Mamá Reyna and crew at Veracruz All Natural.
Courtesy of Veracruz All Natural
Yolanda Guerrero, a taquera with mostly silver hair neatly pulled back and covered by a hairnet, is standing in the doorway of her East Austin taco trailer, Tacos Guerrero. She’s recounting how she got into the food business. In the 1990s, Guerrero beat a hundred other competitors in a cooking contest in her native Monterrey, Mexico. Her winning array of dishes included fluffy, orangey-red rice, chiles rellenos, and half a cabrito (milk-fed kid goat). Guerrero worked at restaurants and cleaned houses and food trucks before her son bought her a trailer in 2016. “You don’t need to work for anyone else anymore,” she remembers him saying proudly.