At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala (2016)

Mexico

Cristina Potters

Mexico is the 14th-largest country in the world, with a land surface of more than 770,000 square miles. Due to its size and placement on the planet, Mexico boasts the world’s 4th-largest biodiversity. Biodiversity, a concept first discussed in 1985, simply means the variety of species, be they animal or vegetable, that exist in any determined space. The term also refers to genetic variability, to ecosystems, and to regions in a given place. Mexico’s enormous biodiversity makes it possible to grow and eat a tremendous variety of foodstuffs, including corn, beans, squash, chilies, cattle, fowl, sheep, goats, and many other species.

In addition to biodiversity, Mexico also boasts wide cultural diversity. Ultramodern urban populations exist elbow to elbow with working-class multigenerational families. Households in which all adult family members bustle off to work in an office contrast with households in which no adult has a “real” job; 60 percent of all Mexicans work in the informal economy, earning what money they can and living on each day’s earnings. In many instances, the most traditional and yet most economically marginalized people are Mexico’s indigenous population. For this group, survival of the ethnic group as well as the individual is paramount. The Ramírez family, of the Purépecha race, lives and works in the state of Michoacán. Today, we will visit their table.

Albala

In Mexico, it does indeed take a village! These Purépecha women from the state of Michoacán wear their traje típico (native clothing) as they prepare hundreds of corundas, a regional specialty similar to tamales, for the wedding feast of the daughter of one of their close friends. (Courtesy of Cristina Potters)

Michoacán, located in west-central Mexico, has a land surface of nearly 23,000 square miles. Its varied topography, ranging from long coastlines to high mountains, and its climate, which includes hot, dry lowlands as well as cool, damp highlands, offers an almost unparalleled number of native species.

Because of Michoacán’s varied climate, cultivation of fruits and vegetables is possible all year long. The largest crop in Michoacán is corn, either native strains grown in the milpa (family use plot of land) or commercially grown corn. Corn composes nearly 45 percent of Michoacán’s agricultural product. In addition, Michoacán is the world’s largest producer of avocados, both the commercially grown Hass variety that is exported everywhere in the world and the ancient native aguacate criollo.

In addition to the avocado, Michoacán produces huge quantities of broccoli, cauliflower, Swiss chard, lentils, macadamia nuts, coconuts, guavas, plums, strawberries, blackberries, and red raspberries, among other edible crops. Bee culture gives ample honey and other hive by-products.

In Michoacán as in most of Mexico, what many people eat hinges in large part on what is available during any given season. Urban populations tend to have more out-of-season food choices due to the presence of modern supermarkets. Rural populations depend less on purchased foodstuffs and more on food of their own production. In rural areas such as the remote village where the Ramírez family lives, nearly all produce is homegrown or grows wild in the hillsides surrounding the town. Most families keep a pig for slaughter, most raise chickens and turkeys, and many have goats or cows for the family’s milk and cheese.

Globalization of Taste

The global appeal of foods such as pizza, Chinese noodles, and curry appears to be a recent phenomenon; since nowadays information travels so rapidly, restaurants intro- duce new flavors, and new ingredients are available in grocery stores. Actually, all these foods traveled wide and far many centuries ago. The wheat that went into the pizza and noodles traveled many millennia ago both East and West, and the spices that went into the curry traveled great distances in ancient times. Once the Americas were connected to Africa, Europe, and Asia, it would not be uncommon to find toma- toes in Italy or even China. The ground spices and nuts that one finds in a curry as well as a Mexican mole are not coincidentally similar; they share a common root in medi- eval Persian cuisine. Thus, taste has always been global but is more apparently so today.

The ancient and current basis for Michoacán’s home food production is the milpa, a family’s parcel of land (usually annexed to the family home) where the millennia-old and still fundamental Mesoamerican triad of corn, beans, and squash is grown. Today’s milpa, which after thousands of years of cultivation consists of these same plants, usually includes chilies, quelites (wild greens), and tomatoes. The milpa is the spot where Mexico’s rich cultural and agricultural heritage and knowledge join to make use of nature during the entire cultivation cycle. The milpa alone has demonstrated its capacity to sustain the healthy and diverse nourishment of large populations, nourishment sustainable from the pre-Hispanic era to current times. The key word is “sustainable”: the milpa is the living and lasting foundation of Mexico’s agricultural biodiversity, renewable with each year’s crop cycle.

