Pancho Claus: A Tex-Mex Santa from the South Pole
Pancho Claus: A Tex-Mex Santa from the South Pole
Associated Press
HOUSTON (AP) -- He usually has black hair and a black beard, sometimes just a mustache. Like Santa, he wears a hat - though often it's a sombrero. He dons a serape or a poncho and, in one case, a red and black zoot suit. And he makes his grand entrance on lowriders or Harleys or led by a pack of burros instead of eight reindeer.
Meet Pancho Claus, the Tex-Mex Santa.
Amid all the talk about Santa Claus' race, spawned by a Fox News commentator's remarks that both Santa and Jesus were white, there is, in the Lone Star State, a Hispanic version of Santa in cities from the border to the plains - handing out gifts for low-income and at-risk children.
Born from the Chicano civil rights movement, Pancho Claus is a mostly Texas thing, historians say, though there may be one somewhere in California. Lorenzo Cano, a Mexican-American studies scholar at the University of Houston, says Pancho was apparently conceived north of the border as Mexican-Americans looked to "build a place and a space for themselves" in the 1970s. His rise coincided with a growing interest in Mexican art, Cinco de Mayo, Mexican Independence Day and other cultural events.
Now, Pancho is an adored Christmas fixture in many Texas cities.
-snip-
Full article here: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_PANCHO_CLAUS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-12-23-01-07-11
= new reply since forum marked as read
I miss that.
Love Tamales. One Christmas offered a grandson tamales- he grew up in the North West and had never seen one. If you think about it they don't look like something to eat. He refused. His dad appeared with a plate piled high and said through a mouth full of tamale, "Have a tamale, these are the best evah!" In short order grandson ate a dozen. Can't keep him away from them now.
Edited to add_ What about bunuelos
Well, I'm glad he figured them out 
I love them, too, even as a vegetarian. The black bean tamales are great, as are the mushroom tamales cooked in banana leaves at a local Mex-Mex restaurant here. I still haven't tried their fruit tamales, though. Those are only available as Christmas orders, and I'd need more freezer room (or more friends) to make an order 
