CounterPunch by SUSAN DAVIS

Here's Marion Cunningham, author of the new Fanny Farmer Cookbook, telling a novice how to cut up an onion:

"Using a paring knife, slice off the fuzzy brownish root end and the stem top... Peel off the papery outer brownish yellow skin of the onion with your fingers or a knife... cut the onion half from stem top to root end. Put the onion halves cut side down on a cutting board. Cut slices crosswise from each half... As you slice, curl under the fingers of your hand holding the onion, so that you don't cut yourself," and so on, until the onion is reduced to perfect dice.

This description is for someone who has never seen an onion except in its freeze-dried or frozen package form. Cunningham assumes no previous knowledge of chopping. But she does take for granted that the would-be cook has hands that work well enough to undertake this basic process.

Some of us don't. If Mrs. Cunningham wrote instructions relevant to me, they might go like this: "See if you can grasp the slippery sphere well enough to hold it steady against a flat hard surface. With your other hand try to grasp the handle of a knife firmly so that you can press it down where you want to cut. Recruit enough force in your arm to break through the onion's skin. If this hurts, or you lose your grip and the onion bounces across the floor, ask someone else to cut it for you."

I've lost enough of the use of my hands that washing dishes, making beds and folding laundry are temporarily out of the question. Cook book reading has become a cruel joke. For a while my husband tried to take my chores up with his own, but it became a huge strain, and by this winter we admitted we needed help with the basics. Since there are four of us to feed on a daily basis, and since Dan hates cooking, we also needed someone who could get dinner on the table.

I resisted hiring someone for a long time, largely because of the cooking issue. In my panic over finding myself out of commission, it seemed to me that being able to put healthy home-cooked food on the table for my family defined me as a creative woman and loving mother. When my ability to cook left, it felt like my femininity had walked along with it. Holidays like Thanksgiving, with their big meals and intensive hand labor were especially hard. I felt disconnected from family traditions that I at least hoped I remembered. One late November afternoon I sobbed over an unmade pie, while my family groused "why don't we just buy one?"

But wait a minute. Was I hallucinating? What tradition was I trying to pass on? My mother could pull off some excellent potato salads and coleslaws that she'd learned from her Pennsylvania German aunts in Allentown. But usually she was a tentative and intimidated cook, for whom a grilled lamb chop was a big production. Her parties were ordeals of stuffed tomatoes, overcooked broccoli and casseroles that never quite turned out. To be fair to her, by the time I was old enough to notice, she was exhausted from working full-time and putting three squares on the table, 365 days a year. Her sister, my aunt Esther, was a truly awful cook, given to pouring spontaneous "mixtures" of prepackaged seasonings and fruit preserves over perfectly good pot roasts. Their own mother approached cooking in the same harassed and anxious way, one nervous hand on the Bisquik box, the other with a can opener. To be fair to Grandma, she grew up an orphan, shuttled from family to family. So where did I get the notion that kitchen wizardry ran in the distaff side of my family? The real feminine tradition in our family was fear of the stove.

Actually, I learned to cook by watching my father. Dad was most at home outdoors, and he usually spent summer evenings over a Dutch oven baking sourdough biscuits. Cooking reminded him of his teenage summers in a sheep camp in Wyoming, the coffee boiled with egg shells, the lamb fries. Occasionally he would dig a deep trench in the back lawn to hold a nostalgic grilling fire. My father was a spontaneous cook. He had his own rules like "keep your cast-iron greasy," "a little of this, a little of that," "taste as you go along," and he always made sure to have a shot of bourbon on the side. Every August he drove all the way to New Jersey to get just the right fruit for his peach marmalade.

If I learned to cook and love food by hanging out with my dad, why is the command to be a good cook connected to being a good woman? It turns out that the sense that women ought to feel creative and inspired by cooking is relatively new. Ann Mendelson's wonderful book, Stand Facing the Stove, the story of America's most widely-used kitchen guide, The Joy of Cooking, shows us how our feelings about cooking have changed over the last hundred years and more. According to Mendelson, how we feel about what goes on the table has been driven at least as much by the food processing industry, food writers and food fashionistas, as by changes in women's work and household size. In the 19th century, a good woman spent much more time worrying about her children's immortal souls than she did about their digestive tracts. Marketing gimmicks, nutritional bullying and expert pronouncements changed all that.

For most of human history, cooking was taught by observation and touch in a group effort that took younger women, daughters and servants, through thousands of different tasks. They learned by doing how it should smell, feel, and taste. Up until about the 1880s, most cookbooks were collated sketches of how to cook something. But women of my grandmother's generation, born 15 years before the turn of the 20th century, were already disconnected from what Mendelson calls the collegial cookery of the big open kitchen. They began to need specific reminders, and eventually, detailed instructions. A huge market in how-to books opened up.

And at the same time, the American diet changed with the industrialization of food production. From quite early in the 20th century the mass marketing of canned soups, factory baked bread, and tinned meats helped sever city dwellers from much of the direct contact they had had with local food sources. Although this loss is widely lamented by foodies today, it was celebrated then --- who wouldn't celebrate being liberated by can opener and cellophane bag from bending over a hot wood range all day?

