Do you know that writer Langston Hughes lived in Mexico as a teenager and spoke Spanish fluently. Jim Crow laws and customs in the United States influenced his father to become an expatriate who lived in Toluca just south of Mexico City. This happened during the time of the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1917. Rising Mexican nationalism caused many white American to flee Mexico thus providing job opening for African-American like Hughes. At the age of fourteen Langston lived with his father in Toluca and as a serious foodie, he provides wonderful descriptions of the food there particularly the “pile of steaming-hot tortillas,” that always appeared on a Mexican table. Historically neighborhoods of all class distinctions in Mexico had a tortilla vender that produced piping hot government subsidized tortillas. Mexicans eat them with all kinds of cuts of beef, pork, and fish, they make soup with them, eat soup with them, and filled them with all kinds of ingredients from sautéed mushrooms in gravy, to guacamole, to refried beans, and topped with red or green salsa.
