The highest inflation in 24 years embitters the essential Mexican tortilla shops, who face the rise in the price of corn due to the war in Ukraine and the increase in the cost of inputs, which leaves this omnipresent food as one of the most affected products.
A proof of the problem is experienced in La Morena, the traditional tortilla shop in the Pensil Sur neighborhood, in the north of Mexico City, where the shop assistant Carmen Hernández now deals with an angry clientele due to the sudden increase of prices, a phenomenon that he had never seen in his 12 years of work.
“He gets angry, of course. People actually believe that this situation of raising the tortilla is from us, but in reality it is not. It is the same increase in corn that makes one increase the kilo of tortillas,” Hernández told Efe this Thursday.
A hot inflation
The prices of corn tortillas rose by 17.25 Annual % in the first half of April, more than double the general inflation of 7.72 %, the highest rate in Mexico in 21 years.
Isaac Sánchez, the administrator of La Morena, regrets in an interview with Efe that “for a long time time the tortilla always cost the same”, but “from a few years to now the increase has been disproportionate”.
Two years ago, a kilo of tortilla cost 15 pesos (some 75 cents of dollar), but now it has risen to 20 pesos (about 1 dollar), which means , according to their calculations, that for the same amount of money a family or b now has between 10 and 12 fewer tortillas.
“There has been an increase of 20 to 25 % in two years. The climate crisis has hit corn because the drought has meant that there is less, cost more, coupled with the conflict in Russia and Ukraine, that has driven the issue of grains in the world crazy, and we can say that it has risen and will rise ”, expresses Sánchez.
La Morena -who has supported her 16 employees despite the crisis for a daily production of 1,800 kilograms of tortilla- is one of the more than 110,000 businesses for making corn tortillas and grinding nixtamal (corn cooked with water and lime), according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).
Before inflation, Sánchez considers that there is little to do other than reason with the clientele.
“We have had to explain why and try to offer them a product according to their needs, although without a doubt we can say that we are selling a little less because people also consume less. Maybe offer them other alternatives, but in the end nothing can replace the tortilla”, he comments.
A solution?
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced this Wednesday an “anti-inflation plan” of “guarantee prices” negotiated with businessmen to control 24 products of the basic basket, which would include corn and tortillas.
In addition he exhorted the peasants to “plant corn, beans, the basics, because they are facing famine, inflation with self-consumption”, although Mexico is already self-sufficient in white corn for human consumption.
Blanca Mejía, representative of the Governing Council of the Traditional Mexican Tortilla, which brings together nixtamaleros and tortillerías, is skeptical of the plan.
“We are very nervous in the industrial sector because we do not know what these measures are going to be. sea. We are very afraid of price controls because what makes it possible to deal with the situation of price increases is that the price of tortillas is free”, he says.
The main challenges for tortilla makers, warns Mejía, are the prices of a ton of corn, which is now at 8,900 pesos (about 445 dollars), while at the beginning of the year, before the war, it was around 6,900 (about 345 dollars).
They have also faced up to double the electricity rates due to adjustments by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and the loss of subsidies for the extraction of water wells.
Therefore, Mejía questions the president’s proposals, in addition to criticize that it has only met with large companies.
“It is not just an immediate measure, I think there are many issues that have to be resolved. Indeed, these are issues that have been dragging on from bad practices of other governments, but no way, it’s up to the current president to solve it”, he says.
An indispensable product
The price of corn has fallen in a country where the 98 % of the population eats tortillas, with a per capita consumption of 75 kilograms per year, which is equivalent to almost 10 daily tortillas per Mexican, according to the Institute Department of Ecology (Inecol) of the Government.
“It will decrease, so we make an adjustment there, a readjustment to our budget, so that we can more or less carry out our daily life, food , the basics,” laments Gladys Pastor, a regular customer of the La Morena tortilla shop.
But the fidelity of Mexicans to the corn tortilla is just right, the basic product for tacos and the accompaniment of food par excellence, which e feeds Isaac Sánchez with optimism.
“Without a tortilla we can practically say that you cannot eat, the diet Mexican needs it”, he concludes.
With information from Pedro Pablo Cortés/EFE.
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