Post by Dominicanese on Jan 22, 2018 0:01:03 GMT
Mexico.
Culture:
The culture of Mexico reflects the country's complex history and is the result of the gradual blending of native culture (particularly Mesoamerican) with Spanish culture and other immigrant cultures.
Cuisine:
Mexican meals consist mainly of sauces, stews and soups, and most recipes are prepared anywhere between a quick-fry to a slow roast. Mexico represents a melding of cultures: Spanish, French, Mediterranean influences are felt and combined into a mestizaje (mixing), as Mexicans defy their own cuisine. Almost every region has its own legends regarding food background. In Puebla, the legend says that some nuns were asked to prepare a dish for a dignitary visit. Because they were not sure what a stylish meal meant, the nuns innovated a mixture of herbs, chocolate and spices. This recipe is the base of mole, a thick sauce, used at the old royal feasts and highly popular nowadays.
The Mexican diet is based on some very specific aliments: beans, corn, tomatoes, chilies and exotic fruits. The most important aliment and the oldest one is the corn, as it has been consumed for over 4000 years. Corn is used for the famous tortillas, tacos, tamales and nachos and beans are prepared as kidney beans and fava (in soups or stews), served as refrito, or de la olla. The tomatoes are essential for the salsas and the dips, used for the fish meals or the beef ones. Chilies are used both dried and fresh and they are found in a wide range: chipotle, haberano, mulato, cascabel or serrano. The exotic fruits are used for garnishes, sauces or desserts: the coconuts, papayas, pineapples or bananas.
Corn, chilies, beans, tomatoes and fruit make up the Mexican diet. Corn is used for tortillas, which are usually used for tacos and tamales. Chilies, on the other hand, are used both fresh and dried. Mexicans prefer their food hot and flavorful thus, they use a variety of chilies in their dishes – jalapeno, serrano, guajillo, pasilla, ancho, poblano, habanero and mulato to name a few. Beans range from lentils to kidney beans and these are the usually used in many Mexican soups and stews. Of course, a truly Mexican salsa is never complete without tomatoes. Tomatoes, too, are used to make sauces for meat and fish dishes. Fresh mangoes, pineapples, papayas and coconuts are usually served for dessert. However, they are also used for sauces.
Long before Spain set foot on Mexican soil, corn was an important and revered crop by the Aztec Indians. It was the Aztec’s staple food and corn was eaten a number of ways – raw, roasted, boiled or made into corn meal. Tortilla, which comes from the Spanish word “torta” meaning “round cake”, was born when the Spanish brought grain with them and mixed it with corn. Similar to rice, corn tortillas are versatile – they can be eaten plain, with beans or meat, with sauces, and served hot or cold. Many Mexicans consider tortillas as an alternative to bread.
There are 4 main regions in Mexican, which provide different types of meals or variations of aroma, texture and flavor of traditional Mexican meals: Puebla, Oaxaca, Yucatan and Veracruz, but also, a more general division is: Central Mexico, Southern Mexico and the Pacific coast. Puebla is situated not far from Mexico City and its cuisine it’s represented by the mole sauce that covers chicken, camotes desserts with potatoes and many pastries. Oaxaca is famous for the Oaxaqueno mole that also contains bananas, for a sweeter flavor. Yucatan has many sauces with fruits, spread over chicken, (pollo pibil), or pork (cochinita pibil). In Veracruz, like on all the Pacific coast, the main dish is fish, like the fish dish a la Vareacruzana, which is topped with a local sauce, made of tomatoes, olives and chilies. The best assortments for the fish are the fruits, especially the exotic ones: memey, guanabana or cherimoya. Generally, in central Mexico, there is a mixture of Spanish and Aztec cuisines: nuts, different spices, cocoa and seeds are very much used. In the south, peppers are mostly used dry, especially in stews and toppings. The best sauce for the seafood, famous on the Pacific coast, is the achiote sauce, which is also added to chicken or pork.
