An official USGenWeb Project site Dedicated to Free Information for Home Family Genealogy use only.
Abe Peña's "From the Past" newspaper column

All material used with the kind permission of the author, given to me personally.

Published Tuesday, September 8, 2009 11:49 AM MDT
By Abe Peña
Abe Peña is a local author and historian whose award winning books 'Memories of Cibola' and 'Villages and Villagers' are available at bookstores throughout New Mexico.

"Chile or chili: red or green?

Starting in August and continuing through September and October, you can smell green chile roasting in villages and pueblos across New Mexico. Some is roasted in kitchen ovens, some in hornos, and some in butane roasters at supermarkets. Supermarkets do a land office business selling and roasting chile across the state, and the practice is growing and moving to neighboring states.

Most of the commercial chile is produced by farmers in the Hatch-Las Cruces area on the Rio Grande and in the Deming area in southern New Mexico. The Española valley in the north produces some of the best chile in the state, but it's mostly for local and family use.

Several years ago, most places across New Mexico were selling mild, medium, or hot chile for about $17 a sack, including roasting. The gunny sacks (burlap) are disappearing and being replaced by plastic bags and cardboard boxes. Most families buy two or three boxes, peel it, and put it in freezers in plastic bags. It stores well. By September, the green chile is turning red and red chile pods are woven into ristras (chile strings) or dried in the pod. Some goes into making Christmas wreaths and are becoming very popular.

In the land of Cíbola in the 1930s, most families raised a garden, and one of the principal crops was chile. By August, the harvest began and some green chile was packed in jars, but most of the chile was roasted, peeled, and dried in the sun in September.

It was then bagged and stored to be re-hydrated when cooked. In those early days, there were no refrigerators or freezers. Most all our food had to be grown, preserved, and stored for winter.

I recall our family in late September in the backyard peeling chile after school. Sometimes neighbors dropped by and it turned into a social affair. By October, almost all the vegetables and fruits from the gardens and orchards had been harvested and stored for winter.

My great grandparents, Juan and Encarnacion Ortega, had a plazuela. The plazuela, a large patio, had a tall adobe wall around it where we were sent on weekends to help peel chile, husk corn, or make orejon from apples and other fruits and put out to dry on large tables. They had one of the largest orchards in the village, and stored a lot of food.

Great-grandma, whom we called mi nana Encarnacion, stored all the dried fruit in large wooden bins and padlocked them. Like the true patrona, she carried a large ring of keys pinned to her ample black skirt. She was the matriarch, and also carried a horsewhip pinned to her skirt. She seldom used it, but it was always there.

Her husband, Juan Ortega, whom we called mi palle, was a hard worker and lived to 107. He came from the Concho country in eastern Arizona, where the Ortegas of trading post and turquoise jewelry fame also were raised.

San Mateo is on the northwest side of Mount Taylor, and has a shorter growing season than Seboyeta on the southeastern side. Because of the shorter growing season, the chile seldom matured to the red color before the first frost came. Most of the chile was preserved green. In Seboyeta, they made a lot more ristras from the red chile.

Chile is also spelled chili. The Spanish spelling and pronunciation is chile. The English or anglized spelling and pronunciation is chili. Chile and frijoles are vegetables of New Mexico. Mexican or New Mexican food is now the second most popular ethnic food in America. Italian is first (pizzas), Mexican is second, and Chinese third.

New arrivals to New Mexico generally become addicted to chile after they have been here a while and have eaten chile for some time. . . preferably the mild or the medium-hot. One told me, “I was hooked after being here for only three months. I prefer red, and the hotter the better”. . . atta boy!

Editor’s Note: From the Past by Abe Peña is published twice monthly."