How the 'tamale lady' became a symbol of growing Latino political influence in Arizona

Rosalba Lopez learned how to make tamales growing up in a small town near Cuernavaca, Mexico.

The Mexican immigrant makes tamales with red or green chili. But her specialty is beef tamales soaked in a rich mole sauce the color of dark chocolate.

Most Americans are accustomed to eating tamales wrapped in corn husks. But Lopez wraps her mole tamales in banana leaves, the traditional way in southern Mexico and Central America.

For the past 10 years, Lopez has been selling tamales she makes in her home kitchen in Phoenix. She individually wraps tamales in aluminum foil and hauls them hot in a blue cooler to the parking lot of a Home Depot or takes orders over the phone. She charges $25 for a dozen regular tamales and $44 for the ones made with mole, which are larger, take longer and cost more to make.

"This is my way of getting ahead. A way to pay my bills," the 50-year-old grandmother said in Spanish.

Making tamales at home and selling them to earn extra cash is a long-standing and deeply rooted tradition in Latino communities that goes back generations, carried over from when the Southwest was part of Mexico and reinforced by steady waves of immigrants such as Lopez.

"It's a very long tradition, and Mexican neighborhoods will always have one or two or three houses which specialize in making tamales," said Arizona State University anthropologist Carlos Vélez-Ibáňez, an expert on the Latino population.

Tamales date back 10,000 years to pre-Hispanic times, and recipes are handed down and vary from family to family, Vélez-Ibáňez said.

Buying homemade tamales has become so popular, it's now part of mainstream culture, especially around Christmastime. Latinos and non-Latinos alike buy homemade tamales, whether from the local "tamale lady," a relative, a friend at work or a random vendor in a parking lot.

What not everyone may realize, however, is selling homemade tamales is illegal, though the law is rarely enforced.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs' April 18 veto of a bill that sought to legalize the sale of homemade perishable foods, including tamales, shined a spotlight on the tradition. Hobbs said she vetoed the bill because it would significantly increase the risk of foodborne illness. At the same time, Hobbs' veto has ignited a political backlash among some Latinos, underscoring the political importance of the state's large and growing Latino population.

The "tamale lady" has become the latest symbol of Latinos' growing political power.

ASU political science professor Isamera Coronado said people who make and sell tamales are typically women living in poverty trying to earn a living and provide for their families by engaging in the free market through the underground economy.

Democrats changed votes on tamale bill: Most in Arizona House won't say why

The governor's veto, she said, "was a missed opportunity to explore ways of helping people empower themselves."

The Latino community is not homogenous and is politically diverse, Coronado said. But the governor and lawmakers who voted against overriding Hobbs' veto could pay a political price among Latinos, she said.

"This is affecting women more than men because it's usually the women that participate in this kind of informal economy and especially in the cooking realm," Coronado said. "And so it's very unfortunate that that has happened. But I can see how some people would say, 'This is a direct assault on my community. I'm going to stick by (tamale makers), and it doesn't matter what my party thinks.'"

Hobbs declined to comment for this story. But the governor's spokesperson, Christian Slater, said Hobbs has met with legislators about a replacement bill and is "committed to supporting small businesses while prioritizing the health of everyday Arizonans."

Republicans capitalize on Hobbs' veto, focus on tamales

The bill, HB 2509, passed the Legislature with bipartisan support but was spearheaded by the libertarian-leaning Institute for Justice, and sponsored by Republican state Rep. Travis Grantham, R-Gilbert. Republicans quickly capitalized on Hobbs' veto to score needed political points with Latinos, who tend to support Democrats over Republican candidates and contributed to Hobbs' razor-thin victory in the governor's race in November. Hobbs won Latino voters by 15 percentage points over her Republican opponent.

An attempt to override Hobbs' veto failed after several Democrats who initially voted in favor of the bill switched their votes for the override, in part to not go against a governor from their own party, and further intensified the backlash.

Some Latino Democratic lawmakers accused Republicans of using the bill to pander to Latinos, pointing out it was supported by Americans for Prosperity and The Libre Initiative, two groups with ties to the Koch family, which funds a network of conservative groups.

Arizona, once a reliable red state, has turned into a swing state in part because of the rise of Latino voters. The increase in Latino voting power was the result of voter drives launched after Republicans pushed through a series of laws aimed at driving undocumented immigrants out of the state. The crackdown was capped by the 2010 passage of SB 1070, the state's immigration enforcement law, which many Latinos viewed as racist.

"They're acting like they care about our community, but this is the same party that introduced SB 1070," said state Rep. Cesar Aguilar, D-Phoenix, whose district includes many predominantly Latino neighborhoods.

Many tamale vendors are U.S. citizens. But many others are undocumented immigrants who can't work legally and so resort to selling home-cooked food to earn cash.

Aguilar said Republicans have blocked other bills aimed at improving the lives of undocumented immigrants, many of whom are Latino, including a bill allowing undocumented people to get driver's licenses and another he sponsored. His bill would make it possible for undocumented immigrants who lack Social Security Numbers to obtain professional licenses and certificates with Taxpayer Identification Numbers.

Aguilar voted for the food bill. He said he also was prepared to vote "yes" on the override but changed his mind at the last minute after it became increasingly apparent to him that supporters were more interested in scoring political points than helping tamale vendors.

