Leaving San Miguel: Taco Memories

At sunset, the light softens on the spires and church domes across town. The evening sky from the rooftop is washed and chalked with soft clouds. Life in the barrio grows quiet in the brief interval between the workaday afternoon and the social nighttime. Church bells begin to toll across the roofs, some anonymous verger switches on the illuminated cross atop La Parroquia and it is officially eventide. 

On some obscure signal, the first strand of birds appears, strung out across the sky, looping westward to roost in the Presa, the reservoir at the edge of town. Behind them another ribbon of birds, furling and folding in on itself as if blown along on a high breeze, hundreds of white-faced ibis flapping along the sky in loose ranks. Each morning they make the same short flight eastward over the town, over the hilltop in the middle distance, to some unseen feeding ground, and back the same way each evening, ribbon on ribbon of ibis. By May they will be nesting in wetlands in Colorado and Wyoming and Montana.

White-faced Ibis



Oblivious to all of this, the long-tailed grackles on the roof across the street are guarding from some insistent kingbirds a puddle of water that has collected atop a water tank; other kingbirds are harrassing a solitary woodpecker in a nearby tree, the woodpecker uncharacteristically minding his own business for once. Everyone, it seems, has a job to do and no one capable of doing it without a mild ruckus.

On the last evening in San Miguel, I walked the three blocks through the darkened backstreets to the bright lights and conviviality of Tacos Diana. Tacos Diana is one of those frequent outposts of the informal economy of Mexico, a small lunch counter on wheels that disappears each day and reappears each evening lit up like a Polish church in the doorway of the ferreteria, the hardware store on Orizaba. Ranged along the counter beneath an awning are some stools, some earthenware bowls of lime wedges and jars of salsas rojo y verde. The offerings are basic - tacos, tortas, gringos and something called a 'volcanes', a crisp corn tostada piled with either chopped beef or chorizo beneath a glaze of melted cheese. Healthy stuff served with pride. The vegetable courses consist of a fine chop of onion and cilantro, bowls of pickled cucumber and carrot slices, and grilled jalapenos.

The chef is a large congenial fellow who works beneath a thick shock of black hair. His wife and helpmeet stands at his side working the grill, which is basically a round platter over a gas flame with an outer trough around a raised middle. The meat and onions are cooked down in the trough where the grease from previous courses has collected, then drained and kept warm on the raised center. When a customer orders, say, three tacos, the proprietor of the establishment sets corn tacos out on a plate, garnishes them with onion and cilantro, sets the meat on a round wooden block hollowed with use into a shallow bowl, and with a knife of venerable provenance and a deep-curved blade that exactly fits the bowl of the chopping block, he chops it fine and assembles the tacos. Some lime, some salsa, a couple of whole jalapenos, and Bob, as they say in Mexico, is your uncle (Bob son tu tio").

This does not begin to capture the ambience of Tacos Diana, the anchor, icon and masthead of which is the stolid wife of the owner. She is in her own right the atmosphere of the place, every bit as substantial as her husband and with a kind of natural glower, all business and clearly no nonsense where he is all cordiality and blessings. Diana, for whom the business is named, is the daughter who stands at her father's right hand, setting up plates, collecting money and dispensing change when she is not seated on the steps of the nearby tienda in congress with her friends and their friends and a good portion of the neighborhood who prefer to bundle themselves against the chill and stand around in lighted spots chatting, trying out their English on the customers ("Jalapeno not too spicy for you?"), eating ice cream from the bright little storefront and generally cutting up like human beings with social business to transact.

But I am loyal to Tacos Diana, and for this reason: on my final evening in San Miguel, when my face, familiar by now, appeared within the ring of light, the mistress of the place looked up at me and - faintly, but definitely - smiled at me. It was the moon peering slyly from behind a cloud. I must return to San Miguel.