# Lessons Learned From Living In Chiapas



## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

Well, here it is Semana Santa and San Cristóbal de Las Casas is filled to the brim with mostly Mexican tourists enjoying what I believe to be their favorite holiday season and you may rest assured that the city leaders do not wish to offend all those tourists filling the hotels and restaurants by, (_shudder_) running out of municipally supplied wáter here at the tail-end of the dry season when wáter is scarce - especially if the municipal wáter company is cheap, er, frugal and has failed to make necessary capital improvements to assure wáter to all. So, of course, wáter is faithfully delivered to commercial establishments catering to the tourists out on the town but, somehow, there is insufficient wáter to assure a supply to all barrios in the city because of this and that excuse so, all of a sudden, even though we have a very large wáter cistern at our house, we had no wáter and this went on for days. The wáter compány´s excuse for this was a classic comedic response worthy of _Monty Python_. It seems that the pumps were sufficient to deliver wáter to all living in the flats (where most of the hotels and restaurants are located) but incapable of delivering said wáter up the hill where we and a lot of other people live in one of the city´s most venerable, if somewhat poverty stricken, barrios dating back over 400 years.


Now, all of this seems a bit amusing until one begins to ripen from a lack of bathwater but, after a time, the amusement wears thin and is replaced by sullenness and, then, perhaps, outright anger.

During this latter period when I was becoming sullen because we were having to exist only with garafones of bottled "purified" wáter brought to our doorstep by trucks, my darlin´ wife reminded me of our frequent travels we have enjoyed in the incredibly poor but indescribably beautiful and spectacular mountainous regions surrounding San Cristóbal populated mainly by indigenous people where we have witnessed repeatedly the (mostly) women and children struggling to carry heavy jugs of wáter over treacherous mountain roads and trails in both the dangerous wet and more easily negotiated dry seasons many kilometers from their homes to and from wáter sources. And, that´s just the wáter. There is also the essential cooking wood from the mountainous backcountry carried strapped to headbands over extremely rugged terrain and the milpas cultivated on what we would consider sheer cliffs by folks just trying to provide food for themselves with, hopefully, enough to take over rough terrain to market to trade for a few pesos for essentials thay cannot provide themselves. 

OK, enough melodrama from me. When the wáter truck passes my house, I´ll go buy three more bottles of _potable_ wáter for $22 Pesos each and the driver will carry them to my kitchen. Perception based on personal experience is everything.


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

At least it's a shorter trip to the local lake with the jug balanced on one's head.

Ah.....the price of duo-loco...er loca...tions.

Think I'll go take a nice long shower now.


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

_


lagoloo said:



At least it's a shorter trip to the local lake with the jug balanced on one's head.
Ah.....the price of duo-loco...er loca...tions.
Think I'll go take a nice long shower now.

Click to expand...

_Wash your tush for me lagoloo since mine is getting so ripe that I can´t walk down to the central plaza and cathedral in San Cristóbal without attracting a flock of buzzards and local street mutts seeking suspected nearby rancid offal.

If Dawg had to carry wáter and food up a Chiapas mountain to survive, I would have to get by with Herradura Tequila and Cheese Whoppers for the duration.


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## AlanMexicali (Jun 1, 2011)

Depending on the setup but cooking and heating with wood in some regions has proven to be a health risk even if they did not smoke cigarettes and effects your health in latter life. Educating people to it´s health risks is now a gov´t. responsibility of the Secretaria de Salud and DIF in rural áreas.

I probably could add myself the risk of eating large amounts of lard or sugar in your daily diet also to the list.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Many people downhere cook on wood fire and to ma it worst they do it inside a room. The oorest have wooden kitchen with slats that are not touching too much and no chimneys so the smake fills up the room and escapr through the ealls. WIth progress the bete ogg have block houses and the smake escape through the door. Various NGO ae introducing metal wood stoves with an exhaust, they use less wood and you can contro the smoke but old habits die hard and they are not widely used so lung problems ae very comon.

The very poor in the country do not cook with lard but coca cola and other sweet soft drinks are used in excess so diabetes is also a big problem.

In the little town of Teopisca the restaurants serve the local specialties: various sausages served on totally addictive all lard tostadas with beans cream and cheese and you can also have a side order of hearts of palms in sugary escabeche. For deserts you can have meringues..do not forget your extra lipitor...The diet of the mestizos is even worst that the indigenous diet that is lacking in protein, Many indgfenouswomen are also anemic. Malnutrition is a big problem .