The bill would have benefitted people who produce a wide range of perishable foods, but Republicans chose to focus on tamale makers, Aguilar said. Supporters of the bill even showed up at a rally at the capitol on the morning of the override vote with "Free the Tamale" posters showing Americans for Prosperity and The Libre Initiative logos printed next to a cartoon of a green tamale behind bars, Aguilar noted.

"That's what really, really upset me," Aguilar said. "I thought, okay, you guys really wanted to do something about this, but it just felt disingenuous that they were trying to politicize it more and they were pandering to us because they knew that Latinos in the Democratic caucus could break away and vote for this."

He's also not worried voting against the override could cost him votes because Latinos are concerned about more important issues such as "finding a place to live that is affordable," he said.

Bill to expand Cottage Food Program about more than tamales

Paul Avelar is managing partner of the Institute for Justice Arizona, a nonprofit public interest group that leans libertarian. The bill is based on a proposal Avelar drafted. An identical bill was introduced last year. But it was introduced late and failed to get a hearing, he said. The bill, Avelar said, is based on cottage food bills passed by six other states with broad cottage food programs: Wyoming, North Dakota, Iowa, Utah, Montana and Oklahoma.

Avelar insists the bill was genuinely a bipartisan effort to expand the state's Cottage Food Program, which currently is limited to home producers of nonperishable foods such as breads, fruit pies, tortillas, brownies and cookies. He said groups such as Americans for Prosperity and The Libre Initiative jumped on board later.

Avelar, who is Latino, said he grew up eating tamales bought from neighborhood tamale ladies while growing up in Kearny, a town in rural southeastern Arizona.

The Cottage Food Program was created by the Legislature in 2011 but is currently limited to "shelf stable" foods that do not require heat or refrigeration.

The bill would have expanded the program to allow people to sell homemade tamales, empanadas, cakes made with butter, and other perishable foods without a license. Participants in the program are required to obtain a food handler's certificate. Food sold under the program must be labeled with the person's name, contact information and a disclaimer that says the food was made in a home kitchen that is not inspected by the health department.

Although legislators connected with the larger idea of expanding the Cottage Food Program to include many additional foods, it was "this more Arizona-specific tamale issue" that really resonated, Avelar said.

"A lot of people that we talked to, both Republicans and Democrats, they got that immediately, and that's the frame in which they got it," Avelar said.

Although the bill started off with bipartisan support, the rancor over the governor's veto and failed override has divided Democrats, and tarnished the governor's image among some Latinos, resulting in a political win for Republicans even if the bill itself failed, said Vélez-Ibáňez, the ASU professor.

"If I were a Republican I would be clapping my hands right now," said Vélez-Ibáňez. "If somebody did that strategically they were very successful."

Backlash among Latinos after veto override vote

Hobbs and Democratic lawmakers who voted for the bill but against the override now face losing political support among Latino voters over the issue.

"We certainly will not vote for you again," said tamale maker Imelda Hartley, 53. "We voted for you to represent us and you failed us. This is not a political issue. ... This is about being okay with your community."

Hartley said she used to sell homemade tamales in the parking lot of a 24-hour convenience store near 15th Avenue and Indian School Road in Phoenix.

She used the money she earned to buy shoes and clothes for her 14 children.

She now owns her own licensed catering business called Happy Tamales. Instead of at home, she now makes her tamales in a commercial kitchen. She recently made 200 tamales for a golf tournament sponsored by the Mexican government to raise money for student scholarships.

She said many small business owners started out the same way as she did.

In vetoing the bill, Hobbs cited public health concerns and said the legislation didn't take strong enough measures to ensure home kitchens are free of "hazardous chemicals, rodent or insect infestation," which some Latino lawmakers interpreted as racist.

"I find it offensive that they think that there's rodents and rats and bugs infested in my grandmother's kitchen selling tamales. I think that's just ridiculous," said House Majority Whip Teresa Martinez, a Republican from Casa Grande.

Selling homemade tamales remains illegal, but enforcement is lax

Homemade tamale vendors such as Lopez may have to wait another year before lawmakers can introduce a similar bill to legalize tamales and other perishable foods.

For now, selling homemade tamales remains illegal. Food truck vendors, who view homemade tamale vendors as unfair competition, have sometimes threatened to call the health department when tamale vendors sell food in parking lots, Hartley said.

Health officials, however, rarely crack down on homemade food vendors, said Jesse Lewis, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Health Services, which oversees the state's Cottage Food Program.

The state health department does not fine people for breaking the law, but individual counties can impose their own penalties.

When the department receives a complaint, they "approach the individual from a place of education, not punitiveness," Lewis said in a statement.

The Maricopa County Environmental Services Department has received 41 complaints of food vendors operating without a permit this year, and 46 complaints in 2022, including restaurants and people selling homemade food, according to county data.

Complaints are investigated and if verified a cease and desist order may be issued, said Bryan Hare, the department's environmental health division manager.

Violating a cease and desist order may result in a complaint being filed in Superior Court, but the goal is to help home food vendors become compliant, Hare said.

"We’ve never had to take this action on a home-based operator," Hare said in an email. "We try to work with operators to gain compliance. Compliance is always our approach with any case, not penalties." 

Daniel Gonzalez covers race, equity and opportunity. For tips reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8312. Follow him on Twitter @azdangonzalez.