Fueling Mexico City: A Grain Revolution
Transcript of Rachel Laudan‘s recent talk on the history of the Mexico’s primary fuel: tortillas. Excellent round-up, from the maize stock to the flat bread on your plate, which seemed largely unknown to anybody out of Mexico:
“[…] right up until about twenty years ago, large numbers of Mexican women were spending five hours a day grinding. Just imagine Mexico City: every household had somebody grinding tortillas. […] somewhere in a back room, somebody grinding maize to make tortillas for the main meal of the day.”
The impact this type of food preparation has had on its society is bigger than you might think. Today, things have changed dramatically with automated milling and preparations, the change was nevertheless a conscious decision:
Mexican women that I have talked to are very explicit about this trade-off. They know it doesn’t taste as good; they don’t care. Because if they want to have time, if they want to work, if they want to send their kids to school, then taste is less important than having that bit of extra money, and moving into the middle class. They have very self-consciously made this decision.
By the way, I know this blog is all over anything Mexico right now. Yes, I do get mildly obsessed about such things.