Phoenix.- Milagros Cruz only had 75 dollars and was sleeping in a car, when she heard her mother’s voice advising her in a dream: My girl, make tamales.
Arizona doesn’t let that be easy. Although the state promotes itself as a place where it offers low taxes and low regulation for private businesses, it does not allow the sale of perishable home-made foods.
So, for years, a burgeoning working-class, mostly Latino home-cooker economy operated clandestinely, selling tacos, tres leches cakes, and chile-spiked corn illegally from living rooms, outside laundromats. public and soccer matches.
Cruz, 41, sells green chile and pork tamales near an auto parts store in Phoenix, and is concerned about being cited under a state law that punishes home cooking with a $500 fine and six months from jail.
She said she could operate legally if she could, but the state isn’t offering her any way to do so.
Earlier this month, Republicans who control the state Legislature joined Democrats in a rare bipartisan deal to change that.
They passed a bill that would allow Arizona home cooks to register with the state to legally sell perishable foods like salsas and tamales.
Although Katie Hobbs, the state’s new Democratic governor, vetoed the measure last week, citing concerns about possible illnesses that home cooking can cause, as well as rats and insects that may be found in home kitchens.
Her veto unleashed fierce culinary and cultural criticism of the Capitol from kitchens across Arizona, offering a political lesson for the new governor: Don’t go looking for trouble with tamaleras.
“I respect our governor and I voted for her, but I don’t agree with that veto,” said Imelda Hartley, who began a culinary career making tamales from home and now runs Happy Tamales in a commercial kitchen.
“It’s affecting our Latino community,” Hartley said of the ban. He added that cooking at home was the only realistic option for immigrants, many of them undocumented, who want to own a food business.
Republicans lashed out at Hobbs for preserving restrictions on small businesses and were unable to override the veto on Tuesday. Most Democrats supported the governor.
