A Taste of Home, From 1,600 Miles Away

In my family, a wheel of queso añejo often finds itself tucked away in a suitcase and ferried across the border. For immigrants across the world, it’s a well-loved system of transport and trade.

My greatest family heirloom isn’t jewelry, old letters, or sepia-toned photos of family members — it’s a wheel of cheese that I keep in my freezer. Queso añejo, a stinky, salty orange-stained hard cheese — lovingly nicknamed queso de pata (foot cheese) — is my heritage.

I come from a family of queseros from the Mexican state of Zacatecas, specifically the pueblo of Laguna Grande, where we have been cheesemongers dating back to the 1800s. My family uses traditional methods passed down through the generations, and the wheel of cheese in my freezer features a logo of two dairy cows standing against a bucolic landscape bracketed by the words “Rancho Ruedas.” It’s made from the unpasteurized milk of cows that graze the green grassy foothills of the countryside (rancho de familia Ruedas); it’s aged for six days on an open reed.

Cheeses rooted in their areas of origin simply can’t be reproduced. Queso añejo, a source of great pride to the Laguna Grande region, is an identifying cultural mark. An arched sign marking the entrance to the pueblo proudly proclaims “Tierra del queso añejo” (land of queso añejo). As its makers milk cows by hand and preserve ranching traditions, these cheeses acquire special climatic properties and characteristics, expressing the various components that make up pastures and fields. Each has a distinct flavor that distinguishes each artisan cheesemaker.

Although Mexican grocery stores and neighborhood mercaditos supply a variety of Mexican cheeses to diasporic migrant communities, hyper-regional handcrafted queso, like that of Laguna Grande, remains subject to familial exchange.

Growing up, whenever a family member visited the motherland, they always brought back a care package that included our beloved queso — a hoard of cheese, vacuum-sealed tight, secured in carry-on luggage for the journey to el norte. My prima Arlene recalled the time she was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. “One of my cheeses got flagged so they pulled me aside and went through all my things,” Arlene said, laughing. “It was a 30-minute ordeal and the cousins I was traveling with were complaining and yelling, ‘Just leave the cheese.’ I had an assignment: No, that wasn’t going to happen.” Arlene was eventually cleared, but before letting her go, the agent paused and said, ‘Can I ask you a question, what’s up with this cheese? Because I have hundreds of people coming through daily with this cheese.’” It’s a customary, transnational migration narrative.

For a lot of people, a taste of home is rooted in the exchange of ingredients and regional foods — literally, carrying food across physical borders and down through generations, connecting people, memories, and ancestral foodways. Food transcended borders, was smuggled in suitcases, flown across continents, and driven countless miles to feed cravings necessitated by scarcity, even today. It’s a culinary journey that reflects the deep cultural attachment that migrants maintain with their homeland.

Alicia Rojas, who recently visited her home country of Colombia, says she brought back a suitcase Tetris-packed with Colombian coffee, arepas, bocadillo de guayaba (guava paste), brevas con arequipe (figs stuffed with dulce de leche), chocolate, and aguardiente (an anise-flavored molasses liquor and national spirit of Colombia).

“In reality, a lot of the food that I bring back from El Salvador is available here in the States: frijoles rojo de seda (red silk beans), semita de piña (pineapple jam-filled pastries), Salvadoran coffee and cheeses,” says Rosa Maria Rodriguez, who lives in Gardena, California. “But we buy them and bring them to this country to help and collaborate with our country.”

The practice of bringing ingredients back from the homeland resonates differently than purchasing the same (often marked up) items in the U.S. It brings the power of sentiment, individual experiences, and nostalgia evinced through food. And although ingredients that were once hard to find in the U.S. are now more accessible due to globalization and the expansion of Latine communities, not everyone has the ability to go back and forth, whether because of economic reasons, their legal status, or other factors.

Sarah Portnoy, a professor of food studies at the University of Southern California, says cultures have long turned to food and cultural stewards — those who have supplied and contributed to the culinary evolution of Latino food in the United States — as means for creating community.

“If you bring it to them — say, somebody who isn’t able to cross the border,” she says, “it’s a way to connect with home and continue to have those ties, even if you can’t physically be there.”

One of those people is Fernando Lopez Sr., who emigrated from Oaxaca to Los Angeles in 1993 and spent the next year going door-to-door selling Oaxacan products that he had shipped from his home state. The following year, he and wife Maria Monterrubio opened their restaurant, Guelaguetza, in LA’s Koreatown.

Fernando Lopez Jr., who now runs the James Beard America’s Classics Award-winning restaurant with his two siblings, remembers the time his father drove from Los Angeles to Fresno because someone tipped him off about its Oaxacan community.

“He had no idea where Fresno was — there was no GPS back then — so he bought a Thomas Guide at the gas station and started driving north,” Lopez Jr. says. “My dad says that he shows up to Fresno and sees someone from Oaxaca and asks him, ‘Hey, are you looking for anything?’ They ask him, ‘What do you have?’ My dad opens up his trunk and they say, ‘Hold on. Hold here.’ That person leaves, makes a couple of phone calls, and within an hour, my dad had an entire community surrounding his car.”

Lopez Sr. was selling tlayudas, Oaxacan cheese, mole, bread, and chile de agua — a lot of the staples that the restaurant still serves today.

“When we moved here in 1994 [a year after our father], our backpacks were full of mezcal, cheese, and tlayudas,” says Lopez Jr. “Even to this day, when we’re flying out of Oaxaca, everybody has food with them — our food is the identity of who we are.”

A ​​2009 Universidad Autónoma Chapingo study on the production of Laguna Grande queso añejo found that the aged cheese operates as a cultural bridge between Zacatecan migrants and their environmental heritage. The consumption of this cheese represents more than mere taste, it is a ritual that reconnects them with their origins, preserving their traditions and sense of belonging. The study concludes that “in this region, the relationships that migrants maintain with their communities of origin have strengthened due to the establishment of the nostalgic market centered on aged cheese production and consumption.”

Dr. Carmen Licon-Cano, director of the Dairy Products Technology Center at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo and founder of the MILKulture Institute (a multidisciplinary project that advocates for artisanal and cultural diversity in the dairy industry), says that Mexican cheese is more than just an ingredient. It also evokes sensory comfort.

“Our brains are connected in a way that our memories are linked with our senses,” Licon-Cano says. “Every time we smell something that we recognize as memorable, it brings joy.” In some circumstances, we’re delivering on behalf of others to keep that connector.

When I’m gifted a wheel of queso añejo, I cut it up into evenly sized wedges — the best way of stretching out every piece — set one aside for eating right away and freeze the rest for specific meals I want to make. Cheese enchiladas drenched in smoky chile rojo. Crispy gorditas stuffed with chorizo. Pinto beans topped with chards of stinky cheese. My favorite way to eat it is via a simple quesadilla — añejo stuffed between two toasted tortillas de maiz — liberally doused with a fiery chile de árbol salsa. I’m nourished with my family’s history.

Next year, when I go to Laguna Grande, it will be my turn to bring queso back for family members — a symbol of love and gratitude for those who have done the same for me countless times.

Cynthia Rebolledo is a freelance journalist in Orange County and Los Angeles covering food and culture.
Fanesha Fabre is a Brooklyn-based multi-media artist with a rich background in illustration and music. Her work is a celebration of her identity as a Latina living in New York City, capturing the vibrancy and beauty of her everyday surroundings through bold, colorful illustrations.
Contributing editor: Serena Maria Daniels