…there goes the beer?

Food riots are breaking out all over the place: Haiti, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Burkina Faso… you name it. Food scarcity is so serious that even steel-hearted people like the World Bank and IMF executives are concerned.

According to Bloomberg’s information services on business and finances, the world prices of cereals over the last 12 months (one year to March 08) have increased in percentages hard to imagine:

• Wheat 130%


• Soya 87%


• Rice 74%


• Corn 31%

(...well, soya is not a cereal, you got me! but it's going up anyway)

What remains unchanged is the overall picture of losers and winners. Just check up the map below. No surprises. Same winners, same losers:

To add insult to injury, a nasty effect of this world wide scenario is being felt in lovely beer-ville. The end prices of suds are going up as well. According to Nora Lacey, of Canada’s ANBL, “a lot of brewery costs have gone up: fuel cost has risen, hops price has gone up, and even the price of glass has changed significantly for some breweries. Those items will affect the price” (http://www.telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/).

It seems that it is about time for us to send some of our key policy makers to the Czech Republic. It is out there where this token of wisdom is found:

“The government will fall that raises the price of beer.”

They’d better follow such warning because at the end, some of us endorse to the Egyptian admonition that goes:

“Do note cease to drink beer, to intoxicate thyself, to make love, and to celebrate the good days.”

Moreover,

Fighting hunger: community kitchens

A community kitchen entails a gathering of people on a regular basis to cook. Community kitchens offer the opportunity to share skills, socialize and reduce costs by purchasing collectively. Kitchens are as diverse in their purpose and organization as the people who participate in them –– some groups only prepare enough food to sit down and eat one meal together. Others prepare several meals in large portions to take home to their families. One group of immigrants may want to get together to cook "foods from home", another may prefer to practice their English or learn new recipes

(Community kitchen, Toronto)

· There are vegetarian kitchens, kitchens for new moms, kitchens that cater primarily to psychiatric consumer/survivors.

· There are no hard and fast rules about how to organize a community kitchen, just a few pointers and guidelines (and a knowledge and love of food helps).

Want an example? Check out: http://www.foodshare.net

(Community kitchen, Pascua, Arizona)

Bogota, Colombia: 9 de abril, 6 decadas atras

(Mensaje sin tildes)

9 de Abril, 1948: es asesinado Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, lider liberal de corte socialista, critico acerrimo de las castas privilegiadas que aun gobiernan el pais.

Este blog le rinde un homenaje a su memoria, y a su legado que se mantiene vigente en las luchas de quienes buscan construir un pais fundamentado en la justicia social y economica.

Mas buena que el pan: Better than bread

Way back at the dawn of the Middle Ages, when those from Castille, in Spain, where heavily borrowing from the Greek, the Latin, the Arabic, the Gothic and who knows how many other languages in order to craft their own, little they knew that one of their most beautiful expressions would make my mouth water this evening.


"Mas bueno que el pan" -better than bread- is an old Spanish clause that is used to speak of the goodness of a person. Back then, bread was made out of wholesome grain, and this coupled with the energy the Castilians from of old invested in their daily activities (that included persecuting Muslims, Jews, and later on killing American natives while raping their mates) meant that bread and goodness went hand in hand.


They still do, in spite of today's anti-carb propaganda. However, when bread and language crossed the pond to plant their tent pegs in the hearts, minds and tongues of the descendants of Spaniards, native Americans, African slaves, and one or two mercenaries coming from other quarters, "bueno" took on a way more exciting nuance: this is not only goodness in the theological sense, but a similar quality in the erotic field.

And here comes a stunning Castilian actress, Paz Vega, whom I just saw in one of her many movies: "Teresa, el cuerpo de Cristo" (Teresa, the Body of Christ). There's no doubt, she is better than bread, "mas buena que el pan."






It'd be nice to take her out to dinner after seeing her flick, or before, or even if I've never heard of her. However this particular movie is about another woman, also "mas buena que el pan," who has been influential in my life for years. She is Teresa de Avila, a 16th century mystic, whose writing, poetry and spirituality shook the foundations of the cold steel panels that still pretend to protect Christendom (or any other male centered arrangement) from the shattering questions of a woman.

No rice, no nice

I grew up loving rice, longing for a spoonful of fluffy, steamy, white rice cooked the tasty way so typical of my mother. I wasn't born in a rice laden country, nor do I have the privilege of having even the slightest drop of oriental blood in my family tree (to my knowledge). But in my culture of origin rice is a delicacy. Most of us back home just cannot make it through the day without rice. Even at breakfast, as warmed up leftovers from the evening meal of the previous day, rice mixed with a local omelette that sees the charm of the eggs enhanced by finely chopped green onions and red tomatoes makes life worth living. You're right. I was brought up as a country boy.

Thus, when I hear that the price of rice is skyrocketing I cannot help but feel alarmed. A cluster of factors are making it more difficult to put rice in billions of bowls:

• Poor harvests resulting from extreme weather
• A rise in demand in some rice-importing countries, where populations and incomes are growing
• The expectation of further price increases - resulting in hoarding
• Low stockpiles and a long term lack of agricultural investment

As it always happens, the poor are already being sorely hit by these developments. Countries that depend on rice aids will see their supplies greatly reduced.

You know the real price of your banana?

The United Fruit Co.

Pablo Neruda

When the trumpet sounded,
it was all prepared on the earth,
and Jehovah parceled out the earth
to Coca-Cola, Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other entities:
The Fruit Company, Inc.
reserved for itself the most succulent,
the central coast of my own land,
the delicate waist of America.
It rechristened its territories
as the “Banana Republics”
and over the sleeping dead,
over the restless heroes
who brought about the greatness,
the liberty and the flags,
it established the comic opera:
abolished the independencies,
presented crowns of Caesar,
unsheathed envy, attracted
the dictatorship of the flies,
Trujillo flies, Tacho flies,
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, damp flies

of modest blood and marmalade,
drunken flies who zoom
over the ordinary graves,
circus flies, wise flies
well trained in tyranny.
Among the bloodthirsty flies
the Fruit Company lands its ships,
taking off the coffee and the fruit;
the treasure of our submerged
territories flows as though
on plates into the ships.
Meanwhile Indians are falling
into the sugared chasms
of the harbors, wrapped
for burial in the mist of the dawn:
a body rolls, a thing
that has no name, a fallen cipher,
a cluster of dead fruit
thrown down on the dump.