Best products from r/mexico

Well, that's a "tough" question. A couple of years ago there was a similar thread, but that I can't find it.

I would say that you can start with "Y la comida se hizo". It's a series that was published by the government decades ago, but it's still published by a commercial press. Each book focuses on different types of food. Most of the recipes are Mexican. They are really simple and easy to follow (sometimes too simple; I noticed that in a handful of recipes, they leave steps out that are obvious to an experience cook, but that a beginner might need instructions for). Overall these books are a pretty good starting point if your criteria is Mexican food and learning Spanish.

CONACULTA, through Editorial Océano, published a series of family cookbooks by state, so there are essentially 32 different volumes in the series. These are really a great resource, as they contain a massive amount of recipes. There are no images, just text. The series is called "La concina familiar en el estado de XXXX". If you click that link, and then click on the author, you can find all the books in the series.

Recently, Margarita Carrillo published a new book. There is a version in English. This is a more sophisticated book, and it has recipes from different parts/regions of the country. It's by no means difficult to follow, but many of the recipes are more time consuming and require more knowledge of cooking techniques.

Diana Kennedy also has several books, most of them in English, but also in Spanish. They are mostly ok, although some of the recipes don't quite match what you see in everyday Mexico, or at least not in my experience. Lastly, there are books by Enrique Olvera and by Patricia Quintana. I haven't read those books, but the authors have good reputations.

As far as regional cuisines, you fill find that there really many different parts of the country, perhaps more than there are states. Even within states you can find differences or culinary microregions. In most of the country you will find plenty of vegetable/vegetarian dishes. The north, however, is a bit more meat-centric, for geographical and historical reasons. In Central and Southern Mexico there are literally hundreds of vegetarian dishes.

Lastly, I only used Amazon links. However, if you are in Mexico or don't mind waiting for your order, check out Librería Gandhi. You can find many different cookbooks there, all in Spanish. They ship to most parts of the world.

Edit: I forgot to add that there are a lot of good vloggers that have clear instructions and good recipes. A good starting point for traditional, Mexican homecooking is Jauja Cocina Mexicana. She does a great job of explaining the steps, and the pacing of the videos is ideal. There is nothing new, she is not a chef, but rather a home cook, but she does a darn good job. There are others that are easy to find, with different approaches to cooking/food, like Marisol Pink, who is very prolific, but she is a fast talker, and often uses Mexican idioms, so her videos might be more challenging to follow if you are just learning Spanish.

I'm actually a violinist by hobby and I've played in orchestras. You pretty much summarized the most well known repertoire. I'd like to include or recommend you some more:

• Joaquin Beristain composed an overture for spring, called simply like that Obertura a la Primavera. You can hear much of european influence though.
  
  
• Silvestre Revuelstas is very well known on international repertoire: Sensemayá, surely is more popular in latin symphonic music, but I've heard some European orchestras have shown interest as well due to its complex rhythms, in fact, it was featured in the american movie Sin City. Another large piece his well known is La noche de los Mayas (the night of the Mayans).
  
  
• Manuel Maria Ponce has two very well known pieces, the first one, a song for soprano and accompaniment (being piano or orchestra) is called Estrellita, it's quite popular also abroad, there are even arrangements for tenor or solo violin. The other piece I recall is a sweet simple movement for piano called Intermezzo, and as a bonus, there's a Gavote that I used to play in string quartets.
  
  
• Carlos Chavez is another mexican composer, his Symphony No. 2 dubbed "Sinfonia India", is often played in mexican repertoire too.
  
  
• Arturo Marquez is the composer who is very popular now days in Mexico, since you already mentioned his famous Danzon 2, I highly recommend you the No. 4, the No. 5, the No. 8 (a tribute to Ravel). You can buy an album called El dazon segun marquez if you're into his style; as you can see, he did almost like what piazzolla did to the Tango, taking it a step higher into orchestral repertoire Marquez used the Danzon style and made symphonic and chamber music with it. Just this last Novemeber he premiered a cantata called Alas (a Malala).
  
  I know there's plenty more, but I hope this might get you entertained somehow.

Great classic Mexican movies with english subs available:

Drama

Tizoc <-- golden globe award and Berlin film festival winner.

Animas Trujano <-- Toshiro Mifune was superb on this one!

Comedy

Escuela de Vagabundos <-- screwball comedy with the biggest Mexican star ever, Pedro Infante.

Los tres garcia

(i'm not reccomending the biggest Mexican comedy star ever movies because those are hard to get for non-spanish speakers)


Some great, contemporary ones

• Y tu mamá también
  
  
  
• La Ley de Herodes and el infierno are GREAT comedic mirrors of what is happening in some parts of Mexico right now, regarding corruption and violence.
  
  
  My personal fav: Bajo California
  
  
  
  
  

The "classic" books about the Mayans (the first books every student reads when he/she starts his Mayan Studies master) are:

The Ancient Maya by Sylvanus G. Morley

The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization by J. Eric S. Thompson

La civilización de los antiguos mayas by Alberto Ruz Lhuillier

Those books have some information outdated (mainly because they were written before the Mayan writing was deciphered) but still they are a great introduction to the Mayans studies.