he preparation of different local sauces, salsas and mixtures of spices and herbs requires time and technique. The technique refers to the cooking procedure: fresh or uncooked fruits, boiled veggies, mashed aliments for the dips, oil fried nachos and meat, chopped greens and cubed or minced meat. These are usually done separately, as the same meal includes a number of 3 or more cooking techniques, due to all the mixtures and combinations between aliments. There is the need for banana leafs, like in many other exotic cuisines: to prepare the chicken pollo pibil, or pork cochinita pibil, the meat is wrapped in a banana leaf and then cooked. Time is also a must when preparing a traditional Mexican meal and also, when making the Mexican coffee, which is left to rest for hours. Mexican dishes are served both cold and warm: the Coastal area, based on seafood, mostly has cold meals and in Central or southern Mexico, the bean based meals are served warm.
Pottery and special equipments differ in color and ornaments from one Mexican region to another. In Puebla, there are some traditional beautiful potteries named azulejos; these are blue and white colored with tiles. In Oaxaca, the regional equipment is represented by the artesania, which includes hand crafted wooden figures and black pottery San Bartolomeo de Coatepec. Bowls are very much used, especially due to the dips, sauces and salsas. These are decorated with flowers and olive green motifs. The Mexican traditional plates are made of lead glazed ceramic and they are almost never plain white, as food must be appealing, besides tasty. The consumers use regular cutlery, but many traditional Mexican meals are eaten with the bare hand, like nachos and tortilla chips, which are individually dipped in salsas. The steel processing craft is popular in Mexico and traditionally, every knife should be shaped by hand to get the finest and sharpest aspect.
In Mexico, people celebrate the dead ones in November in a celebration which is called Los Dias de los Muertos. The celebration refers especially to life and death and the spirits that return from the graves are served with ofertas, as altars are build and covered with food and decor. On Christmas, there is a party on Christmas morning, called posada. On this occasion, piñata is offered, which contain prizes and candy. The traditional Mexican meal at the Christmas dinner is the cod with cholli gravy, cranberry-chili sauce with mashed potatoes, buttered veggies and turkey soup. Punch is also served on Christmas day, especially punch with marshmallows.
On traditional Mexican weddings, Mexicans eat breakfast at the bride’s home and after the reception, pinole (sweetened cornmeal) or rice are thrown on the newlyweds to keep the evil spirits far. Other Mexican celebrations include El Grito de Independencia (Independence Day) with the biggest Mexican fiesta (party) and Cinco de Mayo (fifth of May), which celebrates the Mexican victory at Puebla, when confronting the French army; today the celebrations was embraced by USA, too and it symbolizes freedom and liberty, so Mexicans have great family feasts on this day. Among the most traditional meals served on these special days, there are the sweet tamales, usually served at the end of Mexican-themed feasts.
Music:
The music of Mexico is very diverse and features a wide range of musical genres and performance styles. It has been influenced by a variety of cultures, most notably the culture of the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Europe.
Corrido music is a popular narrative song of poetry form, a ballad. Various themes are featured in Mexican corridos, and corrido lyrics are often old legends (stories) and ballads about a famed criminal or hero in the rural frontier areas of Mexico. Some corridos may also be love stories there are also corridos about women (La Venganza de Maria, Laurita Garza, La tragedia de Rosita and la adelita) and couples, not just about men. Some even talk about fiction or a made-up story by the composer. Contemporary corridos written within the past few decades feature more modern themes such as drug trafficking (narcocorridos) and immigration.
Ethnic Racial Composition:
* 62% Mestizo
* 28% Amerindian
* 9% White
* 1% Black
People:
Mexico is ethnically diverse; with people of several ethnicities being united under a single national identity. The core part of Mexican national identity is formed on the basis of a synthesis of cultures, primarily European culture and indigenous cultures, in a process known as mestizaje. Mexican politicians and reformers such as José Vasconcelos (promoter of the cosmic race) and Manuel Gamio (promoter of indigenismo) were instrumental in building a Mexican national identity on the concept of mestizaje.
