Tortured Tortillas

THE TRANSFORMATION OF MEXICO'S FOOD SYSTEM SEEN THROUGH THE GENEALOGY OF THE TORTILLA

Shoreline, WA. Corn was an important entree in my family's cocina fronteriza. My grandmother prepared home-made tortillas on the comal to accompany pretty much every family meal. For breakfast, she would often prepare migas, or fried tortilla strips with scrambled eggs, sauteed onions and serrano peppers. Tamales were a special treat and, in our family, were strictly eaten only during winter season holiday occasions. Our best home-made tamales were prepared using locally-hunted venison mixed with pork. My grandmother prepared our tamales using her own mix of corn flour and the result was a classic Laredo-style támal with a transluscent layer of masa harina that allows you to see the stuffing through the thin (corn flour) envelope.

Whenever we visited Nuevo Laredo, usually once a month, we would feast on steamed white corn served-up by street vendors; the cobs were slathered with mayonnaise and sprinkled with chile powder and queso fresco (white cheese). Corn was as ubiquitous as drinking water which, in those days, came directly from the Rio Bravo del Norte, well before our river was polluted by untreated sewerage and maquiladora toxic wastes.

On those same occasions, my grandmother would take us "across the river" to purchase dozens of freshly-made corn tortillas from the local tortillerias in Nuevo Laredo. I will always remember the smells that emanated from the tortilla factories: Dried corn has a special smell right after going through the molino (the grinder) and getting mixed with water and lime to make la masa harina.



The tortilla was invented by the native peoples of Mexico well before contact with the European invaders. I have always thought this was a brilliant invention; after all, the tortilla is like a plate that you eat; no mess, no fuss, no washing dirty dishes. It seems like the most sustainable of all foods since it reduces the amount of water one might consume to wash dirty dishes. Think of all the water saved and the lack of detergent in streams or lakes.

There are multi-colored tortillas: white, yellow, green, blue, and red. Each is unique in flavor and each is designed with specific recipes in mind: Yellow tortillas for tacos or chalupas (a.k.a. tostadas); red (in Texas) or blue (in New Mexico) tortillas for enchiladas; green tortillas for encilantradas. The colors derive from the corn varieties used (Oaxacan green dent for green tortillas; Hopi blue for blue tortillas) or from the type of chile in the masa mix (red chiles for example).

Globalization and the Decline of the Native Tortilla

It was with great sadness that I witnessed the decline of the Mexican corn tortilla. It was a subtle shift. It was in the 1980s that I first noticed a change in the texture, smell, and quality of tortillas.

I used to teach in the Colorado College Mexico Program based in Guanajuato, Mexico. On one of my semi-annual teaching treks, I noticed the change in the quality of the tortillas I purchased from la tortilleria de la vecindad (neighborhood tortilla maker). The tortillas had changed in color and they no longer seemed whole-grained. Indeed, they tended to tear apart too easily. It became difficult to make enchiladas without the tortillas falling apart. They did not taste like the tortillas of my childhood.

I asked the tortilleria manager if they were using a new type of corn. Her explanation led me on a quest to understand what had happened to Mexico's most famous contribution to world cuisines. "Oh yes," she said, "we get our corn from the United States now, and it is not as good as the corn from Mexico."

This revelation took me on an investigative journey to uncover the secret behind the decline of Mexico's edible corn plate. What I uncovered is a story now familiar to many of us: The globalization of our food system has often involved the replacement of local aboriginal varieties by mass produced imported substitutes of poorer quality. Indeed, for a period of time during the mid- to late- 1980s, much of the corn imported by Mexico for processing into masa harina came from the United States and was actually a mixture of poor quality yellow or white corn from the Midwest and even "feed" corn usually destined for consumption by livestock (pigs mostly). Mexicans were being tricked into making pig corn tortillas or "cheater tortillas."

In the case of corn, this tragedy started to unfold earlier. By the 1970s, Mexico's experiment with the so-called Green Revolution had initiated a process of transformation in which subsistence farmers and small producers were gradually displaced by corporate growers including an increasing number of transnational investors from the United States (who could not own the land directly but subcontracted for export-oriented foodstuffs).

Increasingly, the small independent peasant producer, growing local foods for local markets, was displaced by corporate growers interested in producing for export to the United States. Indeed, in the area of Guanajuato, the heart of Mexico's "breadbasket" known as El Bajio, local food crops were displaced by strawberry fields for ever. This led one observer, Ernest Feder, to coin the phrase el imperialismo fresa (strawberry imperialism) to describe the transformation of Mexican agriculture from local place-based and subsistence-oriented agroecosystems and toward export-oriented cash crop agroindustries. In the process, Mexico eventually lost its capacity for food self-sufficiency.

The loss of Mexico's food sovereignty is captured by the poorer quality of cheater corn flour for tortillas. Indeed, today, close to 80 percent of the masa harina used in the production of tortillas is mass produced by one corporation, Maseca. I have been told by corporate public relations sources that Mexican corn is seldom used to make the corn flour for tortillas. All of Maseca corn flour currently imported from the United States into Mexico, or milled in Mexico, is an industrial product packaged in the form of processed flour and it apparently involves one or two variety-lines in the form of reiterative and ubiquitous "off-shoots" of Midwestern hybrid white dent and yellow flint maize varieties.

But the native whole-grained land race tortilla is in resurgence. Indeed, a growing number of tortillerias in the United States are using only organic Mexican land race varieties. A recent visit to a tortilla factory in Los Angeles (on Santa Monica Blvd. of all places) produced a pleasing result: the tortillas I purchased had the same color, taste, and texture as the corn plates of my youth.

There are many indigenous communities in Mexico that are producing their own land race varieties for masa harina. Zapoteca and Mixteca communities in Oaxaca are among those that refuse to use Maseca's lower-grade industrial corn flour.

The resurgence of the native tortilla is surely one barometer of the resilience of Mexico's local food systems. A good measure of this resilience is the tortilla. Like Mexico's indigenous communities, la tortilla is an integral, even iconic, part of a sustainable local food system.

Que viva la tortilla indigena! Long live the native tortilla!