(light instrumental music plays) - I feel like I bring Michoacan to my food truck.

- [Narrator] The State of Michoacan de Ocampo lies in West Central Mexico and is the native home of Indolfo Martinez, owner of Taqueria MTZ.

A specialty there is Birria, which traditionally is a Mexican dish of stewed meat, either beef or lamb or goat, and it makes a mean taco filling.

- In Mexico, different states, they make it their own way.

Everybody have their own style.

The way I make it is that we make "foreign language" Michoacan and Guerrero.

They are similar.

They have the similar Birria, but in Mexico, the Birria, the original Birria, I believe is from Guadalajara.

But they use goat, they don't use beef.

In Michoacan we use beef but we don't call it "Birria" we call it "barbacoa" in Chihuahua they make more like, with no color just like a slow cook with some garlic and some spice and bay leaf or something but it has no color.

The color is like, like barbacoa, they don't use the guajillo pepper.

In Birria, we use the guajillo pepper.

and some chile ancho, is the one that gives you more color because it is more like more red.

We cook it for like six hours.

It is a, it's a long process.

So the way we make the tacos in our taqueria is you dip it in the red sauce, you throw it on the flat top and you put some cheese on it.

Then you put the meat, cilantro and onions.

But you have to leave it for a little bit on the flat top to make the difference between Birra tacos and the regular tacos, because that is a little bit more crunchy.

We put it like, at least, like, I want to say seven spices.

To make the Birria.

The secret is a secret, it's going to stay a secret.

(laughs jokingly) (light guitar music plays) - The taco's history goes back to the pre-Hispanic era.

Now that's not to say that it was called a taco then it was just a folded or rolled tortilla.

There are several theories on what it was called pre conquest, but the theory for post conquest is the taco gained its name from the dynamite sticks that miners used in the 17th and 18th centuries.

And those were basically rolled tortillas.

And within those tortillas was meat or bean or something spicy with some salsa, which are to this day the essential components of the taco.

Because we live in a nearly free market world.

You can find these foods almost anywhere.

But they did not originate just anywhere.

They originated from population shifts taste and ingredients availability.

Right.

So Al Pastor developed from Shwarma which was brought by Lebanese immigrants through southern Mexico in the town of Puebla.

That became Tacos Arabes in the 1930s.

Then it moved to Mexico's steady where it became tacos Al Pastor, shepherd style taco and then it blew up.

- What other kinds of tacos are, you know in special to different regions?

- Well, we can talk about fish tacos and seafood tacos from the west coast of Baja.

That tradition is highly influenced by Japanese migration during the early 20th century.

And so the batter that you get from fish tacos is inspired by Tempura.

Another one would be Carne Asada, we are very familiar with that because we live in beef country and it's a northern Mexican taco and we just happened to live in what was once Northern Mexico.

So you could say that we're still part of Mexico.

- They're good.

You can never go wrong with tacos.

First of all, they're made with a lot of love.

Every, every time we cook, it's like if we were feeding our kids, we've been in business for, it's gonna be our fifth year in March 2nd on on this location, we started in a food truck.

The only one that had a background on this business was my uncle.

I believe he started when he was 14 in a restaurant.

And it was different type of restaurant.

You know, he had, he worked at a a high class restaurant where it was main dishes that is you know, like rich people go.

- My history started like 28 years ago because I start cooking in Mexico in Chihuahua, Mexico.

And was my first Yelp.

And I love it was a big restaurant.

They sell all kind of food from steak to chilaquiles, tacos, everything.

- The Socios is a chicken.

That's our family recipe.

He, he came up with it and pretty much everything fed off of that one.

- The Socios tacos chicken, how we marinate it and and put the spices on it.

I'm, I am kind of like Colonel Sanders, you know the KFC?

Yeah.

I made my own recipe on the chicken.

It's, it's pretty good.

- Our shrimp tacos are cooked the same way our Alambre tacos are, which Alambre tacos are one of our top sellers.

- Alambre is a, is a tender steak meat.

You cook all together with bacon, onion and bell pepper and you put a, a special black sauce on top.

Then when you finish you make the taco and you put the shredded cheese on top and it's ready to go.

- Pastor is a, it's very popular in, in the place where I grew up in and my aunt used to take me to a place in downtown in Chihuahua and they were pretty famous.

I, I don't know if they're still going.

That was their main dish and they had 'em, I don't know if ya seen, it's like a (foreign language) you know, and, and it is just rotating and it is being cooked and they're just cutting it.

I loved them.

That was my favorite place to eat.

I still remember the week before I came to the United States.

She has a, a son and it was his birth, first birthday and she cater somebody to do that.

And I remember we had leftover and I eat that whole week before I came.

- I feel proud and I feel good when I make food.

I feel like, ah, (foreign language) - [Interviewer] Like a satisfaction.

- Satisfaction.

Yeah.

I feel on me and my, yeah.

So I think that's my, my dream job.

- Anybody can have a taco whether you want it with meat, chicken, fish even vegetables, vegetarians, anyone can eat it.