The large majority of Mexicans have historically been classified as "Mestizos". In modern Mexican usage, the term mestizo is primarily a cultural identity rather than the racial identity it was during the colonial era, resulting in individuals with varying phenotypes being classified under the same identity, regardless of whether they are of mixed ancestry or not. Since the term carries a variety of different socio-cultural, economic, racial and biological meanings, it was deemed too imprecise to be used for ethnic classification, thus it was abandoned by the government and is not in wide use in Mexican society, although it's often used in literature about Mexican social identities and on intellectual circles. In the Yucatán peninsula the word Mestizo has historically had a different meaning, being used to refer to the Maya-speaking populations living in traditional communities, because during the Caste War of the late 19th century those Maya who did not join the rebellion were classified as mestizos. In Chiapas the word "Ladino" is used instead of mestizo. According to Encyclopædia Britannica racially Mestizo Mexicans make up 50% to 67% of the country's population.
Languages:
Spanish is the official language of Mexico. Almost all of the Mexican population speaks Spanish, 99.3% according to the latest census; nonetheless around 5.4% still speaks an indigenous language besides Spanish. The indigenous languages with the most speakers are Nahuatl, spoken by approximately 1.45 million people, Yukatek Maya spoken by some 750,000 people and the Mixtec and Zapotec languages, each spoken by more than 400,000 people.
The National Institute of Indigenous Languages INALI recognizes 68 linguistic groups and some 364 different specific varieties of indigenous languages. Since the promulgation of the Law of Indigenous Linguistic Rights in 2003, these languages have had status as national languages, with equal validity with Spanish in all the areas and contexts in which they are spoken.
In addition to the indigenous languages, other minority languages are spoken by immigrant populations, such as the 80,000 German-speaking Mennonites in Mexico, and 5,000 speakers of the Chipilo dialect of the Venetian language spoken in Chipilo, Puebla.
Mexican Spanish stems largely from Andaluzian, Extremaduran, and Castillian Spanish with some influences from Indigenous languages native to Mexico. In some Coastal areas of Mexico there is some noticeable Canarian Spanish influences, especially in places like Veracruz where many Canarians settled during the colonial period. Mexican Spanish in general has a stronger Extremaduran Spanish influence out of any other Spanish variety of Spain.
Religion:
Catholic Christianity is the dominant religion in Mexico, representing about 82.7% of the total population as of 2010. In recent decades the number of Catholics has been declining, due to the growth of other Christian denominations – especially various Protestant churches and Mormonism – which now constitute 8% of the population, and non-Christian religions (1.9%). Conversion to non-Catholic denominations has been considerably slower than in Central America, and central Mexico remains one of the most Catholic areas in the world.
Mexico is a secular country and has allowed freedom of religion since the mid-19th century. Traditional Protestant denominations and the open practice of Judaism established themselves in the country during that era. Modern growth has been seen in Evangelical Protestantism, Mormonism and in folk religions, such as Mexicayotl. Buddhism and Islam have both made limited inroads through immigration and conversion.
Economy:
Mexico has the 15th largest nominal GDP and the 11th largest by purchasing power parity. GDP annual average growth for the period of 1995–2002 was 5.1%. Mexico's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in purchasing power parity (PPP) was estimated at US $2.2602 trillion in 2015, and $1.3673 trillion in nominal exchange rates. Mexico's GDP in PPP per capita was US $18,714.05. The World Bank reported in 2009 that the country's Gross National Income in market exchange rates was the second highest in Latin America, after Brazil at US $1,830.392 billion, which lead to the highest income per capita in the region at $15,311. Mexico is now firmly established as an upper middle-income country. After the slowdown of 2001 the country has recovered and has grown 4.2, 3.0 and 4.8 percent in 2004, 2005 and 2006, even though it is considered to be well below Mexico's potential growth. Furthermore, after the 2008–2009 recession, the economy grew an average of 3.32 percent per year from 2010 to 2014. About 43% of the population lives in poverty.
Sports:
The most popular sport in Mexico is soccer, followed by boxing. Baseball the most popular sport in the northwest and southeast regions, basketball, American football and bullfighting are also highly popular and appreciated.
