It just goes to show you: it's always something. Professor Schaff comments below on the recently falling price of gasoline. Good news, you say. Well, yeah. Unless your livelihood depends on corn tortillas. The Washington Post reports that as the price of gasoline heads south, taco shells are headed in the opposite direction.
Mexico is in the grip of the worst tortilla crisis in its modern history. Dramatically rising international corn prices, spurred by demand for the grain-based fuel ethanol, have led to expensive tortillas. That, in turn, has led to lower sales for vendors such as Rosales and angry protests by consumers.
The uproar is exposing this country's outsize dependence on tortillas in its diet -- especially among the poor -- and testing the acumen of the new president, Felipe Calderón. It is also raising questions about the powerful businesses that dominate the Mexican corn market and are suspected by some lawmakers and regulators of unfair speculation and monopoly practices.
Tortilla prices have tripled or quadrupled in some parts of Mexico since last summer. On Jan. 18, Calderón announced an agreement with business leaders capping tortilla prices at 78 cents per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, less than half the highest reported prices. The president's move was a throwback to a previous era when Mexico controlled prices -- the government subsidized tortillas until 1999, at which point cheap corn imports were rising under the NAFTA trade agreement. It was also a surprise given his carefully crafted image as an avowed supporter of free trade.
Consider the awesome force of those words: "the worst tortilla crisis in modern history." Drum roll, please. I am curious now, for the first time I assure you, about what the second greatest tortilla crisis in modern history looked like, and how your typical pre-modern tortilla crisis differed from the modern version. Surely there is a Ph.D. dissertation in this.
Shrewd historians and political scientists will recognize that this crisis has serious implications for the freedom of the press in Mexico. 
Recent Comments