[BigV]

Beer's bad enough, but when the source of 40% of your protein triples in price, now you have a problem.

A Culinary and Cultural Staple in Crisis
Mexico Grapples With Soaring Prices for Corn -- and Tortillas

Tortilla prices have tripled or quadrupled in some parts of Mexico since last summer. On Jan. 18, Calderón announced an agreement with business leaders capping tortilla prices at 78 cents per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, less than half the highest reported prices. The president's move was a throwback to a previous era when Mexico controlled prices -- the government subsidized tortillas until 1999, at which point cheap corn imports were rising under the NAFTA trade agreement. It was also a surprise given his carefully crafted image as an avowed supporter of free trade.

"There are certainly some contradictions in Calderón's positions here," said Arturo Puente, an economist at the National Institute for Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research in Mexico City.

Calderón's administration portrayed the cap as a get-tough measure that, coupled with his earlier approval of new corn imports from the United States and other countries, would stem the crisis. In an interview two days before the price-cap announcement, Calderón's undersecretary of industry and commerce, Rocio Ruíz Chávez, boasted that Mexico's tortilla problems would stabilize in "one to two weeks."

But Calderón's price cap does not carry the force of law. It is "a gentleman's agreement," said Laura Tamayo, a spokeswoman for the Mexico division of Cargill, a Minneapolis-based company that signed the pact and is a major player in the Mexican corn market.

A study this week by the lower house of Mexico's National Congress showed that many tortilla makers are ignoring Calderón's edict. The average price of tortillas is 6 cents higher than the cap, and some shops are charging between 59 cents and $1.04 above the government threshold.

"Going ahead, it looks very good for high corn prices," said William Edwards, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

In another place, a rise in the cost of a single food product might not set off a tidal wave of discontent. But Mexico is different.

"When you talk about Mexico, when you talk about culture and societal roots, when you talk about the economy, you talk about the tortilla," said Lorenzo Mejía, president of a tortilla makers trade group. "Everything revolves around the tortilla."

The ancient Mayans believed they were created by gods who mixed their blood with ground corn. They called themselves "Children of the Corn," a phrase Mexicans still sometimes use to describe themselves.

Poor Mexicans get more than 40 percent of their protein from tortillas, according to Amanda Gálvez, a nutrition expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Modern-day tortilla makers such as Rosales use "an ancient and absolutely wise" Mayan process called "nixtamalizacion," Gálvez said.