Baseball, Doritos, and Giant Killer Moths:
John Hartz Invades Pancho Villa's Turf

By John Hartz
----------
January 1, 2000 | Page 1, 2

The moth was in my room. My sole haven in a hostile land had been invaded by a large—a frighteningly large—flying insect. ‘La mariposa muy grande’, as it is called in Mexico, presented an immediate threat, if not to life and limb, then at the very least to a sorely needed night’s rest. Combat seemed the only possible option. Being a skilled warrior in the art of hand-to-wing warfare, I turned to the most ancient and deadly weapon since Gutenberg—the rolled-up newspaper. The hunt had begun…

When this battle occurred I was living in the Mexican city of Oaxaca, the capital and largest city of Oaxaca state. Just one other state, infamous Chiapas, lies between Oaxaca and the Guatemalan border. When ‘la mariposa’ and I first crossed paths, I had been in Mexico for about three weeks. During that time, and throughout the rest of my stay in Mexico, one thing in particular colored my perception of the country more than any other: Salsa Verde Doritos. Apparently, these now also exist in the United States, but at the time I had never encountered Salsa Verde Doritos, and their impact upon me was immense.

For the uninitiated, Doritos, the intensely flavorful and conveniently packaged bite-sized snack chips, originated in the U.S. as a lame rip-off of authentic Mexican nachos. Judged against their venerable predecessors, Doritos in general fall far short; but, when considered against other foods in their league (that league being the highly processed, chock-full of sodium and preservatives league) Doritos approach the pinnacle of quality. With the slimy tentacles of American consumerism having worked their way, ringworm-like, beneath of skin of every national culture on earth, it was not surprising that Doritos had surfaced in Mexico, occupying their familiar eye-level location in every market and corner store I’d seen. Yet Mexicans, to their everlasting credit, were not satisfied with trite American flavors. Hence, Salsa Verde Doritos.

The entire point of Salsa Verde Doritos is that Americans cannot handle them, or so I thought at the time. Taco Bell has succeeded in Americanizing and bland-ifying Mexican food, not to mention having co-opted Third World socialist revolution in one of the most bizarrely effective advertising campaigns in history. But Salsa Verde Doritos are the just the opposite—a Mexicanized version of a classic American junk food staple which, of course, has its roots firmly planted south of the Rio Grande. Is this what they had in mind when NAFTA passed?

My experience in Oaxaca was eventful beyond the discovery of new snack frontiers. I managed to delve deeply into the culture of the state, not least by attending Game 4 of the Mexican Baseball Championships. The Guerreros of Oaxaca were taking on Monclova for the title. A friend and I purchased tickets on the day of the game from a ‘revendedore’ (scalper) and we took our seats at 5:30 for a 7:30 start. This was a good idea since in Oaxaca, there was no assigned seating. Like many other aspects of Mexican society, there existed an underlying order in the apparent disorder of the stadium. With empty Corona bottles and folded-up newspapers, seats had been claimed long before we had even arrived. Unlike the attitude of Mexicans toward places in line—that is to say, places are to be dogmatically disregarded—these seating claims were scrupulously respected.

Page 1, 2