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## AlanMexicali (Jun 1, 2011)

citlali said:


> Many people downhere cook on wood fire and to ma it worst they do it inside a room. The oorest have wooden kitchen with slats that are not touching too much and no chimneys so the smake fills up the room and escapr through the ealls. WIth progress the bete ogg have block houses and the smake escape through the door. Various NGO ae introducing metal wood stoves with an exhaust, they use less wood and you can contro the smoke but old habits die hard and they are not widely used so lung problems ae very comon.
> 
> The very poor in the country do not cook with lard but coca cola and other sweet soft drinks are used in excess so diabetes is also a big problem.
> 
> In the little town of Teopisca the restaurants serve the local specialties: various sausages served on totally addictive all lard tostadas with beans cream and cheese and you can also have a side order of hearts of palms in sugary escabeche. For deserts you can have meringues..do not forget your extra lipitor...The diet of the mestizos is even worst that the indigenous diet that is lacking in protein, Many indgfenouswomen are also anemic. Malnutrition is a big problem .


I have had the exact same experience seeing this when visiting my wife´s tiny home town in La Huasteca zone in the hills in the state of San Luis Potosi.

Many of the popular sweet breads have lard folded into the dough. The tamales also have large amounts of lard folded into the masa. I prefer the "dry" tamales of Baja with very little lard in the masa. Here I don´t eat them, they hurt my stomache.

I see people early on a Sunday morning walking back from the store with a 3 liter bottle of regular Coca Cola and a kilo of tortillas for breakfast outside my in laws house.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

When my friends from Oaxaca make tamales the recipe is simple 1/2kg of lard for every kilo of masa, a little water and banana leaves and whatever stuffing... They are delicious but they also hurt my stomach. Pastry made with lard is delicious ..
The tostadas from Teopisca are totally delicious as well. Most of the traditional breads here are also made with lard.
One good thing I do not like refrescos or Coca so maybe if I drink wine the French Paradox will kick in.


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## AlanMexicali (Jun 1, 2011)

citlali said:


> When my friends from Oaxaca make tamales the recipe is simple 1/2kg of lard for every kilo of masa, a little water and banana leaves and whatever stuffing... They are delicious but they also hurt my stomach. Pastry made with lard is delicious ..
> The tostadas from Teopisca are totally delicious as well. Most of the traditional breads here are also made with lard.
> One good thing I do not like refrescos or Coca so maybe if I drink wine the French Paradox will kick in.


Yes pastry made with lard is very tasty, but high in calorie. 

In San Diego vegetable shorting is popular among Mexican bakeries for decades and vegetable oil is advertised on the signs on the wall of Mexican taco shops and restuarants for about 15 years now or more there and even in TJ and Mexicali some places advertise no lard but oil for cooking.

Here all use the cheaper pork lard for baking and frying unfortuanately. Actually french fries here at a local joint taste better than at Carl´s Jr. most likey because they use lard to fry them. I eat them once in a blue moon. 

Tamales here slid off the plate in a pool of grease with the banana leaves still on them if you tilt the plate even an inch.


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

AlanMexicali said:


> Yes pastry made with lard is very tasty, but high in calorie.....
> Here all use the cheaper pork lard for baking and frying unfortuanately. Actually french fries here at a local joint taste better than at Carl´s Jr. most likey because they use lard to fry them. I eat them once in a blue moon.
> 
> Tamales here slid off the plate in a pool of grease with the banana leaves still on them if you tilt the plate even an inch.


Great post, Alan. I especially like the comment about the sliding tamales. We rarely if ever eat tamales when at home at Lake Chapala but here in San Cristóbal Saturday night is tamal night and various homes all over the city offer tamales and my favorites are tamales asafran and mole, both served in banana leaves and I never touch tamales served up in corn husks with a thick masa coating. I have concluded that these Coleto style tamales, while delicious, are truly life threatening. I am reminded of the 1950s while I was growing up in South Alabama. Lard was widely used and I remember that home cooks would always save bacon fat by the stove which would solidify at room temperature and was then used to cook everything from scrambled to fried eggs to fried chicken. In those days there was little I loved more than the smell of DDT sprayed all over town to control mosquitoes. 

Lard and bacon "grease" added flavor to fabulous meals back then and that is a lost experience for most who live today in the United States. Thank God we still have single malt scotch whiskey and fine tequila. We´ll do ourselves in one way or the other.


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