(This is adapted from a guest blogger piece I did for Chronicle Books.)
One of my favorite parts of Mexico is the Huasteca region.
It goes from east to west though the states of San Luis Potosi, Hidalgo and
Veracruz. It’s said that when the conquest of Mexico was at its height, many
indigenous people left the cities and went up into the mountains of the rugged
Huasteca and they’ve never quite been able to let their guard down. The regions
all share some similar food and the music is especially great.
A few years ago I was on a typical driving trip with my
partners, Yunuen and Gabriel. I wish I could express how much I love these
trips. We sing and laugh and eat and I see parts of Mexico that just shock and
delight me. How many ways can you deep fry corn and come up with another
delicious dish? Don’t even try to keep track while you’re in Mexico. We stop
often to eat, inspect bean fields or best of all to climb ruins and imagine
pre-Conquest Mexico. The Huasteca normally means great mountains and not so
great roads. It took us hours to get to a farmer we had heard about who was
growing his family’s heirloom beans, but
we didn’t mind so much. You can always stop for fresh coconuts and their juice
and there’s always a meal or a snack around the corner.
We started to get excited as we got closer to the farmer.
There was lots of agriculture and we even saw neat rows of beans. I was happy
to see the farmers were using good irrigation water and the general state of
things told us this was a farmer who cared and wanted to do good work.
Dogs barked and chickens lost their cool as we pulled up to
the farmhouse. It was big news having uninvited visitors. The farmer was really
thin but healthy looking and I’d bet he had a steady diet of beans, tortillas
and boiled cactus paddles, all from his land. He seemed nice enough but he kept
staring at me and smiling. I wasn’t sure what his motivation but it was welcome
and preferable to a smirk. After pleasantries, Gabriel asked him what beans he
was growing. I was prepared to hear about the varieties that had been in his
family for generations and would be perfect for importing back to the states through
my company, Rancho Gordo.
Still staring at me and beaming, he almost shouted,
“Michigan Black!”
Michigan black is a boring hybrid that produces well but is
of little interest to an heirloom bean fan. We burst out laughing at the
thought that we had come all this way to get generic beans from Michigan. We
apologized for laughing and did our best to leave a good impression but after
the humor wore off, we had a sense of horror. Here was a farmer way out in
nowhere who gave up his family heirloom bean business to grow generic black
beans for an imaginary international market. How was this farmer to compete
with the Chinese or the Peruvians on price? He’d given up quality and we lost
some heirloom beans. Nobody wins.
It was this trip that made my bean hunting go from a fun
hobby to almost an act of desperation. How many varieties are we losing? How
fast can I find them? I return to Mexico about six times a year and always have
an eye for my beloved heirloom beans that might need my help. I hear there are
people here in California trying to produce a good balsamic vinegar. I think
this is admirable but it’s a tradition that is very stable in Europe and it’s
going to take generations to be competitive. Meanwhile, here’s one of our own
indigenous crops and various varieties are on the verge of extinction, and we
don’t even know what they taste like. This is why I love to focus on New World
food, heirloom beans in particular.
