant, where a medium meal cost no less than 1.50 pesos per cover.
In the 1920s, a person could eat very cheaply in “los agachados”, he needed between 15 and 50 cents to go to those famous stalls, where people had to eat squatting for lack of a seat, even that place was a possibility denied to the poorest pockets of the metropolis.
Also read: “Los agachados: las fondas de los olvidados”
Tepito: where everything has value
A saying ran through the streets of the past: “Only the lazy starve in Tepito”.
The journalist Sam Quiñones says that Tepiteños have an ability: they extract value from almost anything and food has not been the exception, nothing is wasted, previously even the chickens that died from suffocation in the truck could find their destination somewhere godly saucepan.
A hundred years ago the neighborhood was a maze of wooden stalls and blankets on the ground with everything imaginable: meat, offal, vegetables, seeds, food, pulque... also used clothing, knives, keys, shoes with crooked heels, pieces of chains, irons, old umbrellas and a thousand chatter of what El Duende de la Basílica called “centavero trade”: two, ten, 50 cents at the most.
The Tepito square was the last place where the Baratillo Market was located, famous for selling iron, used clothing and other products accessible to the low-income population. The image shows its appearance in 1930. Photo: Centro de Estudios Tepiteños / Courtesy.
Also read: The ancient trade of being a junker
El Duende wrote: “Tepito, it's original. There is not in the entire Republic, nor do I think in all of America, a neighborhood similar to this one. It has things that are very much its own: its filth, its indolence, its types, its trade and... Even its theater!... Because Tepito, as a tributary of this very noble and loyal city of palaces, has its own theater, where one smokes, spit, drink pulque, cough at the top of your lungs, and whistle, shout, or clap your hands without anyone bothering you.”
Lobby of the Tepito theater. Photo: EL UNIVERSAL ILLUSTRADO (January 20, 1921).
The escamocheras had their place in two streets adjacent to the square of San Francisco Tepito, mainly at the end of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, one of the arteries that for more than a century have been the center of intense commercial activity, along with Toltecs and Caridad, explains the historian Fausto Arellano Ramírez.
They shared the road with businesses that fried beef intestines and pork meat, as well as street characters such as the tripe vendor or the woman who offered three large tortillas for a penny that served as a plate for the carnitas. There was no shortage of the snack bar that sold alcohol to unclog the snacks and, incidentally, the sorrows.
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"Fat beef guts." Tripe seller in Tepito. Photo: EL UNIVERSAL ILLUSTRADO (January 20, 1921).
The experiences of Isela Hernández's grandmother remain in the voice of her granddaughter, she tells that in Bartolomé de las Casas there was a wood market that reached the church of San Francisco, for some people it was everything, its source work and also his home: "my grandmother was one of the people who lived in those little wooden stalls... there they had a business to get ahead."
Tepito streets in the 50s. Photo: EL UNIVERSAL archive.
The taste of inequality
Outsiders did not understand that Tepitean life, they were easily frightened, as an employee of the Superior Health Council who visited the Tepito plaza in September 1906, saw the scale and described it as "very bad looking and a disgusting smell."
Sometimes the escamocheras were brought before the authorities for violations of the Sanitary Code. On December 12, 1922, EL UNIVERSAL reported that 79 street bakers, 63 food vendors, nine fried food vendors, 15 meat vendors, 20 viscera vendors, and six fish scale vendors had been sent to the capital for this reason.
“I am surprised that there are stomachs that admit these subjects without possible classification. Only those disappointed in life... The fish stands are restaurants for suicide bombers," Castillo wrote in EL UNIVERSAL ILUSTRADO in 1921.
Street commerce and homeless people were not well regarded by the elites. Photo: EL UNIVERSAL newspaper library (February 25, 1926).
Who held the scale? Frequent customers were homeless people, the collaborator Juan del Sena called them "the honorable brotherhood of beggars", the reporter José Pérez Moruno called them "slum dwellers".
The journalist Jacobo Dalevuelta recounted in 1944 that malnourished children went there: every day they sang joylessly in exchange for a few quintos to be able to go buy at the escamocha stalls, they didn't let the dogs out there like in the big houses in the city.
According to El Duende de la Basílica, there were “ragged bohemians”, unemployed comedians, thugs, “all that miserable and suffering world”. In those pots sheltered by a thick layer of fat, people found comfort who had almost nothing, but they did have their five cents, with luck they would get a piece of meat.
A scene from Tepito. Photo: EL UNIVERSAL file.
Researcher Miguel Digón Pérez explains that in the late 40s and early 50s “the great chilanga babel dreamed of being a western paradise”, but while the middle classes fantasized to the rhythm of cha cha chá and mambo, many people were excluded from welfare promises:
“As the city grew, the center of Mexico City was reserved for the neighborhoods and neighborhoods as barrio as Tepito experienced a purge of the underworld to accommodate all those who without opportunities in the countryside were preparing to carve out a future in the damned city”.
According to the researcher, those most affected by economic crises were always “those from below” and in those years the compadrazgo became a social buffer against inequality and exclusion, community life in the neighborhoods allowed Relatives from other states arrived, the comadres offered shelter and beans, when they couldn't even pour water on them, the scale was on the street.
EL UNIVERSAL Archive
On July 30, 1948, a journalist from EL UNIVERSAL reported that the food situation would have been unsustainable without the measures in the poorest neighborhoods of the metropolis, especially around the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas market, where there were butcher shops and tahonas clandestine, in addition, there the leftovers of the restaurants were converted into escamocha or croquettes.
The years passed, the old wood market disappeared and some tenants were relocated to new facilities, the escamocheras found a place only in memories, Isela Hernández says that the recipe was discarded by the new generations when it began to be sold in the neighborhood There is another type of economy.
According to journalist Gabriela Ruiz, import substitution economic policies appeared and foreign goods became increasingly valuable and desired in Mexico. Tepito applied his local ingenuity in this new field.
Compare the before and after by sliding the central bar (click here to see it larger)Some products from the Tepito neighborhood have been transformed over the years. Photos: EL UNIVERSAL archive. Web design: Miguel Ángel Garnica.
The escamocha that Isela has in her gastronomic memories today is sweeter, it is another dish with the same name, a dessert prepared with fruit, juice, honey and amaranth that has been sold since she was a child in the Tepito food market .
In her 40 years of life she has seen many changes in the neighborhood, some traditions have remained, among them the famous migas de Tepito; other characters have vanished, like the old ladies who walked the streets with a basket and a stove selling tripe tacos.
That old escamocha is a fragment of Tepito's past, Isela says that it is an ancestral tradition, talking about this stew is talking about the history of many people who no longer live, “it was a custom that the majority made, here It was essential."
This image from the 1990s shows another type of food sale on the streets of Tepito: hot-dogs. Photo: EL UNIVERSAL file.
Also read: The origin of the famous migas de Tepito
The main photograph shows an escamocha stand in Tepito, it is a publication of EL UNIVERSAL ILUSTRADO of June 23, 1921.
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