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It’s no big news that the advertising industry, which I’ve worked in for almost two decades, has been going through a crisis. I’ve seen many things in my time, like the horrid crash in 2008 where many of us got laid off. I got laid off for “not knowing Spanish well enough.” Well, let me tell you sir, I spent about twenty years of my life in Mexico and have a degree from a reputable college.
But I digress.
Jobs as a copywriter/translator are hard to find these days. Blame the economy, blame AI, blame your abuela. It doesn’t matter; creatives nationwide are struggling to find jobs.
What is a career woman to do?
The answer was far from obvious, but here it is: make tamales!
I live in a small town thirty minutes north of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After living in Mexico City, Boston, and New York City, Germantown feels small. After all, there are only 20,987 of us pueblerinos.
It’s bumping into people you know all the time, seeing your streets with no cars and feeling like you’re on the set of Sex and the City, minus the sex or the city. I recently found out you can’t park on the streets overnight in my town without warning the police about it. Weird.
WARNING: Before you keep reading and/or proceed to impart this writer with a series of chanclazos so she can write about some topics of interest for a change, please remember this column was conceived to be handled with a serious dose of humor.
What was I to do in a city that actually does sleep? I love to cook. I make these amazing Mexican wedding cookies; my husband thinks that if that business took off, we would be Jeff Bezos-level billionaires by summer. And then I thought, what about tamales?
I never learned how to make them. My best friend’s aunt in Mexico City is a tamalera, which she does for a living. So, I decided to take a class and give the end results to my neighbors and friends to see if my skill was any good. The sweet ones were a bust, but the mole with chicken were a great hit. I’ve since made rajas with cheese and green salsa with chicken— yum.
I went to my local taco truck one day and found they sell tamales. I thought, I need to keep learning, so maybe I could ask the owner for another class. I got his number and the next day he had me show up at his brick-and-mortar restaurant to teach me. Thank you, Sergio, you are a gem. A hardworking immigrant who came to this country, just like many others and seek the American Dream.
I got there and I’m telling you, this is the epitome of making it. This guy has a restaurant and seven or eight trucks all around the area. (I’ll pause here to say that Sergio asked me if I was single because one of the cooks was interested. I respectfully declined the offer.)
The kitchen worked like a well-oiled machine. Someone was marinating pork for tacos al pastor, another guy was cooking meat a la plancha. Nobody spoke to each other; they just worked. At one point Sergio started cooking for the staff—costilla, tortillas, guacamole, rice, beans—as I watched in awe.
Finally, they started making the tamales. It was amazing. The masa elaboration, the meat, the wrapping. They only make one kind: rojos. The excitement I felt gave me the realization that I had a huge opportunity here. I could make tamales my small community has never seen or dreamed of. Sergio told me everything is possible. He didn’t see me as competition but as a peer who he wanted to cheer on. Oh, Sergio. Thank the high skies for honest, badass immigrants.
Since then, I’ve been experimenting with different masas and fillings. It’s fun. But I question myself: Why is a woman with more than twenty years of experience in the advertising business making tamales?
Well, there is something AI can’t do. Can you take a guess?
If you guessed “make tamales,” you are correct. No algorithm will ever even attempt to do what Sergio does.
Tam-AI-les are not coming to us anytime soon.
Jessica Solt is one of our newest Hisplainers, stepping into the shoes of Laura Martínez, who is currently on hiatus. Stay tuned for the next Hisplaining column, which will tackle other key biz terms and jargon and help leaders everywhere smoothly navigate the multicultural business world. In the meantime, send us tips and ideas for other terms and jargon that you’d like to see us feature. And remember: don’t panic . . . it’s just his-PANIC!
