Category Archives: 2020

2020

The Elections That Trashed America

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

What’s your picture of America, that great expanse between Canada and Mexico? A bastion of freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness? Hmmm … Nope! The American dream? Not so much! An idea, an ideal, a world leader? Not no more.

As one of those WASP-y folks with Mayflower and Revolutionary ancestors, I come from the people who have long believed in the American idea, the ideal, and the responsibilities of leadership. But our time is long gone, and it is long gone because America is no longer one country.

America the Schizophrenic

From the very beginning, the 17th-century “errand into the wilderness” that turned Europeans into Americans had schizophrenia. Established with slaughter and supported by slavery on the one hand, but lifted up as “a city on a hill,” a beacon of freedom and “a special kind of courage,” as Reagan put it, on the other hand, America – WASP America – thought it would be a model society built by the pure and chosen. Not surprising that America has suffered schizophrenic breaks time and time again.

At this moment, the two “personalities” of America are roughly equated with the Republicans and the Democrats, and each of those parties has its own schizophrenia. The Republican party has almost entirely been remade by Donald Trump into an extremely conservative, personal adoration machine – moderate Republicans are few and far between. The Democrats have had to contend with conflict between centrists like President-elect Joe Biden and a progressive movement revitalized by the two presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont.

The two sides are badly split on many issues, with Republicans taking individualist positions on gun rights, immigration, race, assistance for the poor, etc., etc. The Democrats offer community-oriented policies on all those issues and more. The Republicans call the Democrats socialists, and the Democrats think Republicans are fearful of demographic change – i.e., the loss of white-dominated America.

It’s been a long time coming – the presidency of Donald Trump just laid it out in the open. Any number of U.S. elections, combined with demographic and socioeconomic change, have trashed the idea and ideals of America; the Trump elections, however, have raised the possibility that the trash can’t be cleaned up.

The split between individual and community

In 1800, President John Adams was challenged by Thomas Jefferson. Adams believed in strong central government, Thomas Jefferson in state’s rights and individual liberty. The difference in ideas led to Jefferson supporters saying Adams had a “hideous hermaphroditical character,” and Adams supporters calling Jefferson “a mean-spirited low-lived fellow.” Having been great and respectful friends (Adams had asked Jefferson to be his Vice-President, in a bipartisan gesture, but Jefferson turned him down), the two did not speak for twelve years. Adams left town before Jefferson’s inauguration.

Here we have not only deplorable rhetoric and bad behavior, but the beginning of the American conflict between the community and individual. Alexis de Tocqueville, a 19th-century French observer, noted in his two-volume Democracy in America (1835-40) that Americans had “habits of the heart” that supported family life, religious conviction, and local participation in community politics – the bedrock institutions of a free society. On the other hand, he saw that the American tendency towards individualism could divide Americans from one another, prevent positive collective action, and threaten the institutions of freedom.

In 1985, sociologist Robert Bellah and four colleagues published Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Their conclusion? “We are concerned that this individualism may have grown cancerous – that it may be destroying those social integuments that de Tocqueville saw as moderating its more destructive potentialities, that it may be threatening the survival of freedom itself.”

While the gun rights vs. gun control conflict is a good example of individualism vs. community, the anti-mask movement is a more current example, and comes closer to showing individualism attacking community. The beginnings of the anti-mask movement appeared on that ever-reliable indicator of popular sentiment, Facebook, and featured flocks of sheep with quotes about how people who wore masks lived in fear. By May 6, 2020, when Psychology Today asked why the mask issued triggered such rage, retail employees had been assaulted for asking a customer to wear a mask, and an 80-year-old man in a New York City bar was shot and killed for asking why another patron wasn’t wearing a mask. Three months later, Forbes reported continued physical violence and property damage, and a quick Google of news coverage found at least another three people had been murdered over the issue.

Granted that the anti-mask movement got underway before we knew how much protection masks offered, but it doesn’t seem to have lost any steam. Why not? Psychology Today suggested the conflict and rage are triggered because masks are “visible markers of a political divide.” Being anti-mask is firmly allied with the much bigger, basic political idea that the individual comes first, and any attempt to make an individual do something for the benefit of others is an assault on freedom. From that ever-reliable source of information, Facebook in GIANT ALL CAPS: “The urge to save humanity is always just a method for politicians to grab power. Government has overreached so far, now they are coming into your home. This is training you to comply for total takeover.” Another theme is that the science is wrong, also in BIG letters: “Check the math and the science. Mask mandates do not work on slowing or stopping COVID. The only effect that masks have is spreading unreal fear.”

