Remembering Rita Baca and the Legacy of Food and Family

“They’re another cousin.”

My dad must’ve said this a few dozen times at my Aunt Rita’s funeral in December. Hundreds of people flocked to Pueblo’s Sacred Heart Cathedral for the service and then the Steel City Eagles #3367 for a reception to pay respects to Rita Baca, the founder of Rita’s Mexican Food, who passed away on December 7. Throughout the day and into the night, people clasped rosaries or Modelos and remembered Rita. According to my dad, they were all “family” to some extent.

But that was the way Rita was — she made everyone feel like family.

I called Rita my aunt, but that’s just because everyone is an aunt or an uncle, a “tío or tía,” in Latino families. In reality, she was my grandfather’s niece; her mother was his oldest sister. Rita served as a flower girl in my grandparents’ wedding, and in turn, they stood up as the padrinos for her wedding to Ruben Baca in 1968. My Aunt Rita and Uncle Ruben met at the Anchor Bar in Pueblo, a downtown dive on Main Street featuring live Mexican music. Ruben had just gotten out of the Army, and always claimed that he heard wedding bells after his first kiss with Rita.

Ruben spent the next decade working as a maintenance supervisor at the Pueblo Housing Authority. After tiring of this physically demanding job, he told Rita that he was going to quit and they would either go on welfare, or they would open a restaurant for the community. So they opened a restaurant in her name in 1978.

At Rita's Mexican Cafe, the two made everyone feel at home. Over the years, the "man behind the counter” and the friendly cook expanded their very extended family, growing with them and sharing experiences. That included Ruben's death in 2006; Rita just kept on cooking.

Rita's Mexican Restaurant has now been a staple in Pueblo for almost fifty years. During that time, there have been only a handful of modifications to the small red building on Grand Avenue. It’s one of the city’s only truly family-friendly establishments: no alcohol has ever or will ever be served on the premises.

When the COVID-19 pandemic barred establishments from allowing patrons to dine inside, Rita’s customers religiously ordered takeout to show their support. The restaurant has been just as much a part of their lives as they have been for its longevity. Everyone seems to have a story about the restaurant or my Aunt Rita, which speaks to the reach of both her food and her nature. Even Governor Jared Polis expressed his sentiments about my aunt’s menudo and the restaurant. During her services, I listened to people refer to her as a “bonus grandmother” or an “angel,” and every story about her was tied to her food.

Members of the Catholic community spoke about how she would bring beans to the church festival every year, a testament to her faith and acts of service; her grandchildren remembered that she was always cooking for them as they played, happy to have a full house of children with full bellies. And everybody acknowledged that this Christmas would be markedly different without her made-from-scratch tamales.

One holiday season, I was one of the helpers spreading masa on corn husks after-hours as my aunt and cousins prepared the hundreds of tamale orders that had come in over the holidays. That year had been particularly hard for my immediate family: My parents were going through a divorce, my dad had recently lost his job, and his sister had just been in a devastating car accident. My Aunt Rita had always been close to my grandparents, and despite having a restaurant to run during the holidays and her own immediate family to care for, she swooped in to help us, too.

As a distraction from everything going on at home, Aunt Rita took my brother and me to her house to paint Christmas ornaments on acorns and miniature gourds. We then joined her and the rest of the cousins and “cousins” in helping to make the tamales.
Over the years, Rita’s was the gathering place for my family. On Saturday mornings, anyone who happened to be awake, in town or interested would show up for breakfast and sit around a small four-top table. It was an unspoken rule that the larger tables were left for other families enjoying their traditions, so whether it was three or thirteen of us, we all sat at the four-top.

With the passing of Ruben and now Rita, the faces have changed both at that four-top and throughout the restaurant. The table seems to have grown smaller, while the small cousins who used to play pretend with aprons are now earning tips and becoming an integral part of the business.

But food and family remain at the heart of that business.