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By Jonathan Clark This story was originally published in the Mexico edition of The Miami Herald on May 19, 2005. OAXACA - The second game of the Oaxaca Guerreros- Tabasco Olmecas baseball doubleheader was still a few outs from concluding, but Guadalupe "Lupe" Mendez and a team of helpers were already loading up the family truck with empty Tupperware containers, steam pots and gas cookers. The defending champion Campeche Piratas were set to arrive in Oaxaca the next day for a three-game series, and Mendez was in a hurry to get to the market to stock up for what she hoped would be large - and hungry - crowds. A short time later, with the clock creeping towards midnight, Mendez arrived at an all-night wholesale vegetable market. Dodging the delivery boys pushing overloaded trolleys and stepping around the lettuce leaves lying scattered on the floor, she headed straight for one of her regular suppliers. "How much is a box of avocados today?" she asked the clerk, squeezing the fruits as she searched for a batch ripe enough to serve the following day. "Seventy pesos?!?" she cried in mock disgust at his answer. "Come on, I'm trying to run a business here!" Despite the protest, she took the avocados, along with six kilos of jalapeno chiles, two large bags of romaine lettuce, three kilos of onions and three large bundles of cilantro. Moments later, she was back in the front seat of the truck, headed for home and a few hours of sleep before a long day of preparation for the following night's game. Mendez is a familiar sight at Eduardo Vasconcelos Stadium, home of the Oaxaca Guerreros professional baseball team. As the owner-operator of "Antojitos Lupe," a ballpark concession business selling antojitos, or snacks, she has been hawking her home-cooked empanadas, tlayudas, tamales, tostadas and tacos dorados at Guerreros' games for a decade now. Recently, as has happened to many independent entrepreneurs in Mexico, Mendez found herself faced with competition from a multinational franchise. But thanks to her special relationship with her clientele and her careful attention to the quality of her product, she not only held her own against her chain competitor, she beat them. HOME COOKING Mendez lives with her husband and four children in the sprawling Esmeralda subdivision on the outskirts of Oaxaca city. The small government-subsidized row houses are clustered together around culd-de-sacs with colorful gem-themed names like Cuarzo, Rubi and Opalo, and brick sidewalks weave from one entryway to another past carefully tended flower gardens and fledgling palmettos. Many residents have left their front doors open on this warm May afternoon to let in a breeze or to allow their children to freely dash in and out. In Oaxaca, one of the nation's poorest states, the do-it-yourself ethic is more than a way of life, it's a necessity for survival. And in this working-class neighborhood, it appears that most everyone is an entrepreneur. One home is decked with a large banner proclaiming "Barbie products sold here," while a more modest hand-painted sign in a nearby front lawn alerts passers-by that hamburgers and hot dogs are available on Saturdays and Sundays. A visitor who stops for directions is quickly pointed towards Mendez's home. "Oh, you mean the lady who sells the good empanadas," says a teenage boy. "She's right around the corner in Building 10." At 11 a.m., eight hours before the start of the Guerreros-Piratas game, the Mendez household is buzzing with activity. The downstairs, roughly 12 by 25 feet, serves triple duty as living room, dining area and walk-in kitchen. As Mendez bustled back and forth between her countertop prep station and a back patio that serves as kitchen annex, her two young sons, Daniel, 8, and Ali, 12, sit nestled on the sofa, eyes glued to the television. They are watching, appropriately enough, a cooking program. Meanwhile, Dona Felipa, one of only two members of the dozen-strong Antojitos Lupe team who is not a family member, stands patiently at the stove, stirring a vat of chicken. "We bought the chicken fresh this morning at the market," Mendez says, as she prepares a bucket of iodine water with which to sterilize her three large bundles of cilantro. "We also bought the beef, salchicha, and quesillo today, to make sure it's as fresh as possible." Mendez has been up and working since 6 a.m. On the days when Oaxaca's professional soccer team, the Chapulineros ("Grasshopper-ers," in honor of the insect that also serves as a local delicacy) is in town, she is up at 4 a.m. Though baseball is her main gig, she also sells empanadas at the bi-weekly home soccer matches. Most of Mendez's morning is spent on prep work, such as boiling black beans ("I cook them with an avocado rind, for flavor"), drying her tostadas in the warm Oaxacan sun ("The sun gets some of the excess grease out"), and