Far off the beaten path is the mountain village (population fewer than 4,000 souls) where the Ramírez family lives and no near access to modern shopping; the trek via public transportation to the nearest large town takes an hour or more. In the village, there are one or two tiny mom-and-pop storefronts where items such as salt, sugar, canned pickled chilies, catsup, vegetable oil, and loaves of white bread are available, along with a selection of potato chips, cookies, candy bars, soft drinks, and cups of ramen soups, prepared in the store’s microwave for carry-out.

Due to custom and preference, nearly all food consumed in the Ramírez home is prepared by Señora Ramírez and her adult daughters. Daily food preparation, accomplished predominately over a wood fire, includes walking the hills to gather fallen branches for the fire; building and maintaining the cooking fire; hauling water; planting, raising, picking, and drying corn; processing and grinding corn daily for human consumption; patting out fresh tortillas and other corn-based foods for each day’s meals; planting, cultivating, harvesting, and prepping squash, beans, chilies, and other crops in the milpa; collecting wild plants in the forests; feeding pigs, cows, chickens, ducks, turkeys, goats, and other domestic animals; collecting eggs; milking cows and goats; preparing cheeses; and a hundred other daily tasks. The list is long, and food-related chores begin before sunup and only end in time for bed at night.

Given what appear to urban onlookers to be primitive and enormously complex tasks necessary to put daily food on the family table, one wonders: whose responsibility is each task? In the Ramírez family culture—which is nearly identical to the rest of modern Purépecha culture—division of labor is determined by the gender and age of family members. Men’s daily labor at home generally consists of caring for the household’s animals, gathering wood, and performing the heavier agricultural work. Outside the home, men may work as day laborers or fishermen or in other jobs. Women’s daily labor includes taking corn to the mill for grinding; preparing breakfast for the family; getting the children ready for school; washing dishes; making the day’s tortillas; washing clothing; cleaning the house; watering plants; feeding chickens, dogs, and cats; preparing and delivering the midmorning meal (almuerzo) to the men working in the fields; and beginning preparations for the family’s main meal of the day (comida). As children begin to grow up, each takes on tasks suitable to his or her age and gender. Boys help their fathers with the tasks allotted to men, and girls help their mothers with women’s work. It is highly unusual for a Purépecha woman to work outside the home. Even today in the early 21st century, there is little change in the gender-oriented division of labor that is based on centuries-old perceptions of roles.

The traditional Purépecha house where the Ramírez family lives is called a troje. The troje is built of planed logs, fitted together by traditional joining methods so that the house can be dismantled and moved should life require. The troje has two levels: the ground level, where the family lives, and an upper level, which is for storage. In general, the lower level consists of several discrete cabin-type buildings that form a family home. The living and sleeping quarters are separate from the kitchen; the letrina (outdoor toilet) and an outdoor pila (source of cold water for dish and clothes washing) are separate from both the kitchen and the living area. Part of the patio contains the milpa,which is the source of the family’s corn, beans, squash, quelites, and chilies. The patio is also normally home to chickens, cats, dogs, and frequently a pig that is being raised for later butchering. Around the grounds there are guava, orange, banana, loquat, and avocado trees.

The troje’s kitchen is very simple and usually built on a dirt floor. The heart of the kitchen is the parangua—the sacred intimacy of the three-stone rectangular fire space where cooking is done over burning wood. Along one wall or two, trasteros (open shelves for dishes and other utensils) hold colorful plates and glasses. Large clay and light-blue enameled metal pots hang on the wall next to the trasteros. There is a worktable, a few straight-back wooden chairs, and a shelf hanging from the ceiling that holds staples out of the reach of animals. There are no windows, but the high center peak of the roof has a hole for smoke from the parangua to escape. There is also an adobe-brick woodstove, smooth-coated with clay and whitewashed. A clay comal (griddle) is built into the stove, as are one or two holes where pots can rest and beneath which wood burns. Outside the kitchen not far from the door is a clay beehive-shaped oven. The kitchen measures about 8 by 10 feet.

