Mexico Works for an Image Makeover

We at Gus HQ have been seeing tourist numbers steadily rising in Baja for a while now, and it's very encouraging. That's why I was interested to read this article from the Globe and Mail: Mexico battles ‘sun, sea and severed heads’ image. It says that the Mexican government is now trying to change its image - highlighting the country's safety and wonderful travel opportunities and trying to shake the stigma of violence. From the article:

Of 5.1 million visits in the past four years, only 20 Canadians have died while in Mexico, and almost all were accidental deaths, with alcohol playing a role in many (seven, he says, were falls from balconies).

This is the kind of thing that never shows up in articles about Mexico. All of us at Gus HQ have spent a lot of time in Mexico without experiencing anything but an incredibly beautiful country and kind, friendly people. And we know many people whose experiences have been the same.

We've seen a lot of news reports about tragedies in this country. But such stories never point out that, statistically, the country is actually not much more violent than many places in the United States. Nor do such stories describe what percentage of the people who've been involved in violence were directly involved in the drug trade. Nor do they point out that violence is actually highly localized in a few key areas, with most parts of the country remaining quite safe.

These days, it seems as though the media has decided that Mexico is an extremely violent place, and any story which can support that theme is splashed across the front page, while the stories of Mexico's awesomeness tend to fade into the background.

Meanwhile, those of us in the know will keep trekking through this incredible country, learning about its rich history and its incredible cultures, and meeting the millions of kind, generous, happy people who call Mexico their home.

The Gulf Between Us

The Gulf Between Us

 

"The oil is not gone. This story is not over. We smelled it in the air. We felt it in the water. People along the Gulf Coast are getting sick and sicker. Marshes are burned. Oysters are scarce and shrimp are tainted. Jobs are gone and stress is high. What is now hidden will surface over time."


You should probably read this article, even though it's long, because: "To bear witness is not a passive act."

We can still eat tacos!

Well, maybe.  Check out this article by George Monbiot, in which he boldly issues a retraction of his statement that veganism is the only ethical way to eat, due to the social (oh yes, it doesn't just affect the beasts) and animal justice issues that underlay our meat production systems. Monbiot goes on to review a new book by Simon Fairlie that serves as "an abattoir for misleading claims and dodgy figures, on both sides of the argument."

If you can excuse the awful, awful, and inappropriate slaughterhouse puns and get through to the meat of the article (Did I just say that?), you might clear up a few of your own misconceptions too. I certainly did!

Like, for example, you know how they always say it takes a huge amount of feed to produce a smaller amount of meat, to feed an even smaller amount of people? Comparatively, they say, eating the greens ourselves wastes a lot less energy and feeds more people.  Well, it turns out that's true only when talking about "concentrated feed", not about grass.  Actually, cows are terribly efficient at converting the energy in grass into edible energy for humans. Huh.

Also discussed is how pigs are excellent converters of grain waste and slop into food. Basically, in their natural eating habits, they turn things we can't eat into things we can.

Tons of other misconceptions are addressed, as well as some remaining ethical/environmental issues.

Overall, say Monbiot and Fairlie, the root problem isn't the very fact that we're raising animals for food, but the way we're raising them.  Feedlots and commercial slaughterhouses have got to go. But local production and low-energy and -waste farming could be an ethical way to go.

Here at Baja Trek we make most of our camp meals vegetarian. We also try to shop at our locally-owned grocery stores instead of the big commercial chains. When we eat seafood, we've usually bought it off a fisherman we know or dug it up (clams)/caught it ourselves. I'm interested to see if we can start chatting up our favorite taco stand-owners to see if they know where their meat comes from and under what conditions it's raised.

Perhaps it's time to get in touch with your sources of meat!

Article Roundup!

As much as we love turning off our computers and heading out into Baja's wildernesses, you have to admit that the Internet has some pretty interesting things to say, sometimes.  Here's a small roundup of a few items that have caught my interest lately!

• 7 Crazy Ways People Made Millions From Trash
• Awesome. Always remember: Waste is food!

• Towards Sustainable Travel: Breaking the Flying Addiction
• I totally sympathize with the author (Elisabeth Rosenthal) of this article! I do everything I can on a daily basis to make sure my Carbon footprint corresponds to the shoe-size of a newborn baby. And here at Gus Headquarters, we're always trying to think up new and old ways to keep our travel style Carbon neutral. But flying is one of the hardest habits to kick. How do you beat that kind of convenience? 

• Tracking the Ancestry of Corn Back 9000 Years
• Did you know that corn came from a Mexican grass called Teosinte? Apparently the early indigenous Mexicans were doing some pretty sophisticated breeding and domestication of the grass to get corn to the state it is today. 

• Bryant Austen's Studio Cosmos
• Okay, so this isn't technically an article, but check out these "high-resolution, life-size photographs of endangered whale species." Holy crap awesome. Make sure you read his "Bio" page. What a cool dude!

• Dirt Makes Us Smarter
• The article's a little dry, but the point comes through loud and clear: playing in dirt makes you happier, healthier, and even smarter! All right!   

• Amazing Jellies
• "As elegant as they are squishy." A cool educational video (in hd!) about jellies.

• The Winding Road to Spiral Jetty
• A story about visiting Robert Smithson's earthwork named Spiral Jetty in the salt flats of Utah.

Happy reading!