Contestants battle for $200 prize at jalapeño-eating contest

They lay beneath deceptively tranquil green blankets, these festering firecrackers waiting to explode in the mouths of brave souls competing in the jalapeño contest.

"Start your engines, and go!" shouted the master of ceremonies at the jalapeño contest and several other events Saturday afternoon at the Sombrero Festival in Washington Park. The festival included numerous activities Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

On the festival's last day, children scaled rock walls, swung low to the ground and then soared into the air on a bungee jump, and rushed along an inflated obstacle course. Stalls enriched the air with the smells of cooking food. Taqueria Las Cuatas sold Obama tortas; Matamoros Rotary Club served taco piratas, and the Iron Pigs Motorcycle Club prepared hamburgers, cheeseburgers and chips. Bud Lite and Miller Lite seemed to be the preferred drinks of the afternoon, further liberating the festive pulse of the crowd.

A man pushed a stroller covered with a black leather jacket; a young boy struggled to send a Frisbee across a brick walkway, and a daring harmonica frolicked through the gray sky. Another child danced with jubilation after winning a soccer ball at a roulette wheel. Visitors also competed in a Grito contest, tortilla Frisbee toss, a taco eating contest and the Frijolympics, a bean cookoff.

Julio Gonzalez, director of Spanish Meadows Nursing Rehab and Assisted Living, poured cups of beans enhanced with Budweiser into small cups for passersby.

"It's a decent turnout, as the weather didn't cooperate," said Gonzalez as he served a cup of tender beans laced with generous additions of onion, cilantro, tomato and bacon.

Joe Rodriguez, the chef at Spanish Meadows, had prepared the concoction that sent steam into the chilly afternoon.

"The recipe," said Rodriguez, "it was a version of Pancho Villa beans. He used a lot of cuerito (pork) and chorizo. Last year I got third place."

Across the aisle, Becky Longoria, the chef for the YaYa and Clan! cooking team, wouldn't reveal any secrets about her recipe.

"The Washington Post asked me the same question several years ago," she said, as a band played "Good Golly, Miss Molly."

"She interviewed me, and I gave her the recipe, but I wouldn't give her the secret ingredient," she said.

Ali Castillo, the winner of the Frijolympics, didn't release any details of her recipe, either.

"It's the same simple recipe," said Castillo, whose team "EnquiPinadoBeans" won $1,000 for preparing the best beans.

"I feel good, so happy," said the 53-year-old Castillo. "We have so many trophies."

Contestants for first place in the jalapeño contest reached with frustrated eagerness into aluminum trays full of these fervid denizens, assaulting their defenseless taste buds with apparent abandon.

Jose Luis Ramos, 18, was down on his knees, craning his face away from the orange and yellow Nike sweater he wore in the thin cold, his robust mouth chewing with forced determination, ripping stems away as he downed pepper after pepper, a slight red line slowly developing around his lips.

His cousin, Aidee Fuentes, 19, shot video as she kneeled on the pavement in front of him, shouting words of encouragement along with several other cousins as juice spilled from his fingers.

"Don't give up! Don't give up!" she said with raucous joy.

Upon finishing the 23rd pepper, he drank from the bottle of water next to his plate. Nearby, a classmate from Hannah High School gingerly picked through her jalapeños while her nose turned red.

"I just wanted to join the contest with him," she said. "I just ate six for the T-shirt."

Contestants in the event all received a T-shirt if they consumed at least six jalapeños.

Ramos won the contest after consuming 47 of the peppers.

"I'm just going to throw up," said Ramos, after receiving his $200 prize money.

What did he plan to do with the money?

"Taking all his cousins out to eat!" answered Fuentes as everyone laughed.