The Purépecha community still eats primarily what it grows and raises. Few foods other than some fruits and vegetables and some basic staples—flour, salt, sugar, oatmeal, vegetable oil—are purchased. Watermelon, jicama, pineapple, and other fruits not grown at home are not ordinarily eaten at meals but are consumed between meals. Mangos, oranges, bananas, loquats, and all other fruits grown at home are also snack foods; depending on the season of the year, one can almost always walk into the patio and pick something directly from a tree or bush to eat on the spot. Milk and pan dulce (sweet bread, purchased at the town bakery) are also consumed more as a snack than as a meal. The saying in Mexico “Panza llena, corazón contento” (Full stomach, happy heart) is certainly true among the Purépecha community. Those who are more financially comfortable eat when and what they want; those who are financially strapped eat when food is available.

The Ramírez family straddles the two poles: when work is available, money and food are plentiful. When work is scarce, so are money and food. Meat is always scarce unless an animal has been butchered recently. Nevertheless, Señora Ramírez feeds her family at least three times a day, although the usual Mexican meal schedule can call for four or five meals: desayuno, meaning “unfast,” a small very early meal of pan dulce and coffee or hot chocolate; almuerzo, a late morning heavier meal, sometimes composed of yesterday’s main meal leftovers; comida, the midafternoon main meal, the largest meal of the day; merienda, a late afternoon or early evening snack that is rapidly going by the wayside; and cena, a late evening small meal (a taco or two, a pan dulce with herbal tea or hot chocolate, or some other similarly small items meant to tide one over through the night until the next morning’s desayuno).

Señora Ramírez and Yadira, her oldest married daughter, prepared today’s comida (main meal) for the rest of the family:

✵Oldest son Álvaro, his wife Guillermina, and their children Alvarito, Juanita, and Demián;

✵Son Gustavo and his new wife Rosa;

✵Son Benito, still in secondary school;

✵Daughter Josefina, her husband Jorge, and their baby daughter Cynthia;

✵Oldest daughter Yadira, her husband Miguel Ángel, and their children Pamela, Vicente, and baby Inés; and

✵Señora Ramírez, her husband Marcos, and their adult godchild Samuel, who has Down syndrome.

With twenty at the table, we are a fairly normal-sized group for a Ramírez family comida. Today’s meal includes corundas (a Purépecha specialty, triangular tamales, made today with diced carrots and Swiss chard) served with churipo (a traditional Purépecha beef-based soup), and agua fresca de zarzamora (fresh blackberry-flavored water). Michoacán produces blackberries for export as well as for local use; Yadira’s husband Miguel Ángel works for a regional blackberry grower and frequently brings cultivated berries to the family table. The only ingredient purchased for this meal is the beef, butchered earlier today by a neighbor. Everything else except the blackberries is grown at home. Even the honey that sweetens the agua fresca is taken from the family’s beehives.

For several hours yesterday, Señora Ramírez simmered a large pot of dried corn in a solution of builder’s lime and water and left it to cool. Early this morning, she thoroughly washed the simmered corn and removed each kernel’s hard covering. By 10:00 a.m. she is at the local grinding mill to have her corn ground for corundas. While Señora Ramírez waits her turn at the mill, Yadira starts preparations for the churipo, a rich long-cooked broth with bony chunks of beef, chilies, cabbage, carrots, xoconostle (a sour cactus fruit used in savory dishes), and other ingredients.

