The story
Zwolle Tamale Fiesta in Zwolle
The Zwolle Tamale Fiesta celebrates the small Sabine Parish town's distinctive corn-shuck hot tamale tradition, tracing back to the area's Adaeseno and Spanish colonial heritage. Held each October, the festival features tamale making and eating contests, a parade, a royalty pageant and craft vendors in a community whose tamale-making differs from tamale traditions found elsewhere in the country.
Zwolle sits in Sabine Parish along the Louisiana-Texas border, a small community whose culinary identity traces back to the Adaeseno people and Spanish colonial settlers who once inhabited the nearby Los Adaes settlement, once the capital of Spanish Texas despite technically sitting within present-day Louisiana.