Pro-mask postings on Facebook are much less colorful, and usually involve scientific information presented as fact, and geared to guiding group behavior – e.g., asserting herd immunity doesn’t work unless 67-70% of the population has been vaccinated, reprinting of New York Times analysis on why states that locked down in the summer are doing better this fall, listings of the federal government’s failure to contain the virus, and love songs to Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The geographical mismatch

In 1860, the year before America’s Civil War broke out, moderate Republican Abraham Lincoln campaigned not on eliminating slavery, but on preserving the Union by prohibiting the expansion of slavery in new territories. The Democratic platform, represented by candidate Stephen Douglas, ignored the issue of expanding slavery. The question of slavery vs. abolition was tied to the issues of states’ rights, including the right to secede. Lincoln won the election largely because there were two splinter parties that took more extreme positions pro and con slavery and states’ rights/secession.

The upshot of the November 6 election was secession (South Carolina on December 20, six more states by February 1, 1861, 4 more in April and May); Lincoln tried hard to reverse the secessions, but finally on August 16, he declared those states to be in “a state of insurrection” against the Union, and America’s Civil War began. Like all civil wars, it was an unspeakable horror; it also marked geography – the South vs. the North – as representing fundamental social and cultural differences.

In 1981, four years before Habits of the Heart laid out the split between individualism and collective interests, journalist-scholar Joel Garreau published The Nine Nations of North America, which argued that the economic and cultural characteristics of America divided it into nine different geographic regions; within each region, largely driven by the area’s economy, people shared cultural values that conflicted with those of other regions. According to Garreau, “The layers of unifying flavor and substance that define [each of] these nations still explain the major storms through which our public affairs pass. And ‘Nine Nations’ is also a map of power, money and influence, the patterns of which have only deepened.” More recently, journalist Colin Woodard has published two books that, read together, integrate the issues of incompatible regions and individual vs. community: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (2011) and American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good (2016). Needless to say, Woodard’s position is that we need to balance protection of individual liberty and nurturing community.

Woodard, the state and national affairs writer for my hometown papers (Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram), recently used his 11 regions to show that politics, too, are regional, with the strongest support for Republicans in “Greater Appalachia” and for Democrats in New York City and the surrounding area, plus the upper West Coast. Working on a county-by-county basis (which can look quite different from a state-level tabulation), Woodard finds little change in regional voting behavior – except some increase in urban vs. rural outcomes – since 2000.

This is surprising, since all 21st-century elections have been marked by tension and some outright controversy. In 2000, the Supreme Court ended vote recounts in Florida, effectively handing the election to Republican George W. Bush, who was re-elected in 2004 because America was embroiled in a war Bush started under intelligence that proved to be false. In 2008, we elected our first black president, which according to Democrat Barack Obama’s just-released memoir, set America’s racism simmering, if not seething. The whole point of the 2010 midterm elections, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, was to see that Obama was a “one-term president.” It didn’t work out that way, but there was no way the 2016 election was going to follow a president of color with a female president, even without her considerable baggage.

These elections laid the groundwork for where we are when this was written: the incumbent president, even though he lost both the popular vote by over 6 million votes and counting, and the electoral college by 74 votes, is still claiming, that if Biden won, it was because the election was fraudulent. Trump said he will leave the White House if the Electoral College certifies Biden as the winner.

Alternative facts

On January 22, 2017, two days after Donald Trump’s inauguration and in the midst of a photographic brouhaha about whether or not Trump’s inaugural audience was the “largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe,” Kellyanne Conway, special assistant to the President, described the difference between the audience claimed by Trump and the observed attendance to be “alternative facts.”

Conway kicked off what is probably the most divisive aspect of electing Donald John Trump to be President of the United States. Alternative facts establish a different reality, and one Trump has exploited. As of July 9, 2020, he ticked past 20,055 confirmed “false or misleading statements,” firmly believed by his base. Add to that uncounted statements designed to provoke that base to action – statements supporting white supremacist and racist positions, statements encouraging violence, conspiracy theories. On Wednesday, August 11 and Thursday, August 12, 2017 (Trump had been in office seven months), far right groups staged a march in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of Confederate monuments and “unite the White nationalist movement.” On Thursday morning, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe declared an emergency, and the Virginia State Police declared the march an unlawful assembly.

