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Excerpt from Slow Food Nation by Carlo Petrini, with permission from Rizzoli International Publications in May 2007.
Diary 2. Tehuacán
During the summer of 2001, I went on a trip, first to San Francisco, to attend the First National Congress of Slow Food USA, then on to Mexico, a country and a culture of which I am very fond and which I had not visited for some time. I stayed for a while in the Federal District, the immense Mexico City, where I saw with my own eyes the extreme poverty endured by millions of people who had left the countryside, selling off what little land they possessed, and who were now clogging up the suburbs of the capital in the hope of making a living. The small-scale, family-based subsistence farming they practiced was no longer profitable: the nearby United States had created illusions with the glitter of its products and stimulated new needs, but its primary effect had been to impose the methods of industrial farming. The latter had reduced the workforce, made it difficult to avoid being drawn into the vicious circle imposed by the multinationals (the commercialization of seed, fertilizers, and pesticides—all interlinked products), and stripped a farming culture of its traditional knowledge, formed over thousands of years.
In Mexico, where the pre-Columbian civilizations were responsible for developing corn and many other food products that are now part of the basic diet of millions of people around the world, biodiversity is still at record levels. As far as corn is concerned, of the more than a thousand indigenous varieties that evolved over the centuries in perfect harmony with the various Mexican ecosystems, I was told that almost 80 percent have over the years been patented by American multinationals searching for new hybrids.
These local varieties have then been gradually replaced by those very same American hybrids, which need much more water (and many parts of Mexico suffer from a serious water shortage), as well as having a far lower nutritional value and poorer taste. Tortillas made with corn soaked in water with a little lime (the presence of so much calcium in such a widespread dish meant that dental problems were almost unknown in Mexico until fifty years ago) were—and to some extent still are—a homemade product, skillfully cooked by the women and rich in flavors which vary according to the type of corn used. This gastronomic richness should not be underestimated: together with the infinite variety of traditional Indian cuisines, which were always based on local products, it has made Mexican gastronomy one of the most complex in the world. (Much of the country’s rich gastronomic heritage has been documented by José N. Iturriaga de la Fuente, a winner of the 2003 Slow Food Award for the Defense of Biodiversity.)
The spread of the intensive cultivation of corn has threatened other vegetable species, too, such as amaranth. This food, together with beans and corn, was the basis of the Aztec diet, but was banned by the first colonizers because it was felt to be in some way associated with the ritual human sacrifices that these civilizations practiced. As a result it has become extremely rare, gradually forgotten by the local farming cultures, and this is a pity, for not only does the plant need very little water to complete its productive cycle, but it also constitutes an ideal supplement to the country dwellers’ poor diet.
So that summer I went to Tehuacán, in the state of Puebla, to learn more about an excellent project—winner of the 2002 Slow Food prize for the defense of biodiversity—to reintroduce amaranth to one of the poorest areas in Mexico, where the desert is inexorably advancing. The Quali project, founded and directed by Raúl Hernández Garciadiego, is combined with an ingenious plan to regenerate the water supply using some clever methods devised by the ancient inhabitants of this area.
I visited a tiny family-run farm to see a small amaranth allotment with my own eyes and to hear from the farmers themselves what they thought of the project. With me went the directors of Quali, some of my own colleagues, and Alicia De Angeli, a well-known Mexico City chef and an expert on native Mexican cuisines, which she skillfully recreates in her own restaurant.
The poverty of the family we met was unmistakable, but they were very dignified and expressed satisfaction at having found a plant, the amaranth, that was easier to grow and more profitable than corn. Their house was modest; the children played on a small threshing floor strewn with disused tools, fragments of Coca-Cola bottles, and empty Pan Bimbo wrappers. (Pan Bimbo, the best-known brand of bread produced by the Mexican food industry, is gradually supplanting maize tortillas in the everyday diet of the poorer sectors of society, creating many nutritional problems in a country where white bread made from wheat had never formed part of the traditional diet.)
The little amaranth field was close to the farm buildings, and as we walked back to the farmhouse after viewing those colorful plants, I overheard an interesting conversation between Alicia De Angeli and the wife of the farmer who was our host. The two women stopped by the side of the short path down which we were walking. There were weeds all along the path; in fact the house was completely surrounded by weeds. The attention of the two women (both of them cooks, but very different from one another; it was a striking visual contrast to see them together—the one white and of European origin, a member of the affluent elite of the Federal District; the other a poor native Mexican, her spine curved by constant physical labor) was attracted to one of these leafy weeds. “This is a wonderful herb! But I’m sure you know it, don’t you?” Alicia De Angeli asked. “No, why?” said the lady of the house. “It’s excellent for making caldos [broths and soups]; they’re very nutritious, and tasty too. The recipes I discovered during my research originate from this very area; they’re traditional to your people.” The perplexity of this farmer’s wife, a woman of about forty, was shyly expressed on her face, as she asked the white chef for an explanation of how to make soup with that plant. Alicia De Angeli meticulously explained the recipes.
We visited the kitchen: the limited range of utensils and of food in the pantry spoke volumes about how difficult it was for these people to find enough food to put on their plates day by day. The house was surrounded by freely growing herbs which over the centuries their ancestors had learned to use for nutritional and medicinal purposes, but they themselves had no idea how to use them; in fact, they weren’t even aware that they were edible. Industrial agriculture and modernization wiped the slate clean: all it took was the introduction of a few cultivable varieties of the most common products—varieties which do not thrive in this increasingly arid environment—and within two generations the local population had lost all the traditional knowledge that had once enabled it to subsist on the freely available fruits of nature. A simple form of gastronomic knowledge, an ancient wisdom, a recipe, had disappeared from local culture and made life even more difficult in this region where the temptation to sell your field and move to Mexico City, or to take a job in the nearby maquiladoras making jeans for American firms, is stronger than anywhere else in the country.
Evening was falling in Tehuacán; just as we reached the threshing floor, the truck that makes door-to-door deliveries of Pan Bimbo stopped at the end of the street, under a huge billboard advertising Coca-Cola, the American company which, ironically, owns the largest spring of bottled mineral water in Mexico, itself called Tehuacán. Even today, Tehuacán is synonymous for bottled water all over Mexico; in many parts of the country, it is the standard term that people use when ordering mineral water in bars. The factory that bottles it stood out on the skyline a few kilometers from our friends’ house, in this stretch of land which is among the thirstiest and driest in Central America.
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