Tamale Festival Aims To Become a Tradition

LAS CRUCES — Silver City boosters hope that the New Mexico Tamal Fiesta Y Mas becomes as enduring a December tradition as the corn huskwrapped food is on Hispanic tables during the holiday season.

“I’m hoping it’s twice as big as it was last year,” Buck Burns, a partner in a Silver City furniture store, said of the festival scheduled for Saturday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. in the town’s historic downtown on Broadway.

Burns will be one of the judges voting during a noon contest to select the fiesta’s best tamales entered in two categories, traditional and gourmet.

Now in its second year, the festival was conceived as a way to celebrate the local Hispanic culture, to bring the community together and to attract tourists to the town billed as the gateway to the Gila Wilderness, said Cissy McAndrew, executive director of the Southwest New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce, the event’s sponsor.

McAndrew said a southern California transplant with fond memories of a huge tamale festival held annually in Indio, Calif., since 1992 suggested Silver City stage its own event built around the food, which can be made in a variety of sweet or spicy versions.

The Mexican version of the tamal (the Spanish singular word for the food) is typically wrapped and tied with corn husks and steamed.

The fiesta this year also will feature music, dancing, a street party, storytelling and other activities.