El Paso Food Voices is a collection of food stories gathered from home cooks, professional chefs, restaurant owners, community educators, and others from across El Paso, Texas.
In this episode of EPFV, Meredith Abarca speaks with Sandra Licon, from San Elizario, Texas Licon Dairy. Sandra, who married into the Licon family, shares not only the journey of how Licon Dairy has become a much beloved establishments in El Paso Texas’ lower valley, but the matriarchal lineage of asadero cheese makers. The production of asadero cheese begun in California, and in the 1940s continued in Ysleta, Texas. Eugenio Linco, bought it from his father-in-law in 1963 and moved the operation to its current location in San Elizario, Texas. Sandra, beyond sharing the on-going history of cheese making and the expansion of the dairy, she also offers the story of how this dairy became a zoo which at one point included a camel. The Licon Dairy continues to grow as new generations add their own sazón to the kinds of cheeses, butter, and cream produce at the dairy. The Licon’s family commitment to the San Elizario community is evident in the partnerships they established with other locally own food entities in the area—like tortilla makers.
19 Aug 2025
24: Las Guardianas de la Cultura
In this episode of EPFV, Eloisa Arenas talks with our guest, Rosalinda Guadalajara, a Ralámuli woman, about her Culinary Heritage and her indigenous community in Juarez, Chihuahua, on the border with El Paso, Texas. Rosalinda shares with us some ancestral recipes, like Pinole, and a couple of traditional ingredients as corn and quelites. They discuss the significance of Las Guardianas de la Cultura (The Guards of Culture) as preservers of family lineages, as well as some of the challenges the younger Ralámuli people face in keeping their traditions alive in the urban context, through cultural spaces such as Las Tres Marías restaurant or Festival Umukí.
English Transcript Available Here.
22 May 2024
23: To Eat or Not To Eat
“To Eat or Not to Eat” is part of El Paso Food Voices’ special feature on “Culinary Heritage and Culinary Kinship” as it looks at the role of culinary dystopia. Culinary dystopia is the tensions that create toxic relationships between people through food, hindering the potential for kinship. We focus on culinary dystopia formed through restriction, looking at national restrictions such as the criminalization of beef in Nepal, restriction through racial and class oppression in the United States, and cultural and individual restrictions of food through a Mexican-American lens. Through viewing culinary dystopia, we explore how and where the positive and negative relationships of food both exist and create spaces where perceptions of food can be shifted.
Works mentioned in the episode are:
Bennion, Natalie, Alisha H. Redelfs, Lori Spruance, Shelby Benally, and Chantel Sloan-Aagard. “Driving Distance and Food Accessibility: A Geospatial Analysis of the Food Environment in the Navajo Nation and Border Towns.” Frontiers in nutrition (Lausanne) 9 (2022): 904119–904119.
Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2023.
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