Photo by Sarah Bennett (Because The OC Weekly didn’t have a picture of Jesus on a tortilla in their archives)

According to Gustavo Arellano, my mom’s Jesus tortilla is the #1 burrito in all of burrito history. What an honor.

A couple of years ago when his book, “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America,“ I contacted Gustavo over Twitter to let him know that I was Maria Rubio’s daughter and that I would be more than happy to talk to him about his book and the story of my mom. I was truly excited to learn that he’d written about her. He responded with something like, “yeah, we need to catch up!” But we never did. (I tried looking for that tweet for this post, but with over 30,000 tweets under my belt, I couldn’t locate it)

A few months ago, a friend of mine sat alongside Gustavo at The Hub in LA discussing “Latin and Literary.” I asked her to tell him I wanted to talk to him about the tortilla. I haven’t heard from him, so I’m assuming that conversation never took place. Anyhow, Gustavo, if you’re interested, I would still love to talk to you about your book and my mom. I mean, she is the winner of your burrito contest!

My point is, (because I do have one) I want to follow up with those who have written about my mom and the tortilla and ask them questions from our perspective.  I think I owe that to my mom. Secondly, and this job may be a bit more daunting, I would also like to contact those that contacted my mom, through letters written throughout the years and follow up with them.  What ever happened to them? What could we learn from their own lives and their experiences as a result of their interests in the Jesus tortilla? Because my mom did receive many letters, many pieces of correspondence from folks from all over the world, that wanted to just let my mom know that they were thinking about her and they thought she was special.

My mom is special. So why is that not worth writing about?

Stay tuned!