Eating NAFTA

2007, 70 percent of the tortillas and cornmeal consumed in Mexico were produced by a single company, Gruma, owned by the “Tortilla King,” Roberto González Barrera, a Forbes billionaire whose family enjoyed very close ties, and some say, nepotistic favoritism, with the family of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas.

many campesinos do not make a sharp distinction between agriculture, food preparation, and consumption, but see them all as a continual effort to sustain households over time and generations

while Mexican cuisine is elevated and celebrated, the food system in Mexico today is structured so that Mexico’s ancestral foodways may not survive, except as a relic.

In Latin American history, we can see that the powerful have at each stage taken time and energy to record and remember that which they are busy trying to eliminate

Historically the most essential component of a meal, tortillas now provide 20 percent fewer calories in the coastal communities that are most integrated in the tourist economy than in rural inland communities that are less embedded in wage labor.11

Greater market dependency has meant a decline in dietary diversity and nutritional status in low-income communities