EL PASO — Twenty years in the past, Amelia Lopez Patrykus stood outdoors Sacred Coronary heart Catholic Church, ready for a free meal and groceries. The road was simply blocks from the Rio Grande, separating Mexico from her new house in the US.
She had simply arrived from Jalisco, Mexico, together with her kids and, in these first few years in Texas, the church supplied a lifeline, providing staples like rice and cans of tomatoes, and non secular and academic assist. It’s the place her daughter sang within the choir and had her first communion, and the place Ms. Lopez Patrykus took free grownup schooling courses and located a job — at La Tilma, the restaurant that provided her that early meal.
Within the middle of El Segundo Barrio, the place many Mexican immigrants stay in poverty, Sacred Coronary heart is thought to the principally Spanish-speaking residents as a spot to get rental help, take English courses and discover a scorching meal.
La Tilma, named after the cloak worn by St. Juan Diego when the Virgin of Guadalupe is claimed to have appeared in Mexico almost 500 years in the past, has been a group mainstay because it opened in 2003, run by a chef who usually makes dishes acquainted to those new immigrants from Mexico.
Fish or vegetarian specials, like lentil soup, enchiladas and capirotada — a sort of Mexican bread pudding served solely within the lead as much as Easter — seem on Fridays throughout Lent, when many Christians forgo pink meat.
“If it’s not good, I don’t eat it,” stated Dolores Dominguez, 88, who lives in public housing within the neighborhood. If La Tilma didn’t exist, her kids must drive from a close-by Native American reservation to help her, she stated.
Earlier than the pandemic, La Tilma served a full Mexican menu, together with plates with huevos rancheros, burritos and aguas frescas, for underneath $5 to the general public on the weekends. Parishioners sipped on menudo, a conventional Mexican soup, after Sunday Mass, and church workers delivered meals to older adults within the neighborhood. Some time in the past, an undocumented immigrant even delivered meals to immigration officers on the Paso del Norte Worldwide Bridge that connects El Paso with Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
The pandemic pressured La Tilma to close down the restaurant totally and pivot to strictly takeout. However, on Easter Sunday, the restaurant plans to open to the general public as soon as extra.
“We’re reopening on resurrection day,” stated Father Rafael Garcia, 69, the priest in command of Sacred Coronary heart. “It’s a time of latest life.”
Meals right here can be found to anybody who wants them, no questions requested. Many days, Ms. Lopez Patrykus could be discovered pushing a cart stacked with takeout meals from La Tilma across the neighborhood, giving meals to migrants, homeless folks, abused ladies and men ready for short-term work. They name her “Mami” or “La Jefita,” which implies little boss.
She is second in command to James Martinez, the restaurant’s chef, who took over the kitchen in 2005. On a latest Lenten Friday, Ms. Lopez Patrykus scooped potfuls of pico de gallo into a big container of lentil soup. Parts of rice, seasoned with hen broth and cilantro, joined snap peas, broccoli, mushrooms, squash and carrots coated in a spicy yellow curry sauce in takeout containers.
“After I crossed over, the church helped me loads with meals,” Ms. Lopez Patrykus, 63, stated in Spanish. Her 12 years at La Tilma have change into a approach for her to present again to others in return for a way the church helped her. “God will assist us after we want it.”
La Tilma gives meals and groceries to about 250 households. Volunteers fill grocery luggage with staples like rice, pinto beans, noodles, peanut butter and tomatoes.
Catering helps pay for this outreach. In 2018, its highest-grossing yr, La Tilma made about $220,000 making ready meals for weddings, diocese occasions and quinceañeras. Numerous grants, donations and cash from the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic order — often known as Jesuits — and meals donations from organizations like El Pasoans Preventing Starvation make up the distinction.
Every week throughout Lent, workers and volunteers at La Tilma reduce a whole lot of tomatoes and onions. Dried pink chiles are boiled for hours for vegetarian enchiladas rojas. Bread is reduce and toasted for capirotada.
For his model of that bread pudding, Mr. Martinez mixes the toasted bread with a sauce of unsweetened evaporated milk, butter, brown sugar, Abuelita scorching chocolate and cappuccino combine. Coconut shavings, peanuts and raisins supply taste, and Muenster cheese and rainbow sprinkles add the ultimate contact.
“I don’t need to see any white,” Mr. Martinez, 54, shouted, referring to tortillas, as a volunteer ladled salsa roja over a tray of enchiladas.
Mr. Martinez trains the volunteers to arrange and portion meals as he may a sous chef in a restaurant.
“I inform them to only be beneficiant,” he stated. “Échale,” he added in Spanish, that means, “Go for it.” Sacred Coronary heart has a protracted historical past of outreach locally. The one parish by this order left in Texas, it was based in 1893 for Spanish-speaking Catholics and staffed by the Jesuits.
Right this moment, the vast majority of El Paso’s greater than 865,000 residents establish as Catholic, based on the Roman Catholic Diocese of El Paso.
“Their relationship with God could be very important,” Father Daniel Mora, 42, stated in Spanish concerning the primarily Mexican American parishioners on the church.
The church serves solely a small portion of El Paso’s needy. El Pasoans Preventing Starvation, the world’s solely meals financial institution, feeds about 200,000 food-insecure folks. Virtually 18 % of the county’s residents are in poverty, about six share factors greater than the nationwide common, based on census information. In 2020, the common median family revenue right here was solely about $48,000, about $19,000 lower than the nationwide quantity.
The realm’s proximity to Ciudad Juárez make El Paso a largely immigrant group. Virtually 83 % of the county’s residents are Hispanic or Latino, and a language aside from English is spoken in almost 70 % of households right here.
Sustaining human dignity, particularly for the poor, is Sacred Coronary heart’s mission, stated Mr. Garcia, the church’s pastor. Due to this, Mr. Martinez isn’t afraid to prioritize high quality. If donated produce is rotting, he’ll apologize and switch it away.
For Mr. Martinez, a superb meal is one with texture, and he seeks to protect that as he cooks — holding tomatoes and onions chunky within the pico de gallo and retaining crunch with the peanuts within the capirotada. He needs the folks receiving his meals to know precisely what they’re getting.
“Every part that I do is a regular for myself,” Mr. Martinez stated. “I wouldn’t put something on the market that I wouldn’t serve myself, eat myself or current to someone else.”
La Tilma, 602 South Oregon Avenue, El Paso, 915-532-5447, sacredheartelpaso.org/la-tilma.
