11/06/2023
This is what Anthony Bourdain wrote about Mexico, its gastronomy and its uncomfortable relationship with the US:
“I spent most of my life as a cook working with Mexicans.
In almost every kitchen I stumbled into, disoriented and fearful, it was a Mexican who took care of me and showed me how to do everything.
The recent expressions in my country in which Mexicans are called rapists and drug traffickers make me want to vomit with shame.
Americans love Mexican food. We consume copious amounts of nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales, and anything that looks Mexican.
We love Mexican drinks and drink huge amounts of tequila, mezcal and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexicans, we certainly employ huge numbers of them.
Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes toward immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, take care of to our kids.
As any chef will tell you, our entire service industry - the restaurant business as we know it - would collapse overnight in most American cities without Mexican workers.
Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are "stealing American jobs." But in two decades as a chef and employer, it has never happened to me that an American guy walked through my door and applied for a position as a dishwasher, a porter, or even a job as a convenience cook.
Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans demonstrably simply won't.
Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country with which, whether we like it or not, we are inexorably engaged in a close, though frequently uncomfortable, embrace. Look at it. It's lovely. It has some of the most stunningly beautiful beaches in the world. Mountains, deserts, jungles.
A beautiful colonial architecture and a tragic, elegant, violent, absurd, heroic, unfortunate and heartbreaking story. The wine regions of Mexico rival Tuscany in beauty. Its archaeological sites, the remains of great empires, without parallel anywhere.
And, as much as we think we know and love it, we've barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It's not melted cheese on a tortilla. It is not simple or easy.
A true mole sauce, for example, can take DAYS to make, a balance of fresh (always fresh) ingredients, meticulously prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting kitchens on the planet.
If we pay attention. The old cooking schools of Oaxaca make some of the most difficult and nuanced sauces in gastronomy. And some of the younger generations, many of whom have been trained in the kitchens of the United States and Europe, have returned home to take Mexican food to exciting new heights.
In the years that I have been doing television in Mexico, this is one of the places where we, as a team, are happiest when the work day is over. We will gather around a street stand and order soft tacos with fresh, bright and delicious sauces.
We drink cold Mexican beer, sip steaming mezcal, listen with teary eyes to the sentimental songs of street musicians. We will look around and highlight for the hundredth time what an extraordinary place this is.”
In the photograph Anthony Michael Bourdain (1956-2018) in the "El Danubio" canteen, in Cuernavaca, Mor.
(Published by Deya Landín on June 10, 2018)