Video:
Culture:
The culture of Mexico reflects the country's complex history and is the result of the gradual blending of native culture (particularly Mesoamerican) with Spanish culture and other immigrant cultures.
Cuisine:
Mexican meals consist mainly of sauces, stews and soups, and most recipes are prepared anywhere between a quick-fry to a slow roast. Mexico represents a melding of cultures: Spanish, French, Mediterranean influences are felt and combined into a mestizaje (mixing), as Mexicans defy their own cuisine. Almost every region has its own legends regarding food background. In Puebla, the legend says that some nuns were asked to prepare a dish for a dignitary visit. Because they were not sure what a stylish meal meant, the nuns innovated a mixture of herbs, chocolate and spices. This recipe is the base of mole, a thick sauce, used at the old royal feasts and highly popular nowadays.
The Mexican diet is based on some very specific aliments: beans, corn, tomatoes, chilies and exotic fruits. The most important aliment and the oldest one is the corn, as it has been consumed for over 4000 years. Corn is used for the famous tortillas, tacos, tamales and nachos and beans are prepared as kidney beans and fava (in soups or stews), served as refrito, or de la olla. The tomatoes are essential for the salsas and the dips, used for the fish meals or the beef ones. Chilies are used both dried and fresh and they are found in a wide range: chipotle, haberano, mulato, cascabel or serrano. The exotic fruits are used for garnishes, sauces or desserts: the coconuts, papayas, pineapples or bananas.
Corn, chilies, beans, tomatoes and fruit make up the Mexican diet. Corn is used for tortillas, which are usually used for tacos and tamales. Chilies, on the other hand, are used both fresh and dried. Mexicans prefer their food hot and flavorful thus, they use a variety of chilies in their dishes – jalapeno, serrano, guajillo, pasilla, ancho, poblano, habanero and mulato to name a few. Beans range from lentils to kidney beans and these are the usually used in many Mexican soups and stews. Of course, a truly Mexican salsa is never complete without tomatoes. Tomatoes, too, are used to make sauces for meat and fish dishes. Fresh mangoes, pineapples, papayas and coconuts are usually served for dessert. However, they are also used for sauces.
Long before Spain set foot on Mexican soil, corn was an important and revered crop by the Aztec Indians. It was the Aztec’s staple food and corn was eaten a number of ways – raw, roasted, boiled or made into corn meal. Tortilla, which comes from the Spanish word “torta” meaning “round cake”, was born when the Spanish brought grain with them and mixed it with corn. Similar to rice, corn tortillas are versatile – they can be eaten plain, with beans or meat, with sauces, and served hot or cold. Many Mexicans consider tortillas as an alternative to bread.
There are 4 main regions in Mexican, which provide different types of meals or variations of aroma, texture and flavor of traditional Mexican meals: Puebla, Oaxaca, Yucatan and Veracruz, but also, a more general division is: Central Mexico, Southern Mexico and the Pacific coast. Puebla is situated not far from Mexico City and its cuisine it’s represented by the mole sauce that covers chicken, camotes desserts with potatoes and many pastries. Oaxaca is famous for the Oaxaqueno mole that also contains bananas, for a sweeter flavor. Yucatan has many sauces with fruits, spread over chicken, (pollo pibil), or pork (cochinita pibil). In Veracruz, like on all the Pacific coast, the main dish is fish, like the fish dish a la Vareacruzana, which is topped with a local sauce, made of tomatoes, olives and chilies. The best assortments for the fish are the fruits, especially the exotic ones: memey, guanabana or cherimoya. Generally, in central Mexico, there is a mixture of Spanish and Aztec cuisines: nuts, different spices, cocoa and seeds are very much used. In the south, peppers are mostly used dry, especially in stews and toppings. The best sauce for the seafood, famous on the Pacific coast, is the achiote sauce, which is also added to chicken or pork.
