Susanna MacManus was instructing Spanish at Occidental School in 1997 when the household enterprise got here calling.
She had grown up serving to out at Cielito Lindo, generally falling asleep within the cubicles of the tiny restaurant whereas her mom, Ana Natalia Guerrero Robertson, and grandmother, founder Aurora Guerrero, prepped for an additional day on the Olvera Road traditional.
MacManus initially embraced her mom’s admonition that training was the best way to get forward and didn’t make a profession out of Cielito Lindo.
She earned a grasp’s diploma in medieval Spanish at UCLA earlier than touchdown at Occidental, the place generations of scholars loved her courses as a lot for her humor as for the works of Latin American literary greats comparable to Borges, García Márquez and Fuentes.
However when her mom retired and the way forward for Cielito Lindo appeared unsure, MacManus and her sisters took over.
“She understood the legacy — we all did — but she was the one capable of preserving it,” stated her niece, Jacquie Goodman. “She was always the leader of the family, the fearless one. I grew up with my aunt being the one you’re supposed to emulate.”
MacManus died June 25 of cardiac arrest in Pasadena. She was 82.
The vivacious MacManus turned Cielito Lindo’s co-manager and public face whilst she continued to lecture at Occidental. Blessed with a palate that would catch even the slightest tweak, she made certain that the restaurant’s hallmark meal — beef taquitos in a small paper boat or plate, two to an order and floating in steaming, piquant avocado sauce — at all times got here out crunchy but supple. She introduced the restaurant into the twenty first century by taking part in meals festivals and panels that launched Cielito Lindo to a brand new technology of eaters.
MacManus preferred to greet clients as they stood in strains that frequently stretched out to the sidewalk of Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. Vacationers took selfies; regulars hugged her. Folks handled their grandchildren to a Cielito Lindo lunch the best way their very own grandparents as soon as did for them. Newcomers often supplied speedy reward, amongst them Anthony Bourdain. In a 2017 episode of his CNN present “Parts Unknown,” Bourdain proclaimed that he was “loving the sauce already” inside his first chunk of a taquito.
“She felt it was such an iconic L.A. institution,” stated Viviana MacManus, Susanna’s daughter and chair of Occidental’s Essential Principle and Social Justice division. “It wasn’t just part of the tapestry of our family, but the tapestry of L.A. and the nation.”
In 2020, Susanna MacManus advised L.A. Taco that Cielito Lindo was “a symbol of immigrants’ contribution to this vibrant city.”
“It’s the magic of simplicity,” she stated. “There’s nothing artificial. No preservatives. Even the corn is non-GMO. Just simple, fresh and produced daily.”
Beef taquitos in avocado sauce at Cielito Lindo on Olvera Road.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
MacManus was born and raised in Lincoln Heights, on a avenue full of kinfolk and household pals — principally ladies — from Zacatecas. Her grandmother had introduced them over to work at her companies, which included a warehouse the place the taquitos have been prepped and Las Anitas, a sit-down restaurant throughout the best way from Cielito Lindo. Each stay within the household.
“We were always reminded as children, ‘No, we weren’t just pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps,’” stated Viviana, who remembered her mom asking her and her brother to wrap presents for immigrant kids each Christmas. “These women were their support system that made our family’s success possible. They all struggled. My mom remembered that. So she taught us you always have to give back — always, always, always.”
MacManus met her husband of 51 years, Carlos MacManus, quickly after he migrated to the U.S. from Mexico within the Nineteen Seventies with aspirations to make simple cash.
“She brought me down from my cloud fast and said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to continue your education if you want that,’” he stated. They have been driving by Los Angeles Metropolis School when “she slowed down and said, ‘That’s your next school.’”
At Occidental, the place she labored for 34 years earlier than retiring in 2011, Spanish professor Salvador Perez described MacManus because the “anchor” of their division. She particularly beloved to show Spanish courses tailor-made to native audio system, seeding her classes with tales from the Chicano motion that she had witnessed in actual time.
“Her love was really food and storytelling, but behind the love was a genuine intellectual person,” stated Perez, who stated that when his spouse was pregnant with their first baby, the meals she craved above all was Cielito Lindo’s avocado sauce. “Susanna inculcated the value of tradition and heritage to everyone she knew.”
Even earlier than she and her sisters took over for his or her mom, MacManus helped out every time doable. One 12 months, she seen {that a} nightclub up the road from Cielito Lindo was at all times busy on weekends. She volunteered to remain open late and beckon the gang for a late-night snack, bringing in additional income in a number of hours than they’d earned the entire remainder of the day.
“She felt a great responsibility to her family, but also to the city at large and what it meant to everyone,” stated her son, Carlos Eduardo MacManus, an legal professional.
In her spare time, MacManus preferred to journey with household and lift funds for Sacred Coronary heart Excessive College in Lincoln Heights, the all-girls academy she attended. Although a proud torchbearer for what her mom and grandmother had created, MacManus didn’t enable custom to overwhelm Cielito Lindo, as did too lots of its Cal-Mex contemporaries.
She “was more hip to new restaurants and cafes than we were,” Viviana stated, at all times testing tendencies round city to see if they could match her household’s stall.
Carlos Eduardo remembers chuckling when his mom launched soyrizo to enchantment to vegetarians — it’s nonetheless obtainable in Cielito Lindo’s burritos. When Viviana was ending grad college at UC San Diego, her mother and father took her to an area Mexican restaurant, making an attempt carne asada fries for the primary time.
“She said, ‘What is this abomination-slash-delicious thing?’” Viviana stated. “And she put it on the menu.”
MacManus is survived by her husband, Carlos MacManus; kids Carlos Eduardo MacManus and Viviana MacManus; one grandchild; and sisters Gloria Calderon Goodman and Mariana Robertson.
