Rebecca Webb Carranza, 98; Pioneered Creation, Manufacture of Tortilla Chip
By Valerie J. Nelson, Times Staff Writer

The headline in Popular Mechanics magazine saluted a manufacturing triumph
in Los Angeles: "Tortillas Meet the Machine Age." It was 1950, and the El
Zarape Tortilla Factory, among the first to automate the production of
tortillas, had used a tortilla-making machine for three years.

Corn and flour disks poured off the conveyor belt more than 12 times faster
than they could be made by hand. At first many came out "bent" or misshapen,
as company President Rebecca Webb Carranza recalled decades later, and were
thrown away.

For a family party in the late 1940s, Carranza cut some of the discarded
tortillas into triangles and fried them. A hit with the relatives, the chips
soon sold for a dime a bag at her Mexican delicatessen and factory at the
corner of Jefferson Boulevard and Arlington Avenue in southwest Los Angeles.

By the 1960s, the snack the family packaged as Tort Chips and delivered up
and down the coast had evolved into El Zarape's primary business.

Carranza, who was recognized by the tortilla industry as one of the pioneers
of the commercial tortilla chip, died Jan. 19 from complications of old age
at a hospice in Phoenix, her family said. She was 98.

In 1994 and 1995 - the only years the award was given - Carranza was among
the recipients of the Golden Tortilla, created to honor about 20 industry
innovators, said Mario Orozco, an employee of Irving, Texas-based Azteca
Milling, who thought up the celebration.

Carranza was born Rebecca Webb on Nov. 29, 1907, in Durango, Mexico. She was
the only daughter of Leslie Webb, an engineer from Utah who worked for an
American mining company in Mexico, and his Mexican-born wife, Eufemia
Miranda.

As a young girl, Rebecca and her five brothers lived through periodic raids
by Mexican bandit and revolutionary Pancho Villa and other thieves in
northern Mexico.

"Pancho Villa did not like her father, because he was American," said Mario
R. Carranza, the first of her two sons. "She had pictures of her father on
his horse dashing away from danger."

When Rebecca was a pre-teenager, the mining company moved the family to El
Paso, Texas. After her parents divorced, her mother brought the family to
Los Angeles in the 1920s.

She met her future husband, Mario Carranza, on a blind date, and they
married in 1931. She made ties for a neckwear company, and he worked in
finance at O'Keefe & Merritt, an appliance maker.

On the advice of a friend who ran a successful tortilla shop in East Los
Angeles, the Carranzas opened one in the early 1940s and moved into an
apartment above the factory and shop.

Once tortilla chips were on the menu, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, who played
Jack Benny's valet on radio and television, often stopped in to buy them,
said Victor Luis Carranza, her other son.

After Carranza and her husband divorced in 1951, she signed the business
over to him.

He soon opened a tortilla chip factory in Long Beach but closed it in 1967,
partly because of competition from national companies that had discovered
the sales potential of the salty chip.

Rebecca Carranza returned to East Los Angeles and worked into her 80s, first
as a meat wrapper at grocery stores and then as a U.S. Census taker.

She had three more relatively brief marriages, two to the same man,
Augustine Zuniga. Three years ago, she moved to Phoenix to be near her two
sons.

In addition to her sons, Carranza is survived by 12 grandchildren, 19
great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

Dimitri wrote:

> The headline in Popular Mechanics magazine saluted a manufacturing triumph
> in Los Angeles: "Tortillas Meet the Machine Age." It was 1950, and the El
> Zarape Tortilla Factory, among the first to automate the production of
> tortillas, had used a tortilla-making machine for three years.

Mass produced Mexican food lacks one essential ingredient. No matter
what it tastes like, it likes the *love* a mother or wife or sister or
even a male cook might put into the preparation of a snack for one's
family.

Reading about tortillas flying out of a tortilla machine reminded me of
a video I saw about a visit to the El Monterey burrito factory. I can
buy 4 or 5 El Monterrey burritos for a buck at the 99 Cents Only Store,
but, having seen them made, I don't much want to eat one at any price.

The video showed about 200 pounds of hamburger being cooked all at once
and chile powder was thrown by the shovel full into a giant vat with an
automatic valve at the bottom.

Tortillas passed under the valve and the vat extruded a blob of burrito
filling onto each passing tortilla and the process reminded me of the
horrified Sigourney Weaver watching the Mother Alien laying its eggs in
its nest inside the dome of the ruined colony on the distant planet
where the first Alien movie started.

We all know what happened to the crew of the Nostromo...

The blobbed tortillas then passed down the line to a group of unsmiling
Mexican ladies who, the video explained, could deftly fold about 15
burritos per minute.

And that's all the *love* those burritos ever get.

The next step was the insertion (by machine, of course) of the folded
burrito into an endless tube of brightly printed plastic, which was
then heat sealed by a machine, the wrapper was cut from the endless
tube and the finished burritos fell into boxes to go to the freezers.

Is not all "mass produced food" made that way ?

Real home made food, not the "taste like home made", does seem to taste
better always. Can not say really why, but it just simply does !!!

Can not figure out why people sometimes swear by those Restaurants that sell
"taste like home made". Heck, reason why I go out to eat, is because I can
not make it as good as some restaurants make it. There is a place in NM
(Angelina) where I go and eat, and it is waiting to get a seat all the time.
Their food is better than my home made stuff !! If I want home made, I stay
home and do it my self, no ??



"Alfred J." > wrote in message
ups.com...
>
> Dimitri wrote:
>
>> The headline in Popular Mechanics magazine saluted a manufacturing
>> triumph
>> in Los Angeles: "Tortillas Meet the Machine Age." It was 1950, and the El
>> Zarape Tortilla Factory, among the first to automate the production of
>> tortillas, had used a tortilla-making machine for three years.
>
> Mass produced Mexican food lacks one essential ingredient. No matter
> what it tastes like, it likes the *love* a mother or wife or sister or
> even a male cook might put into the preparation of a snack for one's
> family.
>
> Reading about tortillas flying out of a tortilla machine reminded me of
> a video I saw about a visit to the El Monterey burrito factory. I can
> buy 4 or 5 El Monterrey burritos for a buck at the 99 Cents Only Store,
> but, having seen them made, I don't much want to eat one at any price.
>
> The video showed about 200 pounds of hamburger being cooked all at once
> and chile powder was thrown by the shovel full into a giant vat with an
> automatic valve at the bottom.
>
> Tortillas passed under the valve and the vat extruded a blob of burrito
> filling onto each passing tortilla and the process reminded me of the
> horrified Sigourney Weaver watching the Mother Alien laying its eggs in
> its nest inside the dome of the ruined colony on the distant planet
> where the first Alien movie started.
>
> We all know what happened to the crew of the Nostromo...
>
> The blobbed tortillas then passed down the line to a group of unsmiling
> Mexican ladies who, the video explained, could deftly fold about 15
> burritos per minute.
>
> And that's all the *love* those burritos ever get.
>
> The next step was the insertion (by machine, of course) of the folded
> burrito into an endless tube of brightly printed plastic, which was
> then heat sealed by a machine, the wrapper was cut from the endless
> tube and the finished burritos fell into boxes to go to the freezers.
>

I realize the focus of this group is food not history, but I just
cannot ignore the derogatory remark about Poncho Villa in the press
story quoted by the OP. It's common in the USA to mischaracterize
General Villa as an outlaw leader of a gang of bandits when, in fact,
he was a shrewd, effective commanding general of a large army.

He was one of the major heroes of the Mexican Revolution. As a
tactician he was able to elude and embarrass the American army sent to
intervene in the Mexican Revolution. After the war, unlike many of the
victorious generals, he decided to stay out of politics, and go home to
the life of a gentleman rancher until he was assassinated under
conditions that have never been fully explained.

He is painted as a villain in the USA, while in Mexico he is
commemorated as a hero.

I do not think you may call Mrs. Webb the torilla chip inventor, yes
maybe she was the first to openly mass produce and sell them in the
U.S. It is like calling the Taco Bell guy the taco inventor or Ronald
McDonald the hamburger inventor.

About Pancho Villa, yep he didn't like americans, but only those who
mis-treated and abused mexicans, like mining overlords perhaps?.
Remeber that Pancho Villa made some deals with Hollywood directors to
make movies about him and the mexican revolution.

His assassination is perfectly explainable, he was still to popular
with the people and therefore a threat to the goverment.