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Historian,
San Antonio
When
we began our chili queen research we quickly found
our way to Mary Ann Noonan Guerra, the
grand dame of San Antonio history. Mary Ann lives and
breathes the history and rich traditions of old San Antonio.
The walls of large 1920s hacienda, painted daring deep
Mexican reds and blues, display historic Santos, paintings
and photographs of the town's mission and plazas. A warm,
gracious woman in her eighties with white hair swept
back and large, dark glasses protecting her failing eyes,
Mary Ann wrote an essay about the chili queens especially
for our visit.
photo - Mary Ann Guerra
at her home in San Antonio 2005/KS
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The Plazas of San Antonio
"From San Antonio's
earliest days as a Spanish military encampment, life
in the town revolved around the plazas. When the town
was first mapped out by Spaniards in 1730, the viceroy
mandated plazas "for the use and entertainment
of the colonist.
San Antonio's chili queens
reigned over the towns plazas for almost one hundred
years and brought to the Old Town and this city, almost
as much fame as its River and the Alamo. San Antonio
was an isolated outpost, a refueling place for the
military, a rest-stop for travelers and tourists, a
haven for political refugees, and a gold mine for rustlers
and thieves. From its founding days, San Antonio had
foreignness about it, and it was on the plazas that
its lifestyle and acharacter were shaped.
The plazas were once the
center of life. They were the marketplace, the midway,
the front porches of government and the church — the
places where treaties were signed with the Coaches,
where buffalo meat and skins were sold, where weddings,
funerals, festivals and hangings took place.
Here was that life as seen
in the 1870s by Harriet Prescott Spofford who arrived
on one of the first trains into San Antonio and visited
Plaza de Armas (Military Plaza).
"Beneath an umbrella-tree
that sheds powerful fragrance, little tables are spread,
where the market people get their roll and chocolate
and bit of pastry… vendors of bunches of magnolias
and great, ineffably sweet Cape Jasmines; Mexican women
half veiled by their rebozos surrounded by
wicker cages full of mokingbirds, vivid cardinals and
lively little canaries… these faces are a great
part of the little town; there are portions of it called
Chihuahua and Laredo. Here you can buy skins of leopards
and ocelots, which the Indian women work till they
are supple as silk. Here are earthenware jarritos prettily
ornamented with their molinillos or curious
wooden sticks, set in many rings, which rolled upright
between the palms, make the chocolate foam. Whatever
you buy, pilon (a bonus) will be given you."
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Bird's eye view of San Antonio
1873 - Courtesy of the Witte Museum
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At
dusk, as the public market closed down, came the arrival
of the chili queens, pulling their carts loaded with
sawhorses, plank tables, pots, and baskets of food.
As darkness fell, the townspeople and tourists would
crowd around the chili queens' tables to eat chili
using tortillas rolled up like funnel to scoop the
hot food. The plaza was a place to exchange news and
compare notes on one's children and to share food and
conversation. People could argue politics with a neighbor
or listen to the guitars and sad songs of the troubadours
walking amid the crowd.
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"The ever-attentive, always jolly 'chile queen.' They are 'good fellows,'
these 'chile queens,' and are able and willing to talk on any subject that may
be named from love to law. As a general rule they are bright, bewitching creatures
and put themselves to much trouble to please their too often rowdy customers.
Every class of people who come to this city visit the places and partake of their
piquant edibles."~ San
Antonio Daily Express, 1894
Archival news clipping courtesy
of Institute of Texan Cultures at UTSA
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But
later in 1890, when the town council chose to construct
the City hall building right in the center of Military
Plaza, the chili queens and the bustling life of the market
and plaza were forced to relocate. Some of the queens migrated
to Alamo Plaza. Others moved to Milam Plaza, where they
remained for a few years until they were forced to move
again when the city decided to landscape the plaza. San
Antonio was growing quickly — at the end of the nineteenth
century; it was the fastest growing city in Texas. Newcomers
were arriving, the own was developing and the queens were
feeling the push and pull of progress." |
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The chili queens of Haymarket Plaza,
San Antonio, Texas, 1933 Courtesy of Institute of Texas
Cultures at UTSA
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Read more about the legendary
chili queens in Mary Ann Guerra's book The History
of San Antonio's Market Square and in Hidden
Kitchens—Stories, Recipes and More from NPR's The
Kitchen Sisters. |
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