GLC
Head Chef
I've never heard them called tuna either, TL. We can get pickled and fresh nopales at the store here, love them.
Oddly, the fruit, the "pears," came to be "tuna," the Spanish term. The pad became "nopal" from the Aztec. There are at least three places in Texas that are or have been called Nopal. There are a number of places called "La Tuna," one of them giving its name to La Tuna Federal Prison at Anthony in El Paso County. And there was, up to sometime after 1935, a Tuna, Texas, so the popular stage comedy performances of Greater Tuna and A Tuna Christmas are not set in a wholly fictional town as is often said.
They were obviously of great importance. They kept cattle going when all other vegetation failed. Ranchers used torches and, by the 1950's, propane burners to remove the spines. Anyone who lived on a South Texas ranch then knows all about the burners. They had an unholy roar that could be heard for miles. Cattle came running at the sound. And anyone who had to operate one nursed facial and hand blisters for days. But the sound is mostly remembered because, to the ranchers, it meant hard times. They should have done what coyote does in the Mexican tales and brushed the spines off with his tail before eating.