THE SPANISH WORD for ‘delicious’ – rico – can also mean rich in the material sense. I contemplated this etymological irony as I ate the most delicious tortillas in my experience in Xicotlán, a small indigenous village in Guerrero, Mexico, where the women shape impossibly large, blue-tinged tortillas by patting them out between their hands and then spinning and stretching them on a board.
The global trading game also contains some irony in the case of Mexican corn. Though corn originated here some 5,000 years ago, it makes little sense, according to world-market wisdom, for Mexicans to continue ...
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