Comments elcomputo has made

Mexican cuisine

Having recently lived in Mexico for two years, I'd like to add a few notes to Philpott's story.

1, He's correct in saying that corn is central to the Mexican diet, primarily consumed in corn tortillas. However, the corn masa that, with water, is the only ingredient of tortillas traditionally was made at home by hand grinding dried corn kernels into a gritty powder on a stone.

Today, most tortillas are purchased at tortilla shops found in every town. These feature a machine that takes prepackaged masa in one end and spits out tortillas at the other. The corn meal used for the masa has far less nutritional value and is pretty close to flavorless. The tortilla shops are ubiquitous throughout Mexico and could be called the MacDonald's of Mexico if there weren't already plenty of MacDonald's in the bigger cities.

2. Much of the land that had been given over to corn production has been gobbled up by large land owners or left fallow by the men who have gone to los Estados Unidos to try and find paying jobs. The large land owners grow tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupes, and anything else they can sell in the USA. Ironically, so much food for export is grown in Mexico that Mexico now has to import corn for masa and seed corn from the USA. Even with that, starvation is not unknown to the back country of Mexico.

3. Mexican farmers have become concerned about the seed corn, genetically modified to be Roundup ready, that has been imported from the USA. When a seed matures into a stalk, it crosses with the native Mexican corn, thereby endangering the continued survival of this hardy product of evolution.

4. Unlike the small private garden patches it has replaced, large-scale agriculture calls for the large-scale use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and herbicides. Safety standards being lax in Mexico at best and non-existent at worst, more and more field workers are coming down with cancer and other diseases.

(I should point out that one of the cash crops grown south of the border, marijuana, is also subject to the same agricultural methods. Another reason to buy local.)

5. It gets even worse. White wheat flour is rapidly becoming the ingredient of choice over native corn. Wheat tortillas, long considered luxury fare, are gaining favor in such hole-in-the-wall joints as small cafeterias specializing in burritos (a fat-making American invention). But where its greatest distribution comes from is in bolillos (oval baguettes) sold in every grocery and the loaves of white bread and Twinkies-like confections produced by the massive Mexican bakery, Bimbo. (Oddly enough, Bimbo owns Orowheat in the USA.)

I have never seen white bread served on Mexican tables, so I don't know how it is used. But kids are constantly buying those packaged cakes and washing them down with Coke, both purchased at mom-and-pop living room stores located about five doors apart in most towns.

This is one of the reasons Coke has the largest per capita sales figures in the world. Small wonder, then, that Mexico is getting fatter and more diabetic. Its rate of obesity in children and Type 2 diabetes in adults is second only to the USA's.On Notes on a recent trip to Mexico posted 1 year, 3 months ago 8 Responses

Nader running again

I see nothing wrong with Nader running for President again. It's anybody's right to run (where does he get the money for this, though?), and he's dead on correct on just about every issue.

But being right doesn't automatically equate to running for President. First, it makes you a latter day don Quixote, tilting at corporate windmills. Are the corporations going to stand by while their arch-enemy runs for high office?

Second, should Nader somehow win and somehow curb the power of corporations, is that going to cure the ills of the world? Some, but there are as many real and potential problems as there are people on this planet.

Third, should the impossible happen and Nader gets elected, how does he expect to get his bills to go through Congress with no party support behind him? There is no Nader Party, and the Green Party is just about as irrelevant in national politics as Nader has become.

Nader is the Mr. Spock of politics. He thinks everything should be logical, and it's logical to be your brother's keeper because that's invariably a win-win proposition. But it isn't always, and anyway, logic plays far less of a role in everyday life than guys like Nader would like to think.

Ralph, we love you, you do great things, you're a good guy, but you're just not a man beloved by the electorate. You're good enough, you're smart enough, and, doggone it, a lot of people do love you. But, in a land where smarminess is important in a politician and most voters are suckers when it comes to believing accomplished liars in high office, you will never be a politician and you will never be elected to high office. What is even worse is that you will never get a soap box by running. After all, who owns the media? The corporations. In terms of media coverage, look what has happened to you in the past and look what happened to John Edwards just recently. The corporate media will pay little or no attention to candidates attacking them and their brethren.On Ralph Nader announces his presidential run, calls for carbon tax posted 1 year, 9 months ago 23 Responses

Poverty

I think one thing that academic researchers and journalists should be looking into is the question of why the poor is the one group of citizens least likely to register and vote.

Certainly, they have just as much of a personal stake as our more wealthy citizens in voting on directions the nation should be taking. Yet, the poor don't vote, and the rich do.

(Oddly enough, the rich overwhelmingly vote Republican, which means they do not vote their own long-term self-interest. To their benefit would be policies that also benefit the poor -- policies which would provide opportunities for all Americans to improve their lot. This would increase the standard of living throughout the nation and build the gross national product. Instead, the rich vote for candidates and programs that create and increase disparities in immediate income, making the rich richer, the poor poorer, and creating eventual, inevitable economic disaster for all, themselves included.)

Why don't the poor vote? There are any number of theories.

George Will and other conservatives might say the poor are simply too disorganized and ignorant. There may be some truth in that, given that American public schools throughout the nation are deficient, and the most deficient can be found in poor communities. No student these days gets much instruction in civics and citizenship.

Others would say the poor have had their expectations dashed so many times in the past by politicians promising them a lot and delivering nothing. They may feel there is no point in voting. (In fact, this might extend to most liberals of any class these days, since those politicians promising a progressive agenda seem increasingly to be an endangered species.)

A simple fact turned up in a recent survey is that a lot of people simply don't know where to go to register or to vote. I know from experience that polling places can be changed from election to election, and voters don't always get notified. And given the rate of illiteracy in the USA, many people may not vote because they can't read a ballot. Here are another couple of possible determinants for non-voting behavior.

Whatever the cause... Well, that's just my point: we really don't know the cause -- or causes. And how can we ever change the direction our nation is taking if we cannot get more than 4 people in 10 to go to the polls (less in non-presidential elections)?

Until progressives can educate and move the poor and working classes into going to the polls and voting for progressive candidates and issues, we cannot have a dialogue on the national direction. Before we do anything else, we must know why that potential voter has NOT been going to the polls.On Paradigms of poverty posted 3 years, 8 months ago 4 Responses