Beautiful Horizons

Latin America's Food Supply

Marcela Sánchez's column this week deals with the distribution of food in Latin America and illustartes the rise of supermarkets:

The market I frequent today opened in 1983. In the mid-1970s there were only 300 farmers markets in the United States. Now there are more than 3,000. Of the nearly $950 billion Americans spend on food each year, they are now spending more than $1 billion at these markets, a sum that seems sure to increase.

In Latin America the trend is in reverse. Small, open-air markets, like the ones on the outskirts of Bogota where you can still find farmers in traditional attire willing to haggle over prices, are being replaced by supermarkets at a faster pace than in any other developing region in the world. According to Michigan State University professor Thomas Reardon, in the 1980s supermarkets in Latin America served at most 10 percent to 20 percent of national food retail sales. By 2000, that share had risen to between 50 percent and 60 percent. In just one decade, Latin America witnessed the same growth of supermarkets that took five decades in the United States.

The supermarket boom is an outgrowth of the Washington Consensus reforms that increased privatization and free trade in Latin America in the 1990s. The reforms brought rapid development and increased disposable income to certain segments of the population, along with greater importation of food products and more international investors, including large international supermarket chains such as French-owned Carrefour.

It also appears that the reforms have helped combat hunger. Countries that import less than 10 percent of their food have a higher percentage of population going hungry. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, preliminary research shows that "engaging in agricultural trade is associated with less hunger, not more.''

What got my attention in this article was this:

[Author Brian] Halweil highlights other innovative examples of wedding the needs of the population with those of small farmers. More than 10 years ago, for instance, Brazil's third-largest city, Belo Horizonte, became determined to feed its malnourished residents. It began by facilitating the establishment of farmers markets throughout town and by providing more nutritious school meals made with local products. These and other projects cost the city less than 1 percent of its budget.

Funny she should mention Belo Horizonte.  My favorite place in Belo Horizonte is the Mercado Central which is filled with small shops selling virtually everything. It is a great place to meet and chat (as I noted here, people from Minas Gerais are great conversationalists). I love going to farmer's markets and other public markets around the world: La Boqueiria in Barcelona, Granville Island in Vancouver, and virtually every other public market I've had the pleasure of visiting.

I'm all for helping fight hunger, but I certainly don't want to see it happen at the expense of social interaction. What supermarkets have done in large cities is serve to isolate citizens and as Sánchez notes, benefit large agribusiness at the expense of small farmers.

One-Way Globalization

I've been taking advantage of the three-gets-you-five aspect of Thanksgiving week and have been taking the entire week off. I decided to explore my neighborhood on foot today and thought that I would walk over to the next area of Queens known as Corona.

Corona is a heavily Latino neighborhood with Dominican, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Colombian immigrants. I decided to have lunch at the Guatemalan-based fast food chain called Pollo Campero. I first heard of the chain in an article in Latin Trade magazine. I remember the article  discussed how boxes of the wildly popular chicken was fast becoming the carry-on luggage of Guatemalan immigrants who returned to the US with a taste of home.

Since then the company has opened a few restaurants in the US and even more in Latin America. I had a three-piece combination with a side order of rice and tostones (green plaintains) and a couple of corn tortillas. It was delicious and the breast piece may have been one of the moistest and meatiest breast pieces I have ever had.

So is this truly globalization? I don't know. I was the only gringo* dining in the full restaurant and I don't see this branch attracting many people outside the Hispanic community. There's another branch in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, another heavily Hispanic community and if I get a chance I'll visit it.

The international success of the dreaded McDonald's, however, is their ability to penetrate the world. When I visited Germany a few years ago, I have to confess that in a moment of weakness I ate at McDonald's and the irony of saying "Ich möchte ein McRib" ("I'd like a McRib") was not lost on me. Despite the occasional local variations  like guaraná soda, pineapple pies and passion fruit sundaes in Brazil, McDonald's product is essentially the same from nation to nation. I'll believe that Pollo Campero is truly becoming a force in terms of globalization when I see one on the Upper West Side or Upper East Side below 96th Street or when I go visit family in Huntsville, AL and when it is doing so much more than appealing to immigrants desiring of a taste for home. Meanwhile, I'll let it be our little secret. It was definitely worth the walk to Corona. Check it out.

*Yes I know I'm technically not a gringo in my own country. Deal with it.

Revisiting the "Liberators"

There's an interesting article in today's Miami Herald today about new books on the bestseller lists revisiting the historical figures in Latin American history like Simón Bolivar and José de San Martín.

Read the article and the accompanying interview with one of the writers. Introspection is a great exercise towards gaining self-awareness. Maybe we can do this someday.

A Worthy Project

Here's a worthy project:

Project Apollonia is the Dream of Grupo Utopia Founder David Anderson and children's book author Nancy Gilliam. The purpose of the project is to provide Costa Rican school children with access to high quality English language books for grades K-6. Project Apollonia is named for Apollonia Anderson Calderon, David's youngest daughter, born December 4, 2003.

English has always been an important part of the school curriculum in Costa Rica and is an important part of the learning process. Recent cuts in government spending have affected the government's ability to purchase and maintain English language libraries.

The Goal of Project Apollonia is to donate 1,000 children's books to Costa Rican schools by June of this year (2004), and 10,000 by the end of the year. To that end, A group of parties in the United States and Costa Rica have organized Project Apollonia as a non profit organization based in San José, Costa Rica.

Please be sure to pass this on.

Hat tp to Kevin Hayden at The American Street.

Chile - "The Rich Kid on the Block?"

The New York Times had a Larry Rohter article yesterday about Chile and how Chile seems to have "lost those essential characteristics" about being Latin American.

While I agree with the economic issues discussed in the article, I have a major disagreements with this "essential characteristics" comment. One thing that has always interested me in Latin America is the diversity you have among people and cultures commonly referred to as Latin American. Argentina is markedly different from Brazil, as Bolivia is very different from Venezuela as Guatemala is very different from Cuba, etc. The notion that there are specific "essential characteristics" beyond speaking either Spanish or Portuguese, frankly borders on stereotyping.

Let's examine a few countries and, please forgive me in advance, let's engage in a few generalizations. Argentineans, for example are often rather broadly characterized as "Europeans who speak Spanish and believe anything we hear in English." It's worth noting, however that according to the excellent book, The Idea of Race in Latin America in an early census in the 19th Century, Buenos Aires population was 25% Afro-Argentinean. Brazil has the largest African community outside of Africa, yet the southern states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul are populated with signficant Italian, Ukrainian, Polish, Japanese, Arabic, and German emigre populations. São Paulo state even has a large community of descendants of American Confederate emigres in a city called Americana the most famous of whom is the singer, Rita Lee.

As I've been writing this post I have found it more and more difficult to engage in generalizations about Latin American culture precisely because of its diversity. A samba in Brazil has its roots in Africa, but it is unquestionably Latin. An song by the Chilean group Inti Illimani may have its roots in Amerindian music, but it's also Latin. A tango by Astor Piazzola may have its origins in the yearnings of European emigres in Buenos Aires, but it's most assuredly Latin. All three of them speak to national identities remarkably different from each other, but they are all Latin. That, in my mind, is what I find so fascinating about these cultures.