At about quarter of two, in broad daylight, self-declared white supremacist James Alex Fields, Jr., drove his 2010 Dodge Challenger into the counter-protestors. He was going about 25 miles an hour, and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer. He was charged with first-degree murder, malicious and aggravated malicious wounding (6 counts), felonious assault (2 counts), and federal hate crimes (30 counts). He is serving two life sentences plus 419 years in the federal penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.

Nonetheless, since that incident, “vehicle ramming attacks” are on the rise. Worldwide, terrorists executed 17 vehicle ramming attacks between 2014 and 2017; between May 26 and September 5, 2020, there were at least 104 vehicle ramming attacks carried out on groups protesting the death of George Floyd under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Most (but not all) were executed by members of what the Department of Homeland Security calls WRM (white racially motivated) groups. Democrats put the blame for this squarely on Trump’s statement that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the Charlottesville incident.

Beyond generating the anti-mask movement and eliminating strong federal leadership on the coronavirus pandemic, “alternative facts” have embraced conspiracy theories of every stripe – former Congressman and current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough killed Lori Klausutis, one of his Congressional aides? Phony science makes climate change a “total, and very expensive hoax” perpetrated by China? Joe Biden is out sniffing kids’ panties? The election was rigged and Trump really won?

The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School puts out the Mis/Information Review; this past June, it published a pair of articles investigating how conspiracy theories about the coronavirus shape how people behave about the pandemic. Conspiracy theories have ranged from accusing China, Democrats, the Deep State, big pharma, Bill Gates and George Soros of unleashing the pandemic to promoting the medicinal properties of disinfectants, ultraviolet light, and hydroxychloroquine.

Guess what? People are more prone to believing conspiracy theories “promoted by visible partisan figures” than they are to believing medical information that was wrong. In other words, people are more ready to believe that bad actors are harming them, than they are to believe health-related misinformation. The conspiracy theories were more readily believed by people with conservative ideology who supported Trump; those who did not believe the health information expressed a general mistrust of science and scientists; a general mistrust of science and scientists; about two weeks before the election, Trump said “Fauci is a disaster” and that “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.”

This is a mess. Can it be cleaned up? At the moment, 73,799,431 Americans like things the way they are – but there are 79,853,547 Americans who may never forgive them. A good percentage of them don’t believe they should expend the effort to meet Trumpers halfway. Go halfway to make nice with Nazis? People who don’t respect women? People who think kids in cages are a good idea? People who don’t respect science and fact? Doesn’t look good.

And by the way, the role of Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in handling the pandemic shows similarities to Trump’s approach – downplaying the seriousness, dissing preventive behaviors, etc. AMLO’s approval ratings are dropping across the board – not for his personal handling of the pandemic, but an August poll showed 66% of Mexicans surveyed thought the “government” did not have the pandemic “under control”; by November, 75% thought the country’s coronavirus strategy should be modified or completely changes. In the midst of all this, 63% thought the country’s problems (poverty, public safety, organized crime, violence) “had overtaken” AMLO’s ability to control them. Another one-term president?

Deborah Sampson Van Hoewyk is named for her great, great, great, great, etc., grandmother or aunt, whatever, from Sharon, Massachusetts, who got dressed up as a boy named Robert Shurtliff and fought in the Revolutionary War.

2020

Covid-19 Measures in Huatulco

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1. Road checkpoints will remain in effect to prevent entry of people with symptoms.

2. The enforcement of sanitary measures in commercial establishments. -hand washing and gel -mandatory face masks -social distancing

3. Disinfection of public spaces and common areas.

4. All businesses must require customers to use face masks.

5. All outside tourist buses and public transport must arrive at the centralized bus station.

6. Suspension of service of bars and cantinas.

7. MANDATORY USE OF FACE MASKS IN PUBLIC- failure to comply could result in a fine of a minimum of 500 pesos.

8. All restaurants must have a digital, disposable menu or a menu posted that customers can see.

I have done my best to translate the main points of this lengthy government document. Apologies for any errors. Regardless of your personal opinion about safety measures, it is important to remember that we are a community and must work together to ensure the safety of all. Be safe everyone.

Jane Bauer

2020

A Muffled Cry for Independence

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By Kary Vannice

Several years ago, at midnight on September 15th, I stood misty eyed in the zócalo of San Miguel de Allende as thousands of Mexicans reenacted “el Grito,” the cry for independence that occurred in Dolores de Hidalgo in 1810, just 40 kilometers from where I stood. This famous “call to arms” to rise up against Spanish rule is acted out in cities and towns all across Mexico annually.

