During September 5th’s CaminArte, Laredoans got the opportunity to practice a technique that few living people here have experienced. In the back corner of Casa Ortiz by the kitchen, the packed audience watched women from the crowd taking turns at the stone metate, using the oval rock called a mano to grind corn kernels into masa. Maíz expert chef Luna Vela instructed the volunteers to put their whole upper body into the metate. Over a hundred years ago, likely in this same kitchen, this process would take the better part of a day to transform raw corn into our beloved tortillas, tamales, and gorditas.
Vela then showed the audience how masa is made today with an electric molino that was loaned by Kendra Gutierrez of La Fe Tortilleria. What would take hours on the metate took just a few minutes with the loud machine-powered molino.
“I use this same type of molino in Austin. Even though it’s much faster, I like to meditate on the amount of time and labor that women used to spend every day doing this by hand,” Vela said.
Vela has roots in both Monterrey and McAllen. During the pandemic, she started a project called Neighborhood Molino, meant to both educate people on the ancient process and allow the public to use her molino communally to make their own masa.
As she explained at Casa Ortiz, the first step is nixtamalization, a technique developed at least 3,000 years ago in Central Mexico whereby dried kernels are simmered and then steeped overnight in a water-alkaline solution to unlock nutrients like niacin and calcium and make the corn more digestible. Likely by some accidental miracle, our ancestors learned to do this with wood ash. Today, the norm is cal, white powdered limestone. A few hours before the workshop, Vela used cal donated by La India Packing Co. to cook the corn for grinding.
The event’s overwhelming turnout is interesting given maíz’s universality in our culture and cuisine. The positive reception is at least partly explained because of how rare this ancient process has become. For those of us who grew up after the 1970s, there is a good chance that almost every tortilla de maíz we have eaten is the same tortilla de Maseca, made by simply adding water to dehydrated cornmeal. For Maseca purchased in the United States, it’s likely that the corn wasn’t even grown in its birthplace in Mexico but instead from industrialized fields in the Midwest, where genetically modified (GMO) corn is the norm. Today, very few tortillerias in northern Mexico and across the United States make their masa using nixtamalization and a molino, except for a few holdouts like La Fe.
During the workshop, the guests prepared and tasted two varieties of rare heirloom corn: a yellow corn from Tlaxcala and a blue corn from Oaxaca. Combining them into one tortilla can yield a variety of yellow-blue designs: swirls, flowers, half-and-half.
“The first flip is the most important,” Vela told the crowd during the first demonstration. After carefully laying the pressed masa onto the comal, she flipped it less than a minute to prevent it from drying and cracking. After a few minutes, she flipped it again, causing the tortilla to inflate as the steam from the masa moisture cooked the inside.
Vela unleashed the eager crowd around the portable presses and comales stationed around the kitchen. The frenzied pressing, flipping, and eating added more heat to a scorching late-summer evening. Luckily participants cooled off with another expression of maíz: Vela’s agua fresca made from the same yellow masa used for the tortillas. Since this was a celebration, a few people added a splash of pox, a liquor from Chiapas made from cane sugar and…more maíz.
As the saying goes and as Vela helped us appreciate, somos gente de maíz y el maíz es de la gente.
Note: Luna Vela’s workshop on September 5, 2025 was co-hosted by The Laredo Cultural District and the Laredo Film Society (LFS). After the workshop, LFS screened a double feature of two short films: Bisonte by Luna Vela, and Ingles sin Fronteras by Gil Rocha and Edwardo García.