he preparation of different local sauces, salsas and mixtures of spices and herbs requires time and technique. The technique refers to the cooking procedure: fresh or uncooked fruits, boiled veggies, mashed aliments for the dips, oil fried nachos and meat, chopped greens and cubed or minced meat. These are usually done separately, as the same meal includes a number of 3 or more cooking techniques, due to all the mixtures and combinations between aliments. There is the need for banana leafs, like in many other exotic cuisines: to prepare the chicken pollo pibil, or pork cochinita pibil, the meat is wrapped in a banana leaf and then cooked. Time is also a must when preparing a traditional Mexican meal and also, when making the Mexican coffee, which is left to rest for hours. Mexican dishes are served both cold and warm: the Coastal area, based on seafood, mostly has cold meals and in Central or southern Mexico, the bean based meals are served warm.
Pottery and special equipments differ in color and ornaments from one Mexican region to another. In Puebla, there are some traditional beautiful potteries named azulejos; these are blue and white colored with tiles. In Oaxaca, the regional equipment is represented by the artesania, which includes hand crafted wooden figures and black pottery San Bartolomeo de Coatepec. Bowls are very much used, especially due to the dips, sauces and salsas. These are decorated with flowers and olive green motifs. The Mexican traditional plates are made of lead glazed ceramic and they are almost never plain white, as food must be appealing, besides tasty. The consumers use regular cutlery, but many traditional Mexican meals are eaten with the bare hand, like nachos and tortilla chips, which are individually dipped in salsas. The steel processing craft is popular in Mexico and traditionally, every knife should be shaped by hand to get the finest and sharpest aspect.
In Mexico, people celebrate the dead ones in November in a celebration which is called Los Dias de los Muertos. The celebration refers especially to life and death and the spirits that return from the graves are served with ofertas, as altars are build and covered with food and decor. On Christmas, there is a party on Christmas morning, called posada. On this occasion, piñata is offered, which contain prizes and candy. The traditional Mexican meal at the Christmas dinner is the cod with cholli gravy, cranberry-chili sauce with mashed potatoes, buttered veggies and turkey soup. Punch is also served on Christmas day, especially punch with marshmallows.
On traditional Mexican weddings, Mexicans eat breakfast at the bride’s home and after the reception, pinole (sweetened cornmeal) or rice are thrown on the newlyweds to keep the evil spirits far. Other Mexican celebrations include El Grito de Independencia (Independence Day) with the biggest Mexican fiesta (party) and Cinco de Mayo (fifth of May), which celebrates the Mexican victory at Puebla, when confronting the French army; today the celebrations was embraced by USA, too and it symbolizes freedom and liberty, so Mexicans have great family feasts on this day. Among the most traditional meals served on these special days, there are the sweet tamales, usually served at the end of Mexican-themed feasts.
Music:
The music of Mexico is very diverse and features a wide range of musical genres and performance styles. It has been influenced by a variety of cultures, most notably the culture of the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Europe.
Corrido music is a popular narrative song of poetry form, a ballad. Various themes are featured in Mexican corridos, and corrido lyrics are often old legends (stories) and ballads about a famed criminal or hero in the rural frontier areas of Mexico. Some corridos may also be love stories there are also corridos about women (La Venganza de Maria, Laurita Garza, La tragedia de Rosita and la adelita) and couples, not just about men. Some even talk about fiction or a made-up story by the composer. Contemporary corridos written within the past few decades feature more modern themes such as drug trafficking (narcocorridos) and immigration.
Ethnic Racial Composition:
* 62% Mestizo
* 28% Amerindian
* 9% White
* 1% Black
People:
Mexico is ethnically diverse; with people of several ethnicities being united under a single national identity. The core part of Mexican national identity is formed on the basis of a synthesis of cultures, primarily European culture and indigenous cultures, in a process known as mestizaje. Mexican politicians and reformers such as José Vasconcelos (promoter of the cosmic race) and Manuel Gamio (promoter of indigenismo) were instrumental in building a Mexican national identity on the concept of mestizaje.