And this was exactly what brought tears to my eyes, the effect of thousands of Mexicans joyously singing their national anthem. I had never before felt that kind of national pride. My countrymen have long since turned their Independence Day into a commercial affair and an excuse to party with pyrotechnics. It has lost its meaning to capitalism and the almighty dollar. In all my years, never once have I experienced Americans singing the Star Spangled Banner in unison on the Fourth of July.

This year, once again, I found myself in San Miguel de Allende on el Día de la Independencia. But this year, because of COVID-19, it was a very different scene here, and all over Mexico. The town square was blocked off and police were posted at all the entrances. No one would be portraying “el Grito” in a public venue in 2020.

In Mexico City, where last year’s presidential address was nearly drowned out by more than 130,000 red, white and green clad revelers, the president’s words hollowly echoed off the facades of the Metropolitan Cathedral and surrounding buildings with only the local riot police there to hear them. Everyone else was watching the address from their televisions, safely at home.

Perhaps this is the highest demonstration of national pride, to put aside one’s own individual desire to take to the streets and celebrate en masse and instead stay home to protect others from a deadly virus that has yet to be fully understood or controlled.

For the safety of all, Mexicans did not come together by the thousands to celebrate their patriotism, but instead opted for a muffled “grito” from behind a cubreboca (face mask) in small groups or family gatherings, demonstrating that independence is not so much an individual ideal, but a collective one here in Mexico, more of an “it takes a village” approach than one of personal liberties.

Unlike its neighbor to the north, where individuals are being encouraged to gather in large public venues, with no measures of safety or control, to support the current administration’s bid to maintain office, Mexican officials are encouraging and enforcing social distancing and safety protocols to diminish the spread of COVID-19. And given the current state of affairs, it is essential that the public comply for the sake of the collective.

As of Independence Day, a reported 71,049 Mexicans had died of COVID-19. On September 24, just over a week later, that number passed 75,000,out of 710,000 confirmed cases. Yes, that’s a 10% death rate, the third highest in the world, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center, despite the restrictions on large public gatherings.

The 10% death rate, coupled with Mexico’s being in the top ten countries with the most reported cases, makes it the 12th deadliest country in the world where COVID-19 is concerned, as reported by CNN Health (Sept. 24).

Why is Mexico suffering so much? There is much speculation, and some would say absolute quantifiable proof, to answer that question. On September 3, Forbes published an article by a Latin American-focused political analyst, Nathaniel Parish Flannery, who wrote “In Mexico, Covid-19 patients are dying because public hospitals are failing to save them. … According to Mexico’s publicly available epidemiological oversight database, only 20% of the country’s Covid-19 patients who died were intubated. An astounding 51,924 Covid-19 patients never received ventilator treatment before they died.”

He goes on to say, “the official death toll in Mexico is only a fraction of the real total. Tens of thousands of patients in Mexico never seek help, never get tested, and go unaccounted for.”

Flannery points the finger at the current administration for failing to manage the pandemic and for not focusing sufficient energy and resources on saving citizens’ lives.

There are few who would argue that numerous positive cases and deaths go unreported as millions of people in rural areas have little access to testing or adequate treatment if infected. It is likely that the true death toll will never be known.

Where does this leave the Mexican people? Well, quite frankly, bearing the brunt of responsibility to slow the spread of the virus themselves – which most are taking on willingly, as there were virtually no reports of any backlash to Independence Day celebrations being cancelled and the majority of Mexicans continue to wear facemasks in stores, on the street and especially in crowded areas.

If the government is indeed doing little more than handing down rules and regulations for the public to follow in an effort to stem the increasing death toll, individuals are left to shore up the public safety void by setting individual freedoms aside in deference to the survival of el pueblo.

It seems the “it takes a village” approach to overcoming COVID-19 may be Mexico’s best hope of celebrating el Grito in the town square next year and for years to come.

2020

Enlarging Your Scope in the Time of COVID

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By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken

We are inveterate and indepen-dent travelers. We’ve touched down in every continent except Antarctica (too cold) and love immersing ourselves for weeks or sometimes months at a time in different communities and cultures. We’ve kidnapped our grandkids to live with us in Rome, Paris, Geneva, London, Jerusalem, Mexico City, and safari camps in sub-Saharan Africa.

So when we flew back to our home in California from our home away from home, Huatulco, on March 15 and immediately went into quarantine, followed by shelter in place, there was every reason to expect to feel trapped – that our world would shrink to our two-bedroom cottage. It hasn’t. In fact, we are bouncing around the world on a daily basis, meeting new people and as ever, immersing ourselves in communities and cultural events.