It's perfect and you can dress it up how you want.

With hot sauce.

We use a cilantro lime crema.

You could top it off with lettuce and tomatoes.

We top ours off with cilantro and onions.

Our biggest is the Asada meat.

Of course there's Chile Colorado, Chile Rojo, you know all different kinds of meat.

But this is more of the meat flavor that you're tasting.

Our Asada fries are killing it.

We make a queso and I add cream cheese half and half, green chilies and all kinds of seasoning in it.

And then we top it off with the meat the Asada meat and we put a cilantro lime creme, a chipotle creme, cilantro, onions and it's just really hardy.

We went into catering as Fresh Box of Amarillo, and we did that maybe about a year.

Most of my caterings were during the day while kids are in school.

I wanted to be able to do something where I was off in the evening, able to pick them up.

I catered for meetings and when Covid hit everything went to Zoom, remember?

And nobody needed any food for their meetings because they were eating at home.

I couldn't quit.

I needed something.

So I was kind of forced, pushed into the food truck.

The door opened, some doors closed, others opened.

You asked me how I started.

Well somebody brought it up to me.

One of my cousins was talking about it and they said I remember whenever we were in high high school so I was probably about 18, 19, I had already graduated and I had a small house and I, I would make plates with rice and beans Enchiladas and every Friday my high school cousins, younger cousins would come to my house and I would sell like 15 to 20 plates.

I had forgotten about that.

I was like, oh my gosh, that's true.

I have always been doing some kind of food.

I love my food truck family.

Everyone out there is working just as hard as I am.

- So this truck has been in our family since 1997 which is one of several that we have owned.

Well my parents have owned, my name is Julio Herrera and I own El Taco Loco taqueria.

My parents were one of the first ones to put a food truck stationed in Amarillo Boulevard.

My dad has always been the guy that's always, you know at the cookout on the grill, cooking something coming up with something new.

So he's all, well let's just see if Amarillo will like what I like to cook so well.

My dad's name is Rigo Roberto Herrera, his specialty are Tripas, which is the intestine and Carnitas.

That's a four or five hour job for such a small quantity of food.

But the way he does it, the way he cooks it is the original way you're supposed to cook it.

A big old castle with a big old flame.

You know exactly how they used to do it back where he's from.

You know, there's a lot of people that do shortcuts.

My dad is like "if you don't do it the right way, it's not going to come out good.

It's not going to taste delicious."

So those two things are, I think what the food truck really you know, caught the most, you know because beef is beef, you know, you can make chicken I mean, you know, beef fajita, stuff like that.

But when it comes down to tripe, not many people know how to do it the right way.

So when my dad tried it people loved it and he went with it.

In short terms of what tripe should taste like is like biting into some chips.

But when you put lime and salt on some chips and then you take a bite of it, it crunches.

So most people that don't know about it they don't know how to get it.

So they're like, oh, whatever you think is best.

Well, your taste buds could be different.

You know, you, you may not want something real chewy, you may want something real crunchy.

So when it's made and prepared the right way, no salt no hot sauce is needed.

Just a little bit of lime, a little bit of salt.

You take a bite, it crunches and you're just like, oh man, that's, that's golden.

(light guitar music playing) - I'm from Mexico.

When I came to this country when I was like 17 years old.

I lost my dad when I was 13 years old.

So we was, was struggling to survive and had to walk like five days and, and five nights to get to this country.

When I came, that was in 2000 April, April 15th of 2000.

So on the 16th I was working already I was starting cleaning tables, then they promoted me to dishwasher, another six months and then they promoted me to line cook.

My challenge and always on my mind is what I want.

When you go to the mountain and you go to the end of the mountian, don't feel like okay, you're on the mountian, you're done, No.

Go find something else more higher.

You know, I told my wife, hey, now my plan is to open my own business.

Everything I have is because I do it here.

I don't do it in Mexico.

This country is my country now.

Because I have my kids from here, my wife's from here always my kids, my wife, they say, hey your truck.

No, it's a family business.

It's ours.

Everything.

Everything we do is we do it together.

- I don't think you can dissociate the food itself from the entrepreneurship.

My name is Juan Oyervides, I'm an assistant professor of Spanish.

I also coordinate the Mexican American studies program in WT for for the people that are presenting their experiences in these videos, what the food means it's a lot more than the taste, right?

The flavor, I mean the flavor is of course a very important part of it.

But I think that as they were telling their stories as they were telling kind of like not only where they came from but also where the food came from.

It, it really presented an idea of community and family.

But it is also, I think it is, it's kind of like a one of the latest iterations, right?

Of Mexican and Mexican American people in in this area of Texas innovating through cuisine and innovating through business establishment.

And we know that to be true since, you know, the beginning of the, the beginning of the 20th century.

That is one thing that has always I think been present in the communities, the Hispanic communities that are establishing themselves in in this area of, of Texas, right?

The first records that we have of Hispanic families living here settling in what we understand to be contemporary Amarillo, came with the railroad when the railroad developed right?

