A pleasurable read, thank you.  I was struck by your use of the milpa - a long-standing, successful planting strategy of multiple species within a small area yielding not only a bounty of food but food that work together for an optimal diet.  In addition, as in the story of weeding you offer, social life is supported.

Tom, where in the city were you? From your description you could have been anywhere in Mexico DF (Ben & Jerry's, Starbucks, Walmart, Walmart, Walmart aaaugh!) I'd love to swing by that particular stand and try their tlacoyos!!

I am temporarily living in Mexico City, and I have had to look far and wide to find ways to support the locals as much as possible when it comes to food and groceries. Fortunately I've found an organic farming co-op (La Granja Organica) which will deliver organically grown veggies and farm items to homes throughout the city. Also there's a great little chain of grocers called The Green Corner which carries more of this local produce as well as a fair selection of other organic and sustainably produced grocery items, many from small businesses throughout Mexico. Unfortuantely, when I shop there I'm usually the only person there. All of my Mexican neighbors can't keep themselves out of Walmart's Superama. Ay caramba!  

Thanks for the great report about things happening in my neck of the woods!

Purslane used to be a popular European food in the middle ages. It's a nice salad ingredient, if you harvest it young. As it gets older it gets a really slimy texture, much like okra. It has a nice, lemony flavor, though.

I've been keeping my eye out for huitlacoche. It's English name is terribly venal: corn smut. But I have heard that it's delicious, and my fungophilia will not rest...

Good on you for avoiding mystery meat. It's tough, but if we all did so, there would be big changes in the works - fast.

This topic is so important, and has not received nearly enough attention-- the agribusiness giants of the US and Mexico (often the same companies, sometimes different brands) are of course earning huge profits while small farmers everywhere are getting squeezed. Reading about milpas is inspiring, but sad to think that although Mexico has held on to a subsistence-style community garden arrangement longer than we have in the US that it is becoming less and less affordable.

I see a grim future: writers from wealthy places like Europe and the US will travel to places like Mexico, and ask the locals about old traditions. They will scribble down all the names of the many different types of plants and cultivation methods; they will write books about the thousands of lost types of exotic drinks and dishes.

And then they will go home and publish their texts for their wealthy audiences.

All the while, the big majority of ordinary Mexicans is buying standardized food in standardized Wal-Marts, and has forgotten about all these traditional foodstuffs.

I can see this happening, this strange division of labor and representations.

Wow, had to register an account all I wanted to say is that I enjoyed your article very much,  it is not often that one can find someone that sees through the rubble to find what really matters, anyway it was fun reading it saludos

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.

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.

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.

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.

This does not, however, stop Mexico City, with the largest population of any city in the world, from dumping its raw, heavy metal-laden sewage on fields in Michoacon, where much produce is grown. I have no idea whether the vegetables are sold in the USA, but I've been reading stories of bell peppers and other such produce refused entry by US ag inspectors. Apparently some has gotten through, though, what with the recent reported outbreaks of salmonella traced to Mexican produce.

(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.

I was a student of Charles Mann in 1971 in Puebla, Mexico.  He was also my thesis advisor, though I never completed the thesis!
We have a 40 acre pine forest here in Veracruz and I am trying to learn about bio-mass fuel since we have lots of waste (limbs and bark and needles etc.).  Any ideas?