preparing the mole sauce for her empanadas. She'll cook her top seller, empanadas, in the afternoon just before leaving, and the tlayudas will be prepared later on at the stadium. Before retiring the previous night, she boiled her market-fresh maiz in cal, or lime, and then set the mixture, known as nixtamal, out to cool. First thing in the morning, she brought the nixtamal to a local miller, who ground it into the corn meal for her famous empanadas. "I learned to make empanadas from my mother," Lupe said. "And now, people say that my empanadas are even better than hers. So you see, everybody puts their own special touch on what they do. And I think that special touch is part of the reason why we've been successful." Jose Toledo Cruz, a regular at Guerreros' games, appreciates the special touch that Lupe adds to her tlayudas, a local flatbread sometimes called a "Oaxacan pizza." "They just load them up with quesillo; I love that," he said. "And the meat they use is really lean, too. And then there are the condiments: salsa, chile, onion. They've got so much flavor." FALLEN DOMINO'S Oaxacans are intensely loyal to their state's culinary tradition. In late 2002, when McDonald's attempted to open a restaurant on Oaxaca city's main square, locals were so offended by the idea that they launched a vociferous protest and scuttled the plan. There was no corresponding protest when, a few baseball seasons ago, fast-food chain Domino's Pizza was granted a concession to sell its personal pizzas at Guerreros' games. But when Guerreros' fans were presented with the choice of buying a microwaved pizza hawked by teenagers in generic red and sky-blue Domino's uniforms, or spending their 20 pesos on a homemade empanada served up by Mendez or her rebozo-clad mother, Eustolia Cruz, they almost always chose the latter. So at the start of this season, Domino's looked at its bottom line and decided not to renew its concession with the Guerreros. "All that Domino's was offering was a two-ingredient pizza that, really, was mostly just bread," said Raul Santa Anna Solis, the Guerreros' marketing director. "Plus, their vendors just didn't have that same 'spark' as Lupe." "We have a lot of variety, plus our food is nutritious and wholesome; it's all fresh," Mendez said, trying to remain modest. "Domino's may be a big multinational, but the fact is that what they are selling is junk food. And that's why we were able to drive them out of the stadium." A BASEBALL INSTITUTION Mendez first started selling her empanadas on the sidewalks of Oaxaca 17 years ago when she was in her mid-20s. Soon after, she began focusing her efforts on the crowds at the city's municipal baseball leagues. When the Mexican Baseball League team from Jalisco moved its operations to Oaxaca in 1996, it invited Lupe to sell her antojitos at the Guerreros' games. Now, after 10 years at the stadium, Mendez has become as much of a fixture as Tato, the madcap bird mascot, or the Guerreritas, the team's pom-pom-waving cheerleader squad. She smiles and jokes with her customers as she dashes to deliver their nightly quota of tamales or tlayudas, and the stadium rings with calls of "Lupe! Lupe!" from hungry fans hoping to place an order. The sight of Mendez running her deliveries with a camera-toting reporter in tow elicits a hail of good-natured ribbing from fans who tease her about her new admirer. "I like the way people at the stadium treat my mom," said Guadalupe Cabrera, the eldest of Mendez's four children and a part-time member of the Antojitos Lupe team. "Everyone knows her and jokes with her and treats her with respect." The Mexican Baseball League season only runs for half the year, and so when the Guerreros' schedule ends, Lupe returns to her roots and sells at the city league games. She tried selling at basketball games during the baseball offseason, but didn't have much success. "The games are shorter, so people don't eat as much," she said. "Plus, baseball games draw more of a family crowd, which is good for our business." 'HOW WE SURVIVE' Back at Fraccionamiento Esmeralda, Lupe continued her frantic preparations for the evening's game - the Guerreros require her to be in the stadium ready to go at 6:30 p.m. "It's a lot of work, that's for sure," she said. "From early morning until midnight, and usually without stopping." She was looking forward to the upcoming week when the Guerreros will embark on a road trip. That's when she has time to catch up on all the errands she doesn't have time to do during homestands. And, she added with a smile, it's also a time when she can put her feet up and just relax a bit. Yet despite the demanding schedule and the occasional threats from multinational fast food franchises, Mendez says that her friends at the ballpark and the satisfaction of serving tasty and nutritious treats make the effort worthwhile. Plus, her daughter Guadalupe added, "This is how we survive." |