Death of Inouye Means Loss of Power for Hawaii

After he died last week at 88, this state went into a mourning period usually reserved for monarchs and presidents. His remains were flown to four islands so people could pay their respects, like Abraham Lincoln’s cross-country journey by train after he was assassinated.

When his coffin was carried into the state Capitol, the local news stations all broadcast the live scene. And on the day he was honored at a memorial service at the veterans’ cemetery here, Honolulu city buses flashed “Mahalo Dan” on their electric displays, using the Hawaiian expression for “Thank you.”

They have good reason to be thankful.

Hawaii has had only six United States senators since it became a state in 1959. And since 1962, Mr. Inouye had been one of them, all the while heaping the federal government’s largess on his small state.

When he died, he was the senior member of the Senate, the second-longest serving member in the Senate’s history, and the chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, the ideal perch for directing billions of federal dollars back home.

The state ranked the highest by far in per-capita federal earmark spending, according to the most recent figures from Taxpayers for Common Sense. The $412 million spent on Hawaii in 2010, before a moratorium on earmarks went into effect, was equal to almost $320 for each of the state’s 1.3 million people. (North Dakota was second, at about $233 per person.)

Hawaii, it is often joked here, has three industries: tourism, the military and Dan Inouye.

But with his death and the retirement of the state’s other senator, Daniel K. Akaka, Hawaii will lose all of its seniority in the Senate, raising concerns here that the influence the state has accumulated over the last half-century will be greatly diminished and that federal aid will be harder to obtain.

“Going from first to last is a hard pill to swallow,” said Justin Hughey, a teacher from Maui who sits on the central committee of the state’s Democratic Party. “With all the money Dan was able to raise, those are some big shoes to fill.”

Mr. Inouye’s appointed successor, Brian Schatz, was sworn in on Thursday. Representative Mazie Hirono, a Democrat who was elected in November to replace Mr. Akaka, will be sworn in when the new Congress meets next week.

Like many people here, Mr. Hughey can point to a particular project that he associates with Mr. Inouye. For him, it was the Lahaina Bypass, a highway on Maui that helped alleviate traffic congestion. “That money wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for Dan,” he said. “There’s no bridge to nowhere here.”

Mr. Inouye, who lost his right arm in combat during World War II, also persuaded the United States military to leave its bases in Hawaii open, even though the state is no longer as vital for strategic defense purposes. The Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force and Marine Corps all maintain installations here.

“There were several times that there was talk of Pearl Harbor being shut down, but he protected us from that,” said Jeanne Ishikawa, who attended a memorial service for Mr. Inouye on Oahu over the weekend. “What he did is huge. You can’t define it. You can’t quantify it.”

Complicating matters even more, the state’s House delegation will be especially junior in the next Congress. Colleen Hanabusa, 61, a Democrat, will be the state’s senior representative, but she will be in only her second term. Tulsi Gabbard, 31, who will succeed Ms. Hirono, was just elected in November.  

If Hawaii’s loss of seniority is worrying some residents, its elected officials are putting on stone faces. “Let’s not be wringing our hands,” Ms. Hirono said. “He would expect us to show strength and to build on the foundation he laid.”

Gov. Neil Abercrombie, himself a former member of the House, characterized the seniority shifts as an inevitable changing of the guard. “Between Tulsi Gabbard coming in at 31 in the House and Brian Schatz coming into the Senate at 40, we’re investing in the long run,” said Mr. Abercrombie, who decided to appoint Mr. Schatz, his lieutenant governor, this week. “Sooner or later, it has to begin again. That’s what we’re doing. We’re not whining. We’re not complaining.”

Hawaiians often describe Mr. Inouye’s contributions as immeasurable or unquantifiable. In one way, they are.

Unlike Senators Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia or Ted Stevens of Alaska, whose legacies of pork barrel spending are evident in the structures named for them, Mr. Inouye’s name appears on almost nothing here. A soft-spoken man whose small stature belied his influence, Mr. Inouye was always reluctant to herald his work.