This of course has been made possible by incredible new technology including Zoom, WhatsApp, and AirPlay. We’ve also been supported by the unbelievable generosity of major music and arts institutions. And there is such ingenuity at universities and schools with a passion for providing opportunities for learning even in the most trying times.

During the first couple of months of shelter-in-place we binged on virtual trips to New York and London. Although we had frequently traveled from Huatulco to the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City or the Teatro Macedonio Alcalá in Oaxaca, where we saw operas in HD streaming live from the Met in New York, during some months we were just too busy to leave Huatulco. And of course, we later heard about the superb performances we missed. We were very gratified to learn in March that the Met would be streaming recordings of a different opera every night gratis into our homes. And so, many nights in the first few months of confinement were spent captivated in a good way, watching the operas we had initially missed.

When the Met ultimately depleted its stock of recent recordings of live streaming performances, they began to present relatively old videos of past performances. We were reminded of why we used to travel to Europe for opera. Unlike European opera performances (and today’s in the US) that emphasize the story and character development, the Met formerly concentrated on each aria as an individual performance, and great applause – even curtain calls or encore performances – were encouraged in the middle of scenes. We didn’t appreciate the interruptions then, and even less did we enjoy them in old recordings. So, with nearly the totality of recent HD live operas happily part of our repertoire, we bade farewell to the Met.

Our virtual trips to London were weekly and specifically to visit the National Theatre Live. Although we have more than excellent theater in the U.S. and Mexico, and have seen memorable performances in the Teatro Telcel in Mexico City, there is nothing quite like a London performance. The brilliant performance of Jane Eyre was worth the cost and time for flying across the pond, but this year of course we only had to hit a button or two to attain first row seats. One Man, Two Guvnors was such a comical romp that we completely forgot we weren’t actually in pre-COVID-19 London.

Although we enjoyed other weekly offerings, we were pleased with the National Theatre’s fresh take on some of the Bard’s finest. We had completed our Shakespeare folio several years ago with a superb Pericles at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and were even thinking of skipping the NT Shakespearean offerings. We’re so glad we didn’t. Twelfth Night, which we have seen at least five times, was stunning! Malvolia (yes, Malvolia) emerged as the main character in an unforgettable and deeply emotional performance. And we certainly weren’t sorry we didn’t have to navigate the tube stations and “mind the gap” to get to and from the theater.

By summer, we were ready for a virtual trip to Israel. We signed up for a three-week program of study at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. There were so many classes offered that we were like kids in a candy store trying to decide which to attend. Classes on art, on poetry, on philosophy, and current events, all tied to two predominant themes – social justice and living through plagues. We decided to view classes separately and then compare notes during meals. Our classes took place on Sundays to Thursdays from 9 am PDT to evening seminars. It was definitely like being back in college – but now we had a better appreciation for the professors than we did in college days.

Our studies at Hartman were followed by a week-long virtual tour of Israel – a different community every night. The most interesting community by far was an Ethiopian neighborhood in Ashdod, south of Tel Aviv. Our tour guide that evening was a young woman who was very open about the discrimination she had experienced as an Israeli of color and her life with one foot in the modern Israeli world and the other in the culture of her immigrant parents. We also met with a very gracious rabbi who described his passage from Ethiopia to Israel, including his shock at learning that Israel was full of white Jews. He knew no English and spoke to us in Hebrew with a translator. His final wish was that we all would learn enough Hebrew so the next time we met, we wouldn’t need a translator. We are trying to make his wish come true.

We are now zooming to an Ulpan (intensive Hebrew language program) on a kibbutz in the Negev south of Beer Sheva. We join fifteen other students who are located in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Argentina for two-and-a-half to three hours every Wednesday. During the other days we have plenty of homework. And we practice our lessons with the other students on WhatsApp.

When we’re not bouncing around the world for incredible learning experiences, we’re widening our horizons right here in our own community with book clubs, play readings, and classes in our congregation, and dinners with fascinating people – all these also safely on Zoom. Sometimes, admittedly, in the middle of the night, the walls do seem to being closing in, especially with windows all closed to keep out wildfire smoke. But, for the most part, our world is growing larger, not smaller, and including a greater variety of people. So, if you’re finding yourself feeling confined to wherever you’re now located, Mexico or the U.S. or Canada, open your mind and your computer, and join us in our explorations or your own.

