Author: Anne Ewbank / Source: Atlas Obscura
Food trends don’t usually incite extreme violence. But in early 20th-century America, the popularity of one recently arrived street food caused turf wars, which the media breathlessly sensationalized. That food, as it happened, was the humble tamale.
At the time, the tamale quickly became as popular in America as the hot dog. Tamales had made a splash at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and more and more Americans were moving West into what had previously been Mexican territory. There, they encountered cheap, filling tamales, and they liked them. Hilariously, the Atlantic Monthly explained tamales to unfamiliar readers in 1898: “The hot tamale (pronounced ta-molly)—a molten, pepper-sauced chicken croquette, with a coat of Indian meal and an overcoat of corn husk.” For many white Americans, with their uninitiated taste buds, eating something so spicy was a revelation: The Atlantic Monthly went on to describe the taste of a tamale as “a diabolical combination that tastes like a bonfire.”
Tamale vendors canvassed the growing cities of the West, serving their wares out of kettles, carts, and wagons. Cries of “Hot tamales!”…
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