But there is already talk of memorializing him. “I guess we’ll have to name a highway after him, or put up a statue,” said Grace Fujii, whose father is a veteran of the same Army combat team as Mr. Inouye. “But he’d probably say, ‘Who, me? Why?’ ”   

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Where Christmas Means Tamales

EVERY December, Justina Lagunas spends her workday making tamales in the open kitchen that looks over the produce section at Pro’s Ranch Market, a grocery store in the heavily Hispanic enclave where she lives. There are pork tamales and beef tamales, the meat cooked in a spicy sauce of red New Mexico chiles. It is Christmastime and tamales are in high demand.

Three weeks ago, Ms. Lagunas made 10,000 tamales. Last week, as four more women joined her four-woman team, she made 30,000 tamales. Then she went home and made some more tamales — 100 for her granddaughter’s fourth birthday party and another 100 for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe at St. Matthew Roman Catholic Church, where she and her husband and their daughters attend Mass on Sundays.

Her homemade tamales are different from the tamales she makes at the store: the sauce is made of green serrano peppers. It is a recipe she learned as a young bride 42 years ago in the village of Tlaxmalac, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, and it is exactly the type of tamale her husband adores and her daughters have learned to make.

Tamales are a particular taste memory, not unlike your mother’s Thanksgiving stuffing with oysters or the French Canadian meat pie spiked with Cognac that Uncle Leo always bakes.

For Ms. Lagunas, Christmas is not Christmas if it does not have her homemade tamales, even if it means getting up before the sun or going to bed after the rest of the house has long fallen asleep.

“Tradición,” Ms. Lagunas explained. Tradition. Making tamales, she said, is about rekindling the ritual of women gathering in the kitchen to make something cherished and eaten all throughout the holidays — at intimate gatherings and at open-house parties, where they are brought on paper plates or in plastic bags, to be eaten then and to be eaten later.

Gustavo Arellano, the writer behind the widely popular syndicated column “¡Ask a Mexican!”, said it is through the process of making tamales that culture is communicated across generations, encompassing the value of family, nourishment and collectiveness.

“Tamales are a magical thing,” he said.

The tradition is not exactly the same for Ms. Lagunas in this country, far from her extended family and constrained by her exhausting workday at this time of the year. But if it is a little lonely, she does not seem to mind. When it comes time to make tamales in Ms. Lagunas’s humble kitchen, her older daughter, Carmen, 32, comes by after her daughters are asleep to help peel the tomatoes for the sauce. And her younger daughter, Alondra, 15, helps her shred the pork that will be used for the stuffing.

Her husband, Leovegildo Urbina, keeps her company as she cooks. He says her tamales taste just as good as they did back home.

The sauce is spicy enough to make your tongue tingle, but not so spicy that it overwhelms the distinct taste of cloves and cumin, which Ms. Lagunas uses for seasoning. The pork is tender; she uses shoulder. The dough, or masa, is so moist it crumbles as you bite into it, like a cake with a crumb texture that is just right.

The tradition of tamaladas, as the tamale-cooking feasts are known, is upheld.

The tamales are made by women, as they have been since pre-Columbian times. They are easily transportable, wrapped in husks and stuffed in bags or arranged inside vaporeras, the large steaming pots Mexican women might carry to roadside stands to keep the tamales warm.

They are eaten all year, but during the holiday season, which for Mexicans extends from the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12 through Three Kings’ Day on Jan. 6, they are a culinary requirement, like Christmas cookies. They can be bought at supermarkets here for about $15 a dozen (or from the Williams-Sonoma catalog for $60, in an unquestionable mainstreaming of a quintessentially immigrant holiday staple).

In Mexico, the most traditional tamales are made from pork or chunks of beef, though chicken (leg meat, preferably; the breast can be too dry) is also popular. In the southwestern state of Oaxaca, tamales are wrapped in plantain leaves and filled with chicken and onions flavored by mole negro, a sauce of poblano peppers and chocolate. In Tabasco, on the Gulf Coast, they are filled with garfish.

In Venezuela, tamales are called hallacas and are stuffed with pork, raisins and olives. In Cuba, masa and meat are cooked together on the stove in a porridge-like concoction called tamal en cazuela.

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