The kitchen may have seemed a natural way to Josefina to support herself and her family after these shaky years. Teaching cookery, however, was a risky endeavor for Mexican women who had almost no presence in the workforce in the Mexico of the 1930s. At the time, only one cooking school catering to the upper middle class was in operation in Mexico City, managed by a Spaniard, Alejandro Pardo. To complicate things further, Josefina didn’t have any formal training in cooking, nor receive an academic education beyond high school. In an interview she granted to a newspaper in the 1950s, she mentions an Italian cooking teacher, but acknowledges that her skills came from her mother and her own domestic experience.
This didn’t stop Josefina who started building a reputation writing cooking columns for magazines such as Mignon, la revista de la mujer, a publication that educated socially privileged women. By the time she opened the school, at the end of the 1930s, the place became a primary destination for women from different barrios. But beyond the culinary curiosity, the academy fulfilled a prominent role in the social dynamics of the city. For Mexican women, attending Josefina’s classes was also one of the few acceptable ways to leave their homes.
Josefina, second from right, during a cooking class on her cooking academy. Circa 1953
By the end of the 1950s, Josefina’s classes were so popular that she rented a second location to accommodate the increasing number of students. Soon two of Josefina’s sisters joined the business, Guadalupe, her second sister, as bookkeeper and typist, and María Luisa, the youngest, in charge of shipping, and other administrative chores.
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