Columns

“Today you have to get deep into the countryside, get out of your car and walk awhile before you can find a real Mexican Dia de los Muertos celebration,” 72-year-old Palomon Jurado Vazquez complains, spitting in the mud of a pueblo street.

The Great Depression meant dislocation – along with brutal job and food shortages – not only for Americans but also for thousands of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans living in the United States. 

In many cases, the depression’s indelible ID – chaos, the condition of badly-needing but-not-having an income or a home – was what tore families apart. 

During the early 1930s much of America believed recovery had arrived. But the bubble of change was a dizzying deception.  Many rancher farmers made down payments on new machinery. 

A recent New York Times article, “Culinary History of the Great Depression,” churned rough memories among some local residents – depending on age, or their recall of history.   

The New York Times recently entertained us with an inviting review of what it called “A Square Meal, a culinary history of the Great Depression,” featuring the post-election days of Herbert Hoover and his dreams that led he and his family to preside over “multicourse” banquets at which dinner jackets were required. Dinner jackets soon began to disappear.