LAS SOPITAS, TALE OF CULTURAL SURVIVAL IN NORTHLAND

By Juan Montoya

It was the last week of August 1975, and the start of the Fall semester was fast approaching.

Those of us who had been accepted to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor had arrived a week earlier and had to fend off for ourselves before the issuance of stipends, scholarships, GI Benefits, loans or grants that were disbursed until after registration.

So for the better part of a week those who could afford it lived on burgers and pita bread and waited for school to start. Up north, Mexican American students were highly united. We all lived temporarily in the house of a student who was out of the city until the beginning of school.

He was from Adrian, Mich. and he had allowed the U of M chapter of M.E.Ch.A. (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan) to house incoming students until they had acquired housing of their own.

There were students from Califas, Nuevo Mexico, El Tejon, etc., who shared the house. There was a Filipino-Mexican graduate student from Stanford who was studying psychology, a bato from East Los who was in graduate school with a Social Work major, and some from El Tejon from Eagle Pass (La Aguila), San Anto, etc., I was the only one from El Vallusco.

M.E.Ch.A. officers, in their infinite wisdom, had paired off male student with other males and females with females.

After a few days, we realized that eating out wasn't going to cut it. Not only was our money going to run out, but burgers and sausages on a bun got tired real fast. So we looked in the house cupboards and found boxes of different pasta (sopas) like estrellitas, conchas, letras, coditos, rice, etc.

"Does anyone know how to cook?," we asked each other.

No one really did, but being from South Texas and having seen my mom cook these very same sopitas while my sisters were off to school (I was the third oldest then), said I would give it a try. We passed the hat (sombrero, tandita, etc.)  around and collected enough to buy cooking oil, several pounds of carne molida, onions, tomato sauce, comino, ajo, and a few pound of beans.

In 1975, Mexican food hadn't really taken off in the Midwest so tortillas were out. It would have to be pita bread. We bought a few bags.

Then the Great Experiment began. I had watched my mom countless afternoons as she cooked the meals for my sisters and dad before they came home while she ironed clothes at the same time. A lot of those meals involved the very same ingredients before me. Now, the cuisines of Arizona, New Mexico and California differ from that in South Texas and northern Tamaulipas. They use red chilis, other veggies, different spices, etc. So my fellow students had to settle for South Texas fare.

I started out frying the onions and garlic in oil and then threw in the sopitas to brown them, threw in the carne molida, and finally the tomato sauce with comino and salt. The aroma of South Texas Mexican food brought my fellow students from throughout the house into the kitchen as the sopitas and beans simmered on the stove. We even made a hot sauce with Asian tree peppers we got from an international food store around the corner.

Before the week was over I had made Tex-Mex food the favorite cuisine of the house. We ate our fill for the remaining time and still had a few dollars left over for a few beers.

When the time came around for us to disband, a few graduate students came over and asked me if I had gotten a place to stay. They would gladly let me have a room in their house, they said.

I looked at them suspiciously and replied that I knew why they wanted me to stay with them.

"Son las sopitas, verdad?," I asked and they burst out laughing.