2020

Editor’s Letter

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By Jane Bauer

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

This month at The Eye we have much to celebrate! When we put out the first issue in early 2011, I could not have predicted that almost ten years later we would still be going strong and putting out our 100th issue.

This is also our annual Food Issue and, as a restaurateur, it is one of my favorites to put together. However, this year feels a little bit different for me.

The unprecedented worldwide COVID situation is affecting how we relate to one another. We are reevaluating social norms; shaking hands is verboten, let alone the hugging and kissing which is so common in Latin culture. Standing too close to someone is no longer just rude but is seen as a form of aggression.

The restaurant experience as we have come to know it is changing quickly, with disposable menus, plastic-wrapped cutlery, having your body misted down with disinfectant, hand sanitizer, and of course there are the masks. Suddenly staying home seems a lot more fun.

With this in mind, we return to comfort foods. This is not a time for molecular gastronomy or expensive cuts of meat. It’s a time for eating close to home with seasonal ingredients. Make extra and send it to your neighbor – in sterilized Tupperware, of course!

And we need to evaluate these changes through a wider lens. Yesterday 4,158 people died from COVID while over 21,000 died from hunger. I do not say this to diminish those affected by this virus, but to encourage us to remain focused on the fact that many humans do not have the basics for survival. This ‘new normal’ makes providing those basics even more difficult. There are currently 70 million displaced people across the globe and half of those are women and children. Many are living in one of the various immigration detention centers or refugee camps around the globe. As the world came to a stop, they have not had the luxury of self-isolating. In addition, caseworkers, courts and immigration services came to a standstill, making the already long process they face, even longer.

The world has come to a halt to protect human lives. But why have we not stopped the world for the hungry when their numbers are so great and their power so little?

Thank you to our readers for being on this journey with us!

See you in October,

Jane

2020

Al Pastor and the Lebanese Influence on Mexican food

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By Julie Etra

Yum! One of my favorite Mexican dishes is Tacos al Pastor, layers of marinated meat, slow-cooked on a spit with a vertical flame, slivered up and served on a warm corn tortilla with all the side fixings. The spit, called a trompo (“spinning top”) in Spanish, slowly rotates as it cooks the al pastor, which in Mexico is usually pork. Marinades vary, but can mostly be classified as “adobo,” which includes achiote and ground red guajillo chilies, resulting in the reddish colored meat. The pastor part, which means “shepherd,” is derived from the verb pastorear (“to herd”), as this fixture in Mexican street food is actually Lebanese in origin and the corresponding meat was lamb (pigs are not herded). In the Middle East, the dish is called “shawarma,” and originally consisted of spiced lamb roasting on the slow-turning spit and served on pita bread; when it arrived in Mexico, the pita eventually became a wheat flour tortilla (as in tacos árabe). This method of cooking on a rotating spit is also customary in Greek food, e.g., the gyro (think gyroscope), a meat sandwich of beef, veal (oh no, not a fatted calf), lamb, pork, or chicken.

Lebanese Food Comes to Mexico

Records show that the first Lebanese arrived Mexico in 1892, initially concentrating around Puebla and to a lesser extent Mexico City and the Baja. At the time, Lebanon was not a distinct country but part of the immense Ottoman empire. The immigrants were largely Christians fleeing political persecution, and they rapidly assimilated in Mexico.

The first Middle Eastern restaurant in Mexico was opened in Puebla by Yerbagues Tabe Mena y Galeana in Puebla in 1933. Called “La Oriental,” it was located at Avenida 16 de septiembre, #303. Since lamb apparently was difficult to find and expensive, and since the Mexicans preferred pork, the family quickly adapted. Traditional Lebanese spices, such as caraway, cardamom, nutmeg, and ginger were gradually replaced with Mexican spices but tacos árabes are in part defined by the wheat flour tortilla, not corn.

The restaurant moved to its current location near the zocalo in 1942; it’s at Portal Iturbide, #5. The sign reads “La Oriental: la cuna del taco Árabe” (“The Eastern: the birthplace of the Arab taco).

Speaking of spices, there are numerous spices not originally Mexican but over the centuries and decades have found their way into Mexican cuisine, e.g., cumin (comino in Spanish) and cilantro.