More modern sources :

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/86242.A_Forest_of_Kings

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Maya-Code-Third-Edition/dp/0500289557

A great, great reading, all my friends refuse to give me back Cole's book, they invite me a dinner in exchange and all is OK.

Besides, is good to know the works of this guy, because he is THE guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Knorozov

There are three recent good translations from Mexican authors and the books are great, considering you liked Aira, Cortázar and Bolaño.

The story of my teeth (Valeria Luiselli)
Signs preceding the end of the world (yuri herrera)
and I'll sell you a dog

enjoy!

Could you please recommend three of the type from India?

it have to say "chingadamadre" everytime there's something wrong.

it need to be agressive when is questioned about his personality or life choices

it need to be a party guy/gal whenever it has an opportunity.

You are done ;)

I also recommend you to read this book "Laberinto de la Soledad" , the best book about "how mexicans are" by the great Octavio Paz
https://www.amazon.com/Labyrinth-Solitude-Mexico-Return-Philanthropic/dp/080215042X

Seems strange, but water quality isn't based on opinions. Contrary to popular belief, the water in Mexico is required by law to be purified for human use. However, even though water is distributed purified, it is not guaranteed to reach homes that way because of old and faulty distribution infrastructure, where it may find itself contaminated upon reaching homes. Cities have slowly been upgrading their infrastructure, but another problem arises because people are not used to having a reliable stream of water (during upgrades or maintenance, it's common to lack water for a few hours or in worst cases, days) so they fall back on storage methods that favor the growth of bacteria and pathogens.

Mexicans don't often buy water bottles, we get our water containers refilled or exchanged at the local purifier.

I've answered your form, good luck on your project OP and I hope this little bit of extra information I added helps!

Forgive me for answering in English, but unfortunately Spanish is not my first language. I feel like I can make my point clearer in English.

The idea of Mexico being a mestizo nation is a myth. That's because any indigenous person that dresses in western clothing is automatically labeled as mestizo. Many indigenous communities underwent a process in which they lost most of their native language and customs, which were replaced by Spanish and western clothing. But they are still indigenous people.

We Mexicans need to stop clinging to this idea that we have white blood in our veins because that's not the case for most Mexicans. And for those that do, it shouldn't be a point of pride.

I highly recommend the book Mexico Profundo as it talks more about this.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0292708432

And just to make it clear, I'm not saying that white Mexicans don't exist. They clearly do. Just turn on the TV.

El libro Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills es considerado la biblia del tema.

I believe you don't understand the term 'mestizo'

Mexico is a mestizo nation as only 10-14% of the population is indigenous (amerindians). The rest of the population is a mixture of Indian-White-Black ancestry, it even has been postulated that no pure race exists today as hundreds of years since being conquered (1519) and the import of 600,000 black slaves (early 16th century) has had an impact on all of the population.

An indigenous (amerindian) dressed in western clothing would be called 'mestizo' and that would be correct, as mestizo not only refers to the racial mixture of amerindians-spaniards (or amerindian-white european). But also to a phenomenon exclusive to Mexico called "mestizaje".

As you probably know, Mexico's indigenous culture was pretty much destroyed during the spaniard invasion, language and religion were imposed on the population and after the revolution the elite developed the construction of the mexican national identity, the "Mestizo identity".

It pisses me off to no end to write about this and I don't want to elaborate in the destruction of my (our) culture, suffice to say that mestizo is a correct term for any mexican not identifying fully neither with any indigenous culture nor with a particular non-Mexican heritage, but rather identifies as having cultural traits and heritage incorporating elements from indigenous and European traditions

> We Mexicans need to stop clinging to this idea that we have white blood in our veins because that's not the case for most Mexicans. And for those that do, it shouldn't be a point of pride.

I don't see where you are heading with this. Just being factual, mexican population does have white (European) ancestry just like it has Black ancestry as well (1.8% (±3.5%) of African, and 1.2% (±1.8%) of East Asian ancestry).

It is estimated that on average the population is 41.8% (±15.5%) of European ancestry, towards the north of the country the percentage is higher (northern Sonora is 61.6% European ancestry) and towards the south indigenous ancestry is higher (the southern state of Guerrero showed on average 71.5% of indigenous ancestry)

Most mexicans do have white (European) ancestry (blood) in them (remember that you need ~25% haplotype in order to show up phenotypically), I don't know why it should or shouldn't be a point of pride as you say...

> I highly recommend the book Mexico Profundo as it talks more about this. [1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0292708432

top lel

We've been culturally enriched beyond salvation throughout the last 5 centuries, let our history be an example of the dangers of multiculturalism on homogenous populations as Europe is facing right now lest their culture be forever destroyed too.

> And just to make it clear, I'm not saying that white Mexicans don't exist. They clearly do. Just turn on the TV.

2013, still watching TV. Anyways, Mexico is racist (towards the indigenous population, in large part because of the damned mestizaje) and mexicans want to see on TV that which they like (not being indigenous) and the TV networks happily oblige.

It's not that those actors aren't mexicans or are pure blooded aryan master race, it's just that their mixture has less Indian, Black and Asian ancestry.