Venezuela’s Nutrition Facts Label

On November 8, 1990, George H.W. Bush signed into law the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act that mandated, from then on, for every single nutritional product sold in the United States to have a label specifying the amounts of certain nutrients present in sold food produce. Ever since this historical act was passed, most food products available in the Western hemisphere contain some sort of label explaining what is what in our food, making possible a quantitative understanding of our diets.

It is quite commonly understood that food cannot be solely described in kilocalories or mineral amounts. I hate broccoli with a passion that no number could ever describe, but I also love chocolate to an equally unfathomable degree. Numbers might say that Monster Energy cans have 160 mg of caffeine, but there is very likely not enough data available to the public about how many exams have been passed solely thanks to their effects. Trust me on that one.

Food is more than the nutrients it has. Food is the weaving fabric of our cultures, the tie that holds nations together and one of those things we long the most when we are away from where we come from. Wondering about this while I enjoyed a cachapa, one of the beloved maize products of Venezuelan gastronomy, after ten months away from home, I started to think how could I describe the complex mess of a country I come from solely through food.

When Bush signed the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Louis W. Sullivan magnanimously stated that “The Tower of Babel in food labels has come down”. Let me only hope that this Nutrition Facts Label will help slowly tear down the Babel’s Towers currently trying to create an understanding of what Venezuela is.

If such a mission could ever be accomplished.

Nutrition Facts — Venezuela

Arepa -or disputes and showbiz-

If you have ever met any self-respecting Venezuelan, it is not a likelihood that you have heard about arepas: it is an absolute certainty. Although the dispute with Colombia over its ownership is our most meaningful ongoing international trouble -including the claims held over the Essequibo-, arepas occupy an undoubtedly important place in our national identity. It is, indeed, the only national dish of ours that has made a meaningful international breakthrough, appearing several times in media of the likes of the New York Times or the BBC.

This popularity makes up for a pivotal, if unfortunate, feature of what Venezuela’s society is like: showbiz. As a whole, it could be argued that we don’t love, live or laugh for anything with as much intensity as we do for showbiz. It is so deeply engrained within our societal DNA that the Spanish word for it, farándula, is used in our dialect as an adverb, an adjective and a noun.

As far as Venezuelan Spanish goes, you can do more than read showbiz: you can embody it yourself. And this is, perhaps, we voted for 15 years for a candidate whose main political merit was having an affair with Courtney Love.

Tequeños, the industrial life

In this entry, I sin of bias. And how could I not? Tequeños, a dish composed fried breaded cheese sticks, are pretty much the only noteworthy thing of my hometown of Los Teques, the city where they were created “a block away from where the plaque about it is”, if you are to ask my dad or any of his bakery-enthusiast friends.

Los Teques is a relatively small suburb located some 25 kilometers southwest of Caracas, the country’s capital. Although its origins date back to colonial times, the main reason of the post-1900 growth that shaped the city the way it is now is its strategic location close enough to the highly centralized capital for workers to commute there every day but not too close as to be affected by decentralization policies of the few democracies that managed to seize power during the 20th century.

As such, Los Teques is a coincidence, and so are Tequeños: the legend says that they were created out of dough leftovers from dishes prepared by the handmaids of one of the wealthiest families in the town. And, to some extent, this is the history of Venezuela. The reason of many of our sufferings and successes.

We are one of the most urbanized countries of Latin America solely because we happened to discover the largest oil reserves in the world in an age where everyone was craving for it. We are named Venezuela solely because the first sailors to spot the country were Italian and were reminded of the Venetian channels by the indigenous architecture of the particular zone of the country they sailed to. We are a coincidence.

Sex and giggles, or just cachapas

One of the main rendezvous I had with my strong Venezuelan Spanish while speaking to fellow Spanish speakers was when I tried to explain the word cachapera, which is a slang term for a homosexual woman derived from cachapa, a kind of maize tortilla usually eaten with cheese. The metaphor arises, presumably, from an analogy someone made between the cooking process of cachapas and sexual acts between women.

And, of course, we would turn it into a day-to-day term because there are few things we love more than dirty jokes. I was making dirty jokes way before I knew what made them dirty, and we have chinazo, a term describing that moment of nationalist harmony when someone makes an inadvertently sexual claim and everyone around exclaims “aaaay”, even if the association is extremely vague.

The term for cachapa is also associated with the popular expression cachapear el hierro, which is an extremely specific idiom used to employ the act of getting with a close acquaintance’s significant other. For our culture, sex and relationships are everywhere, and our vocabulary and customs are deeply shaped by it.

Yet, lo and behold if someone dares to implement mandatory sexual education as part of our national curriculum. Venezuelan sex is only interesting and funny as long as it remains forbidden and taboo.

Our diversity: pabellón

I am Spanish. I am Lebanese. I am Portuguese. But, above all, I am Venezuelan. The extreme levels of racial diversity in my country made it quite unseemly for me to ever identify as anything but Venezuelan, even though both my parents are descendants of migrants and my lineage has never stayed in a single country for more than one generation. And pabellón (Spanish for pavilion), a dish composed uniquely of other dishes, reflects this in such a sharp way that the association feels too cheap to be true.

Composed primarily out of rice, black beans and shredded meat, some versions add eggs, avocados, plantain and whatever the chef feels like to it. Like some sort of tropical Theseus ship, each and every single one of its components might be modified and a pabellón will not stop being one as long as it stays composite and diverse.

There is no such thing as an ethnically Venezuelan person. The seven Miss Universe winners that we pride ourselves on are definitely not true representatives of the average phenotype of the country, but they are as Venezuelan as any other person because the only thing that ties us ethnically is this almost deliberate melting pot.

My Portuguese grandmother came to the country under the bleakest conditions in 1960, when Portugal was traversing through its darkest times under the fascist Estado Novo and it was not even considered a Western country. She never faced any kind of ethnic discrimination until chavismo, our current regime, came to power and claimed to “protect diversity”.

Mondongo. Or the thing that only insane people like.

And, at last, we arrive to that dish most people claim they dislike yet, somehow, it still seems to be popular. This diced tripe takes about six hours to cook and ends up in a disgusting soup that is almost impossible to swallow, just like some political realities my country is currently facing.

Venezuela is currently going through its harshest moment in history, but I do not have the courage nor the standing to write extensively about it because, after all, my family is still in the country. We are a culture with amazing traits and enviable qualities found nowhere else, but our current state is far away from how an arepa tastes and the political panorama is basically mondongo: hopelessly awful.

But some still like it.