Posts tagged Spanish Conquerors
Mexico City – General Information
Oct 11th
Mexico City is the capital and most populous city in Mexico. It is the most populated city in America. It is located in the center of the country, in the Valley of Mexico, a plateau at an altitude of 2250 meters. It is surrounded by peaks that extend more than 5000 meters above sea level.
It is often referred to as official Distrito Federal (DF, Federal District) to avoid confusion with the country or the State of Mexico. Founded in 1325 by Mexicas (Aztecs), the city of Tenochtitlan Precolumbian was completely destroyed by Spanish conquerors in the early sixteenth century. Today Mexico City has become one of the most densely populated cities in the world with an estimated population of around 20 million people. This places Mexico City third in the world behind Tokyo and New York. It is also the second most populated urban area in the world after Tokyo. Political, economic and cultural development of Mexico, has made it into one of the most dynamic cities in Latin America. Mexico City still faces the problems of many other megacities such as population explosion, saturation channels of communication, crime and corruption.
Air pollution is one of the many problems that the authorities of the Mexican capital face. This pollution is the result of intense traffic – there are 4 million cars, 27,000 microbuses, 92,000 taxis which consumes about 14 million gallons of gasoline every day. Urban sprawl and the construction of new highways over the past thirty years have helped the increase use of cars in Mexico. The rapid growth of manufacturing plants and industries from abroad who have plants in Mexico for cheap labor have also added to the local pollution problem.
The Food of Nicaragua and Its Main Characteristics
Sep 18th
Nicaragua’s cuisine has a very interesting background. When the Spanish came, they found out that the Creole had a cooking culture already, had interesting dishes of their own, and had learned to prepare corn in almost any way one can think of.
Creoles and Garifunas had been living there long enough as to have a very rich cooking tradition. Later on it mixed with the Spanish cuisine, making thus a very interesting product. Nicaraguans eat some dishes that to other countries may seem strange, as they eat turtle eggs, boas, and some other species going to extinction. They also prepare from the cow almost all parts of it, including brains, bull’s testicles, skin and even the blood. But after a foreigner tries these dishes out, he will be amazed of how good they are.
The Nicaraguan cuisine includes many kinds of fruits and vegetables they grow, being a tropical country, and which have beautiful colors and tastes. But what really belongs to the Nicaraguan cuisine is the corn, in all its forms. This is the inheritance received from the Creoles and the Garifunas. And though most countries in Central America use widely corn, Nicaraguans make a treaty every day with it! Drinks, snacks, main dishes…..
The Spanish conquerors during the colonial times brought their own recipes, and the mixing of them with the regional ones in Nicaragua was of course natural and in that way was founded the Nicaraguan cuisine, rich, strange, and very good!
The different fruits Nicaragua has are absolutely unique and probably not found anywhere else. Herbs grown there as well as roots are different in size, color and taste to those from any other country. All this is what makes Nicaraguan cuisine so good and different. But always, delicious and different!
One must try out these dishes, learn about the Nicaraguan culture, see how both things go so close together. The mixing of recipes, of condiments and tastes and colors come from very old days, yet the freshness and color of those dishes will make you love them right away.
Nicaragua has a treasure in its dishes, in the way they prepare their vegetables, their meats, and it’s not possible not to love them forever after you tried them out!
