Carmen Medina had no choice but to invent huaraches, a great dish that she marketed to support her children.
With green, red or morita sauce, they can be topped with cream, powdered cheese or even melted cheese to make them taste even better, others put roast beef, chicken or even chorizo on them, however they are served, Mexican huaraches are delicious and have now become an indelible part of our gastronomic culture.
But despite their exquisite simplicity, someone had to have invented them, and the culprit of this was a woman named Carmen Gómez Medina, better known as Carmelita, one of the many women of the 1930s who, in order to support her family, had no other option than to put a griddle on a corner of Mexico City, start to make tortillas and prepare these delicacies for the delight of her customers.
The huaraches were born in the Canal de la Viga
Well, the fact that this woman had her stand on a corner is partly a saying, because her small business, the business where the huaraches arose, was on the shore of the extinct Canal de la Viga, a torrent of water that started from the lake of Xochimilco and went to the center of the city, but how this pool of water became pavement is another story.
Returning to the origin of the edible huarache, we must say that its creator, Doña Carmelita, was dedicated to selling tlacoyos and sopes in the aforementioned place, so she knew very well how to handle the dough, but one day she decided, at the request of a demanding customer who was a butcher, to make a larger and longer tlacoyo, making some holes in the top.
The huarache began to be successful
Her product began to be very successful, so she named it “huarache” because of its similarity to traditional Mesoamerican footwear. More people began to replicate her formula, because unlike the tlacoyo, huaraches are fried in lard, then bathed in red or green sauce.
Some time ago, Francisco Estrada compiled part of the history of the huarache and therefore of Carmen Gómez Medina, from whom he learned that she was forced to earn money for her children after being widowed at the age of 30. It was then that she set up her shop on the banks of the Viga canal where the huarache was born.
The legacy of making huaraches
But in 1950 the authorities made the decision to channel the stream and then group the merchants of the area in the Jamaica Market, there Doña Carmelita’s business was no longer as successful as before. She died, but now her descendants continued her legacy in the El Huarache Azteca and Huarache de Jamaica businesses.
Source: mexicodesconocido
