Over the next two weeks, Dr. Barbara Medina, will end her tenure as Interim President of Northern New Mexico College and leave behind a legacy, despite it’s short term, of keeping the college on an even keel during the search for a new president.
She will have served for one year.
Dr. Medina has directed the college purposely onward and not acted as a mere placeholder. Her enthusiasm for the school and for the promise it holds for all of Northern New Mexico has been infectious and inspiring. Actually, you could call her a zealot for NNMC.
She followed the popular Richard Bailey who left for another job, and she quickly immersed herself in the community reaching out to leaders in Espanola and Rio Arriba County. She made herself known and, by the way, popular.
There are those among us who wish she had thrown her hat in the ring to become the new, permanent president, but she agreed not to pursue the job while serving in an interim capacity.
Dr. Medina has had a distinguished career ranging from teaching K-12 to higher education and holding important positions with the Colorado Department of Education. Much of her career has been focused on the needs of those learning a second language.
Attorney General Hector Balderas has been named as the new president of the college. He will have big shoes to fill following Bailey and now Dr. Medina.
Below this editorial, Dr. Medina shares with her El Norte brethren a holiday family tradition that may just bring tears to your eyes. Dr. Medina, you see, combines a sharp intellect with a gracious and warm heart:
Every Christmas Eve after midnight mass we would eat tamales. Growing up I remember walking the corn fields in late fall-collecting the hojas, (corn husks) — up and down the rows picking what was left from the harvest. We tried to collect the biggest or widest corn husks.
The dawn of Christmas Eve, my mother would show us how to soak the hojas in a warm bath to soften them. She then turned her attention to the red chili. She would take the dried red chili ristras and cook them in a big pot with water. Next, she would put them in a blender with a little salt, oil and garlic and blend away. The pork roasts had been cooked in the large roaster pans. They were left to cool. She would mix the red chili with the pork meat that she had shredded. The masa (corn dough) was mixed with Morrell lard, the one in the blue pail.
We set up an assembly line of workers maybe six of us at the table ready to spread the masa on the hojas.This is how we trained up the young members of our family. We got spoons and dishes of warm water to dip our spoons in, so the masa would spread evenly. With so many of us doing this it was not a uniform result.
Mom would just smile, whip out her spatula and fix the masa before adding the rich red chile pork meat. She would gently fold the sides, tuck the bottom up and place the tamale in the oja (big pot). The tamales would simmer on the stove a few hours and be ready when we returned from midnight mass. The blue corn atole would be made from scratch, a sweet porridge that kept us warm on the chilly winter nights.
Then it happened. Our Mom passed. Determined to honor her —and our traditions, we sisters decided that we would carry on the tradition of tamales at Christmas. We wept at every chore. One of us would start, and seeing the tears glisten in my sister’s eyes, I would begin to cry. We call them “sneaky tears.” The tamalera that year was quite subdued. My father hovered in the background encouraging us and making jokes. He would say let’s see who had been paying attention.
The tamales were simply not good. They were not our mom’s. Actually they were awful. Maybe we cried too much. That’s what our father said. Just as in the novel Like Water for Chocolate, our tears and sadness got in our cooking. We tried again before the pandemic to have a tamalera but once again we fell short of our hopes. Again, they tasted awful. We blamed it on the chili pods we used. One sister said they were too old. Another sister said that we used the wrong masa. Yet another sister said that we did not have the whole family to help.
At the Tamalera, my mother was with us. I saw her in my eldest sisters hands as she worked the corn masa. I saw her in my sisters as one tried to help a younger family member learn to spread the masa on the hoja. I saw her in my other sister’s eyes as she wiped a silent tear.
They are both gone now, my parents. While I miss them I can feel that what they taught us about faith, family and shared work is still with us. The tamales are not any better but the tamalera, the coming together to make a special Noche de Navidad envelopes and comforts us.
It was never really about tamales, but about being together, working together and welcoming cold winter nights with hope for the birth of a promise — a promise that only love can fulfill. It was not about the food but celebrating and remembering our traditions. My brother always comes late to the tamaleras, and as he would enter the residence loudly stomping his boots and complaining about the cold and the stubborn cows, he would with a twinkle in his eye say, “Oh good, tamales! We have something to open Christmas Day.”
In Spanish we say, “Panza llena, Corazon contenta.” “Full belly, contented heart.”
Dr. Barbara Medina is the interim president at Northern New Mexico College.