Cumin, which seems indispensable in so many Mexican dishes, is in fact from the Mediterranean, introduced to Mexico by the Spanish conquistadores. Cilantro (called coriander when you are referring to the seeds) is related to cumin, as they are both in the carrot/parsley/celery family. Although its origin remains uncertain, it is also most likely from the Mediterranean and it has been in use as a spice and as a medicinal plant for about 5,000 years. There are references to the use of coriander in the Old Testament (in Exodus) and The Arabian Nights. Coriander, too, arrived in Mexico with the Spaniards, along with cinnamon (canela) and cloves (clavos).

Lebanese Culture in Mexico

Who are some famous Mexicans of Lebanese origin?

Number Uno has to be Carlos Slim Helu, better known as Carlos Slim. I have to assume, dear readers, that most of you know he is the 5th-richest person in the world, the wealthiest Latin American and worth about $68.9 billion US dollars, but did you know he is of Lebanese descent? Slim is the son of Julián Slim Haddad (born Khalil Salim Haddad Aglamaz) and Linda Helú Atta, both Maronite Christians from Lebanon. Slim’s father emigrated to Mexico from Lebanon at age 14, apparently to avoid conscription in the Ottoman army, making Slim first generation on his father’s side. His mother was from Chihuahua, but both her parents were also Lebanese immigrants. The Soumaya Museum in Mexico City – and most of its contents – are the gift of Carlos Slim.

The actress Salma Hayek Jiménez, aka Salma Hayek, is also of Lebanese descent. She was born in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Her father, Sami Hayek Domínguez, is Lebanese, having emigrated from the city of Baabdat, Lebanon. Her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina, is Mexican/Spanish (her maternal grandmother and great-grandparents were from Spain).

The supermarket Chedraui, aka Super Che, is one of the two big box stores in HuatuIco and is part of a chain of super stores founded by the Lebanese immigrants Lázaro Chedraui Chaya and his wife Ana Caram in 1927 in Xalapa, Veracruz. First known as Port of Beirut, this highly successful chain now includes stores in the United States in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas, under the names El Super and Fiesta Mart.

2020

Calming Your Nervios

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By Kary Vannice

“Nervios” is a classification of medical disorders used here in Mexico that, for us, would loosely be translated as the “jitters.” In reality, though, the symptoms go well beyond that.

The late professor Carlos Zolla Luque, an expert in Mexican traditional medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), described nervios as characterized by a “state of unrest” in which it is customary to experience “insomnia, loss of appetite or compulsive eating, anxiety, rapid pulse, occasional despair and other disorders such as hair loss, dermatitis and weakness. Any circumstances that alter the emotional state or mood are interpreted as possible triggering agents.”

Now, let’s be honest, we are all staring down the barrel of another six months of civil unrest, economic uncertainty, and social isolation – as if the past six months were not enough to make anyone reach for the Prozac.

Unlike the other North American countries, Mexicans have long recognized what modern science now calls “stress-related disorders.” Ancient folk remedies throughout Mexico always included several different plants and trees as cures to calm the nerves. In 2014, a team of UNAM scientists itemized 92 “medicinal plants for the treatment of ‘nervios’, anxiety, and depression in Mexican traditional medicine” – a great resource for getting high-strung, stressed out, insomniacs to chill out and take a nap.

In the midst of a global pandemic, regional economic crisis and racial tensions boiling over (for good reason, I might add), it’s safe to say we’re all experiencing more than a little stress in our daily lives. The good news is, here in Mexico, they haven’t lost touch with their ancient ways and some of these old folk remedies are still very much available to us today. Anyone who’s been to a traditional “tianguis” market knows there’s always at least one vendor there selling dried herbs to cure what ails ya’.

Two of the 92 Oaxacan antidotes for los nervios you’d more commonly associate with a flower shop than a pharmacy. They are a local chrysanthemum and Ipomoea stans, a variety of those lovely blue/purple morning glories you see on your morning walks. However, in their case, it’s not the flower that’s used, it’s the roots.

In other plants, it’s the bark or the leaves, or the berries that hold the power to relax one with a tense and uneasy disposition. Calderona Amarilla (Galphimia Glauca, or thryallis), for example, by far the most wildly studied of the folk remedies, uses the seeds and branches to make a soothing tonic.

Another recognizable Mexican flower, the cempasúchil, the Mexican marigold (Tagetes erecta) traditionally used Day of the Dead displays, while not reviewed in the study, has long been used to cure headaches, “fright,” insomnia, excessive crying and nervousness.

There are many other at-home treatments readily available in your local fruit and veg store. While not necessarily native to Mexico, these are well-known “medicines” for nervous Nellies.

Passionflower – There are over 500 varieties of passionflower and only some of them produce a curative effect, but you’ll often find dried Passiflora in local natural farmacías, which you can use to make a calming tea.

