Tortillas

The tortilla is a food staple, which, like many other foods, has been produced and eaten differently and by different people over time. The tortilla was traditionally made and eaten in Mexico and has since been Americanized and expanded upon from its original form. There is no longer just the handmade corn tortilla; people now enjoy flour and wheat tortillas, flavored tortillas, even low fat or gluten tortillas.

Being from Maine, Mexican food has never been a large part of my diet, a chain restaurant called Margaritas being one of the only places nearby to get Mexican food. This means that for me, tortillas are usually eaten not in enchilada, burrito, or any Mexican influenced form, but in place of bread for a sandwich. When used in this way, the tortilla is often just called a wrap, becoming something so different from the traditional Mexican tortilla that it has been given a new name. The tortilla, or wrap, has even evolved to fit America’s health conscious population with spinach, wheat, tomato, and gluten free wraps which hold together a sandwich without bread. As Pollan notes in “Our National Eating Disorder,” American culture has created a kind of “carbophobia” in which things like bread or pasta are seen as bad for one’s health. Pollan observes that “we’ve learned to choose our foods by the numbers (calories, carbs, fats, R.D.A.’s, price, whatever), relying more heavily on our reading and computational skills than upon our senses” (Pollan 4). Tortillas and wraps provide a better choice (over bread) for people prescribing to this kind of computational way of eating that Pollan discusses because they usually have less calories that bread in a sandwich would.   

Although I usually eat tortillas in this very Americanized way, in place of bread on a sandwich, there is one restaurant I go to at home that does not get it’s tortillas delivered premade by some company. Tu Casa is an authentic El Salvadorean restaurant and the only place at I know of at home where you can order horchata or plantains in Spanish and feel like you are part of a different culture. It is also the only place I know of where you can watch your tortillas being made to order right in the kitchen. Tu Casa’s tortillas are not corn based, but flour based. After ordering, you can watch the cooks mix the dough in a large bowl, separate the large blob into smaller round sections and then cook the flattened dough in a pan, working so efficiently that they could probably make twenty tortillas in five minutes if there were enough pans for that. The tortillas come out hot on the plate and taste better than any tortilla you could ever get at a Chipotle or Illegal Pete’s.

Clearly, this Mexican tradition has been influential in the food traditions of America and other countries as well. It is interesting to look at how America has in turn influenced the history of this food staple in Mexico. As noted in “Transnational Tortillas,” “the production of corn, corn-flour, and tortillas (is) critical to the Mexican economy.” Traditionally, dried corn would be cooked with water and limestone into a mixture called nixtamal. The nixtamal would then be ground into masa, or tortilla dough, and then cooked on a griddle. Because tortillas are such an important part of Mexican life, the Mexican government, in times of economic struggle, would create subsidies so that corn farmers received enough money and buyers were able to get tortillas at a good price. The Compañia Nacional de Substencias Populares (CONASUPO) was the agency in charge of creating these subsidies, however, when neoliberalism gained popularity around the 1990’s things started to change.

Neoliberal policies were enforced by American organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF and rather than help the economy, they created many problems. For example, CONASUPO lost control over the food industry and control over pricing and subsidizing. Many industries were privatized, and the corn and tortilla industry suffered because of new policies. Now, “25% of corn consumed in Mexico comes directly from the U.S. market” because subsidies on Mexican corn is no longer allowed and imported corn is cheaper. Price controls on tortillas themselves were also eliminated so they have become more expensive. Because of these neoliberal policies that America imposed upon Mexico, both the corn farmers and tortilla consumers have run into more challenges then they did when CONASUPO controlled the food industry.

From their roots in South America, to their expansion and diversification in American, tortillas are one of the most useful food staples out there. Tortillas have an interesting history and are sure to be around for a long time.

Works cited:

 Bank, Muñoz Carolina. Transnational Tortillas: Race, Gender, and Shop-floor Politics in Mexico and the United States. Ithaca: ILR, 2008. Print.

Pollan, Michael. "Our National Eating Disorder." (2004). Print.