All of the men and adolescent boys eat first, sitting wherever there is space in the troje. Some sit at the kitchen worktable, others sit on wooden chairs just outside the kitchen, and two sit on the porch steps. The women serve them, dishing up clay bowls of steaming churipo and passing large oval bateas (wooden trays) filled with corundas. As the men remove the long corn leaves from their corundas, one of the little girls goes through the rooms collecting the leaves in a plastic bucket. Nothing goes to waste in the Purépecha kitchen; the leaves will be used later for a different purpose. The men, hungry from their morning work, eat steadily and talk little. A slight and brief upward jerk of the chin means “bring more churipo” or “I need more corundas.” Rosa, the newest daughter-in-law, carries around pitcher after pitcher of agua fresca, refilling glasses and cups.

When the men finish, they move to the porch to talk of work, weather, the year’s corn crop, and the cost and advisability of raising a hog. Some smoke postprandial cigarettes. Samuel dozes.

With the men out of the way, the women relax around the table, serving churipo and corundas to one another. This is the hour to comadrear—talk of women’s things, gossip a little, fret that the corundas could have been lighter textured, complain about the high cost of everything, commiserate about the men, worry about the state of youths today, and admire the latest babies. It’s time to tease newlywed Rosa: how long do we have to wait for your first baby?

Children stand close to their mothers; the older children have their own bowls of churipo, their own spoons, their own plates of corundas, and a glass of agua fresca. Mothers feed the littler ones from their bowls, pinching pieces of corunda into the churipo broth, lifting the spoon to the child’s mouth, offering the glass of agua fresca, and wiping a chin or a spill. Baby Cynthia cries; Josefina opens her blouse to feed her.

When the children are satisfied, they stream out into the patio to see the latest litter of kittens, trace a court in the dirt for avión (hopscotch), wander among the flowers and talk about school, gossip, and giggle. The boys pause to lean on their fathers’ shoulders, listening to man talk.

With only the babies to tend, Señora Ramírez and the other women rest a bit, nibbling at a corunda and sipping the last of the agua fresca. The conversation curls itself around to encompass a problem with the parish priest, a neighbor’s mental health problem, and Guillermina’s possible new pregnancy: topics thought to be unsuitable for children’s ears.

Soon the shadow in the doorway lengthens; it’s time to wash the dishes, feed the chickens, and give the bones from the churipo to the family dog. The men rouse themselves from their talk and walk into the milpa to inspect the corn and squash. Miguel Ángel decides to stay home; his work with the berries will wait until tomorrow.

The women bring the dishes to the pila in the patio. One scrapes, one washes, one dries, and one brings more dishes to be washed and carries clean dishes back to the kitchen. All scraps go into the bucket as feed for chickens, dogs, and cats. The long corn leaves that wrapped the corundas are washed along with the dishes; later they’ll be used to make ring-shaped bases for round-bottomed clay pots.

The sun sinks lower; Señora Ramírez plugs in the cord for the single unshaded bulb that hangs in the middle of the kitchen. The dishes clatter into their shelves, and the pots hang again on their hooks. Señora Ramírez and the other women sit again at the worktable to sort through a pile of dried beans, picking out the odd straws, the little stones that look just like beans but will break your teeth if you don’t get rid of them, and the occasional bug-eaten bean. Once the garbage is removed, the beans are put to soak until the morning. While the women pick at the beans, they talk—scandalized—about a neighbor who doesn’t bother to soak her beans.

Dried corn, simmering in its pot of water and builder’s lime for tomorrow’s tortillas, comes off the fire to cool through the night. The cycle begins again.

Churipo

4+ pounds of beef (with bones), cut into chunks

1 bunch of cilantro, chopped

5 ancho chilies; remove seeds and soak chilies in hot water

5 guajillo chilies; remove seeds and soak chilies in hot water

2 or 3 xoconostles (optional if you can’t find them)

½ large cabbage, cut into chunks

1 pound peeled carrots, cut into 2-inch sections

Salt to taste

1.Cook the beef in water to cover until done.

2.Add the chopped cilantro.

3.In a blender, blend the drained, soaked chilies with a little water and strain the mixture into a cooking pot. Allow to simmer for 30 minutes.

4.Add the vegetables and simmer until the vegetables are tender. Add salt to taste.