BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

32 BARBAROUS MEXICO
large corn tortillas, the bread of the poor of Mexico,
a cup of boiled beans, unflavored, and a bowl of fish—
putrid, stinking fish, fish that reeked with an odor that
stuck in my system for days. How could they ever eat
it? Au, well, to vary a weary, unending row of meals
consisting of only beans and tortillas a time must come
when the most refined palate will water to the touch of
something different, though that something is fish which
offends the heavens with its rottenness.
"Beans, tortillas, fish! " I suppose that they can at
least keep alive on it," I told myself, "provided they do
no worse at the other two meals." "By the way," I
turned to the adminstrador, who was showing us about,
"what do they get at the other two meals?"
"The other two meals?" The administrador was
puzzled. "The other two meals? Why, there aren't any
others. This is the only meal they have!?'
Beans, tortillas, fish, once a day, and a dozen hours
under the hottest sun that ever shone!
"But, no," the administrador corrected himself. "They
do get something else, something very fine, too, something
that they can carry to the field with them and eat
when they wish. Here is one now."
At this he picked up from one of the tables of the
women a something about the size of his two small fists,
and handed it to me, triumphantly. I took the round,
soggy mass in my fingers, pinched, smelled and tasted
it. It proved to be corn dough, half fermented and
patted into a ball. This, then, was the other two meals,
the rest of the substance besides beans, tortillas and
decayed fish which sustained the toilers throughout the
long day. I turned to a young Maya who was carefully
picking a fish bone.