Ruda (common rue) – Originally from the Mediterranean, this herb has a long-standing place in Mexican households for its calming and relaxing effects. A tea can be made from its delicate leaves to reduce anxiety and nervousness.

Sage – What we think of as a nice addition to a savory dish is actually an antidote for anxiety here in Mexico. If you’re lucky, you can find it fresh in the produce section. But if you strike out there, move on to the dried herb section of the store and look for salvia.

Lavender – Oil of lavender can be put into a diffuser to create a peaceful and comforting atmosphere. The leaves can be made into a tea and flowers can be added to a hot bath.

Chamomile – You’ll often find this fresh in the herb section of most fruterías. And it is always available in the bagged tea section of the local supermarket.

Hibiscus tea – Yes, the ubiquitous agua de jamica served in cafés and street corners across Mexico is a great tonic for anxiety. So, if you’re feeling edgy, double down on this aguita the next time you have comida corrida.

Red rose – Even this iconic symbol of love and romance has calming effects. Four flowers left standing in a liter of freshly boiled water for one hour can be consumed a half-cup at a time to sooth the stomach and the nerves.

There are better days ahead, but until then, to keep from popping Prozac from a PEZ dispenser, why not take a more natural approach to calming your nervous system? It’s worked here in Mexico for thousands of years.

2020

A Brief History of Cooking

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By Randy Jackson

Today, perhaps more than any other time in human history, food has been elevated on a cultural pedestal of reverence. The depth of knowledge and appreciation for a wide variety of cuisines among so many people seems to be a cultural characteristic of our times. Celebrity chefs, food shows and food networks, never mind food pictures posted on Instagram, are only a few of the many indicators of this interest. The term “foodie” was first coined in the 1980s and is now in common use. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a foodie as “a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food and who eats food not only out of hunger but due to their interest or hobby.” Travel, immigration, and the abundance of food and ingredients from all over the world have all had a hand in this current cultural obsession with food and cooking. However, today’s modern hipsters of cuisine are only the most recent green sprig of growth in the long history of cooking.

Our evolutionary record shows the harnessing of fire coincided with the growth of the human brain relative to body size. This development took place roughly 1.9 million years ago. Harnessing fire had multiple benefits to humans, but chief among them was that it allowed the cooking of food. Cooking food increases the caloric value and reduces the energy required to digest it. Cooking food also enabled early humans to eat certain tubers and roots that were otherwise inedible.

I think it safe to assume that grilling was the first cooking method. Studies of primitive tribes, even today, show how an animal is cooked (it’s estimated that there are more than a hundred “uncontacted peoples” worldwide, half of them in the Amazonian jungle). The entire carcass is thrown onto the open fire. The fire, along with some scraping, removes the fur. Then as bits of the animal are deemed cooked, they are cut or torn from the carcass and consumed. It’s easy to see the direct lineage of this form of cooking to the tossing of a piece of meat onto the barbeque today.

The earliest dishes beyond grilling were probably soups and stews. There is some evidence from Japan dating back 10,000 years of a type of stew made by putting flesh and water into an animal’s paunch and boiling it over a fire. No doubt soups and stews were being made much earlier than this. Once mankind had figured out how to cook in a container of some sort, it only made sense they began boiling up bits of almost anything they could find.

There is an ancient tradition in Oaxaca – still practiced – of making “stone soup.” National Geographic has a documentary showing this
(https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/intelligent-travel/2010/10/04/mexicos_stone_soup/). The cooking method consists of putting water, vegetables, and fish into a smooth rounded depression in the rocky ground. Then a stone is heated on a fire before dropping it into this natural cauldron, and the soup is cooked. It’s easy to imagine how different flavors were discovered by experimentation or by chance when something new was added to the soup or stew.

Let’s not forget about bread. Archaeologists in Jordan have found the remains of flatbread made with wild barley and plant roots – about 14,000 years old, it predates agricultural practices by thousands of years. Societies all over the world have independently found ways to make bread. Mash up grains, add water to make a paste, fry on a hot rock – and presto! For example, the original inhabitants of what is now California developed a complex procedure to make flour for flatbread out of acorns. Source material for bread was everywhere once man learned to harness fire.

Harnessing fire and cooking required greater social organization and division of duties – there had to be fire tenders, wood gatherers, hunters, etc. A central fire also brought people together for longer periods, especially at night, which increased social complexity and likely helped in the evolution of language.