And, and came through the city.

There were a lot of Mexican immigrant workers and migrant workers who were working in the railroad, right?

This is the beginning of the 20th century between 1900, 1920s around that area, right?

And they settled in what we consider today to be El Barrio.

And so as that community grows, there is a need for of course community, but there is a need also for services catering to that specific community, right?

And so Hispanos, they took it upon themselves to be those service providers, right?

For their own community.

And so food is perhaps one of the most salient and most visible examples of that.

But we also know that later on, right, in the 1950s, 1960s all the way to 1970s, segregation was still very prevalent.

And so a lot of Hispanos in this area and Texas in general but Hispanos in this particular area they recognize that that lack of services, that lack of support for the community and so innovation for this particular community in this specific area of Texas, it's, it's to a certain degree necessary.

It's, it's mandatory.

It became mandatory for their own survival and and for them to be able to thrive.

These are entrepreneurs, right?

These are people who are devoted and dedicated to their business and, and it takes a lot of resiliency.

It takes a lot of mental strength.

It takes I think a lot of creativity, right?

Ingenuity to do something like that.

These are not just some dishes that they just come up with but these are dishes that speak to their cultural, they're they speak to the relationships that they are trying to maintain.

But I think that it really speaks to how they see this continuation right of the culture into the future.

- My parents are from Jiquilpan, Michoacan.

My parents were one of the first ones to put a food truck stationed in Amarillo Boulevard.

My dad came over here first, about a year and a half later.

My mom came down, dad started at the IVP.

He got an opportunity to buy a restaurant, which he did.

Didn't open it till about two years after the food truck.

Food trucks back then were there.

Where my parents are from never existed.

It was was a cart with a grill and two pots and the two pots were holding tortillas and all the meat that they would cook would be on the grill.

I would love to be able to do it how they did it back then health-wise it's not permitted.

But if you guys ever have gone to Mexico and you see the stands who cook the food right in front of you, I think that's more of the joy than making the money.

But I think if, if it was possible, I mean I think that that would be great, you know to actually give the culture here the feeling of what we feel over there.

Because in here is enclosed.

You don't see me cooking.

But if you were to watch somebody cook right in front of you, you know, kind of like Kabuki but you know, just more Mexican I guess.

So my parents' restaurant is called Gloria's Oyster Bar.

It's also a Mexican restaurant.

They were one of the first also seafood restaurants that was open here in Amarillo.

So combined with fried fish, Mexican dishes as enchiladas fajitas and stuff like that.

They also do shrimp cocktails.

They have a, a dish that sells the most, which is called Camarones A La Diabla, which is shrimp with rice in the middle but a real spicy sauce.

They're going 32, 33 years strong now so.

I remember at 10 years old on a stool, washing dishes at the restaurant and then helping my mom in the kitchen.

So when I saw the food truck just sitting there, I was like you're gonna be mine one day.

And yeah, I turned 18 and I was all like, yep, I'm, I'm gonna grab that thing.

It's funny because I have a video of my daughter washing dishes in here and she's doing it so loosely.

She's just like, like she's loving it.

I, I saw myself in her whenever I saw that I was like, I remember doing that.

She was standing on a five gallon bucket.

I was standing literally on the stool.

I was, I used to be short back then, well I'm still short now but washing dishes at my mom's restaurant and she would always say, Hey, quit washing dishes.

You're too young.

Or something like that.

I'm like, no, one day I'm going to own this place.

- I like to cook.

I mean, I love to cook.

So everything what I cook, I love to do it.

Even if it's a, a beans burrito or a hot dog or a big steak.

And I try to put all of what I can on that plate.

- It goes to, to my uncle.

I have been asking him to do it for, for many years because his food is good.

We were both in the oil field business and we got laid off.

- We, we have a time down on on the oil rigs so we don't have enough money.

I mean, start thinking about it.

- And he started actually just as a side hustle.

Like we were gonna do it Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

And people love our food so much that we, I told him, okay it's time for you to quit your day job.

So he was supposed to be just me and him.

My sister came along and my, both of my sisters the first couple weeks, we have probably 18 employees right now and probably 12, 13 are our family.

We came from Chihuahua, Mexico.

My uncle, he was here already.

And then my mom came, she brought us just, it was tough in Mexico.

She decided to make a change for us.

- It's hard to, to succeed yourself out there.

I mean, it's not that easy.

- I mean, we, we were poor, you know, so we didn't have the resources to, to go to continue education.

It's very hard over there to, to do something.

Even, even to start business.

It's, it's very tough.

- And you know, here, if you are hardworking and do the right things, you can succeed.

I mean, everybody can succeed in here.

We moved looking for the best opportunities for everybody as a family.

- A few years back.

He said, I wish I would've done it 20 years ago - With the family.

It's what it is.

It's, it's all together.

I mean, we try to share with everybody a different culture.

We try to show the other side of the people in Mexico.

I mean the kindness, the, the I wanna give you good food because I love you.

It's one, it is one way to tell you, "Hey, I'm love you."