The large majority of Mexicans have historically been classified as "Mestizos". In modern Mexican usage, the term mestizo is primarily a cultural identity rather than the racial identity it was during the colonial era, resulting in individuals with varying phenotypes being classified under the same identity, regardless of whether they are of mixed ancestry or not. Since the term carries a variety of different socio-cultural, economic, racial and biological meanings, it was deemed too imprecise to be used for ethnic classification, thus it was abandoned by the government and is not in wide use in Mexican society, although it's often used in literature about Mexican social identities and on intellectual circles. In the Yucatán peninsula the word Mestizo has historically had a different meaning, being used to refer to the Maya-speaking populations living in traditional communities, because during the Caste War of the late 19th century those Maya who did not join the rebellion were classified as mestizos. In Chiapas the word "Ladino" is used instead of mestizo. According to Encyclopædia Britannica racially Mestizo Mexicans make up 50% to 67% of the country's population.
Languages:
Spanish is the official language of Mexico. Almost all of the Mexican population speaks Spanish, 99.3% according to the latest census; nonetheless around 5.4% still speaks an indigenous language besides Spanish. The indigenous languages with the most speakers are Nahuatl, spoken by approximately 1.45 million people, Yukatek Maya spoken by some 750,000 people and the Mixtec and Zapotec languages, each spoken by more than 400,000 people.
The National Institute of Indigenous Languages INALI recognizes 68 linguistic groups and some 364 different specific varieties of indigenous languages. Since the promulgation of the Law of Indigenous Linguistic Rights in 2003, these languages have had status as national languages, with equal validity with Spanish in all the areas and contexts in which they are spoken.
In addition to the indigenous languages, other minority languages are spoken by immigrant populations, such as the 80,000 German-speaking Mennonites in Mexico, and 5,000 speakers of the Chipilo dialect of the Venetian language spoken in Chipilo, Puebla.
Mexican Spanish stems largely from Andaluzian, Extremaduran, and Castillian Spanish with some influences from Indigenous languages native to Mexico. In some Coastal areas of Mexico there is some noticeable Canarian Spanish influences, especially in places like Veracruz where many Canarians settled during the colonial period. Mexican Spanish in general has a stronger Extremaduran Spanish influence out of any other Spanish variety of Spain.
Religion:
Catholic Christianity is the dominant religion in Mexico, representing about 82.7% of the total population as of 2010. In recent decades the number of Catholics has been declining, due to the growth of other Christian denominations – especially various Protestant churches and Mormonism – which now constitute 8% of the population, and non-Christian religions (1.9%). Conversion to non-Catholic denominations has been considerably slower than in Central America, and central Mexico remains one of the most Catholic areas in the world.
Mexico is a secular country and has allowed freedom of religion since the mid-19th century. Traditional Protestant denominations and the open practice of Judaism established themselves in the country during that era. Modern growth has been seen in Evangelical Protestantism, Mormonism and in folk religions, such as Mexicayotl. Buddhism and Islam have both made limited inroads through immigration and conversion.
Economy:
Mexico has the 15th largest nominal GDP and the 11th largest by purchasing power parity. GDP annual average growth for the period of 1995–2002 was 5.1%. Mexico's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in purchasing power parity (PPP) was estimated at US $2.2602 trillion in 2015, and $1.3673 trillion in nominal exchange rates. Mexico's GDP in PPP per capita was US $18,714.05. The World Bank reported in 2009 that the country's Gross National Income in market exchange rates was the second highest in Latin America, after Brazil at US $1,830.392 billion, which lead to the highest income per capita in the region at $15,311. Mexico is now firmly established as an upper middle-income country. After the slowdown of 2001 the country has recovered and has grown 4.2, 3.0 and 4.8 percent in 2004, 2005 and 2006, even though it is considered to be well below Mexico's potential growth. Furthermore, after the 2008–2009 recession, the economy grew an average of 3.32 percent per year from 2010 to 2014. About 43% of the population lives in poverty.
Sports:
The most popular sport in Mexico is soccer, followed by boxing. Baseball the most popular sport in the northwest and southeast regions, basketball, American football and bullfighting are also highly popular and appreciated.
Video: