El Paso School District Under Fire for Serving Hot-Dog Tacos for Lunch

All my El Paso friends hit me up on Facebook last week over a brewing scandal involving the Socorro Independent School District, which covers part of the borderlands town. Seems that parents were in an uproar over a planned school lunch: a hard taco shell with a hot dog inside–a taco dog. There was even a photo that circulated on social media of the seemingly sad meal.

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The uproar, of course, was just the latest incident in PC pendejismo, no doubt brought up by parents who think that serving a hot dog taco to kids is racist and demeans them. As anyone who's spent any time in Chuco can tell you, hot dogs are a big part of the city's Mexican food scene, from the hot dogs served on a hamburger bun that's the second-most popular dish at the legendary Chico's Tacos chain to the guisados de weenie (wiener slices stewed in salsa, ready for serving) to said guisados making it into tacos and burritos. I've had guisados de weenie, and they're delicious–sucks it's not a nationwide dish, or not available in Southern California outside of Guisados.

The best defense of this taco comes from longtime El Paso Times columnist Ramón Rentería, who not only admits to have eaten them since the 1970s but even gave his readers a recipe for them: “Of course, we eat them not on taco shells but on corn tortillas warmed on the comal. Add shredded lettuce and diced tomatos mixed together with a little mayonnaise and you're in weenie taco heaven.”

Email: ga*******@oc******.com. Twitter: @gustavoarellano.

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