"Home cooked meals" became more and more assemblages of mass-produced parts, and the food industry vigorously promoted new food fashions that would highlight their wares. The first editions of The Joy of Cooking, published in the late 1930s, are filled with recipes that combine processed foods into novel dishes. Only later, by mid-century, did the emphasis on making it from scratch reemerge, but this time as a status symbol, a sign of discernment and taste pushed by a vanguard of food experts. First, James Beard, then Gourmet Magazine, then Julia Child, then the Rodales and your full-time organic gardeners and home bread bakers, and onward through the years, until we have Alice Waters instructing us to spend days brewing beef stock before we can even began braising the short ribs. This way lies madness, at least for the working family.

But it was Mrs. Irma Rombauer, author of The Joy of Cooking, who began the public argument that a warm and loving woman cooks well and finds it fun. In the old days, at least, we were allowed to admit that it can be drudgery. Although much of our culture claims to believe that home cooking is a joy, hardly anybody is following through. The fastest growing segment of the grocery industry is "home meal replacements," preprepared food clusters that can be sent straight from the car to the table. Just look around your supermarket and see how much space the deli takes up.

The power of the homemade fantasy was brought home to me forcefully when I tried to hire a cook. Somewhere out there, I felt sure, was a woman who was in touch with a wonderful tradition of home cookery. She would waltz into my kitchen, recipes in her head, and take over, relieve me of my guilt, silence the sullen "I won't eat thats", and up my family's vitamin intake all at the same time. She would be my own private Martha Stewart without all the SEC complications. She'd be able to negotiate the chasm between the Midwest's pallid winter produce and all the eye-catching aisles of grab-it-and-go dinners. She'd even make me a sweet potato pie.

Of course, this miracle woman was nothing more than a food fantasy, although it took me long enough to figure that out. It wasn't hard to find someone who said they could cook, but after a while, discounting for flat-out lying, I began to wonder what they understood by the verb "to cook." Usually, I began to suspect, it meant pouring boiling water over Top Ramen. After generations of processed convenience foods and full-time work for women, what else could it mean?

18-year-old Brittany from Decatur could whip through the laundry, make up the beds and tidy the house within an inch of its life. But she was stumped when I presented her with a roasting chicken.

"You just reach in and pull out the giblets..." I instructed. "What are giblets?"

"Just good stuff they package with the chicken, along with the neck..."

"Neck? Ick. I have to stick my hand in there?" I felt like telling her that one hundred years ago beheading the chicken would have been in the job description.

After a few weeks of scenes like this, I thought I could trust her to make a simple dinner of salad, chicken and rice. I bolstered her with Mrs. Cunningham's beginner's book and confidently went off to teach my evening class. When I got home my husband reported "The chicken was raw inside, and she doesn't know how to cook rice. How can someone not know how to cook rice?" I could explain it to you, but it would take a while. It's taken at least 100 years to produce people incapable of telling when plain rice is done. "I'll work with her," I said desperately.

A few weeks later Brittany informed us that the job just wasn't what she was looking for right now. Maybe we weren't paying enough (unlikely), maybe "housekeeper -- nanny" didn't look good on her resume (in this economy?), but I think she didn't like being asked to cook.

Over the next few weeks, we met a lot of potential cooks and even interviewed a professional chef, but she was far too expensive. Then I met my next fantasy, an immigrant from Venezuela. Elda is cheery and warm and was looking for something better than cleaning the hospital cafeteria. I figured if she is from Venezuela, maybe she is closer to older ways of cooking. I began to dream of unnamed stews, fat little masa harina snacks for the kids, fried plantains, the kitchen steaming away while I work placidly in my study.

Elda, too, is fully a match for our baffling masses of papers, clothing, and Lego blocks. She likes the kids and she even likes our rude dog. But our cooking experiments wake me up to the global realities of eating. It turns out that before coming to the U.S., she and her husband ran a tienda, so she knows how to shop. But there's no equivalent of the local Mercado. The best plantains are found at the big box superstore on the edge of town. Venezuelan-type masa can be gotten at the World Market chain. Seasonings sometimes, not always, are found at a Middle Eastern specialty importer. All this adds up to one elaborate schlep in search of Venezuelan authenticity. And some things just don't translate. U.S. grown cilantro is hopeless, it tastes like soap. And like everyone else in the world, Elda thinks the way to solve these problems is to reach for a modern, salty American-style seasoning mix.

To keep hypertension at bay, I decide we should try making a few things together from scratch. I have a block of very good Vermont cheddar in the refrigerator, so I suggest we make macaroni and cheese. "Claro!" perks Elda. "My daughter loves it. She makes it from the box all the time." This isn't the box kind, I explain, it's better. We work our way through it, and I can tell Elda is a real cook. She knows how to keep an eye on the burner so the flour and butter don't scorch; her sense of timing won't let her turn away from the stove when the melting cheese needs to be watched closely. She knows the difference between boiling and simmering. Her mother made her learn so that she could please a husband, of course. "This is great," says Elda, "I am really learning to cook American food." There are a few hilarious mistakes, like when she dices up raw rhubarb and puts it in the salad. Rhubarb apparently has no Venezuelan equivalent. But overall, she's becoming a good American cook, The Joy of Cooking at her right hand.

Music enchants Elda, "me encanta!," so I find myself practicing my Spanish by giving her a lecture on the Carter family. They were very famous, very beloved, part of the history of American music. We listen to June Carter and I play "Banks of the River Jordan" for her. I didn't imagine myself running a cooking and country music tutorial, but the laundry's getting done, the closets are clean and the dishwasher is humming. My Spanish is getting better fast. Dame cinco, Elda.

Susan Davis teaches at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She is the author of Spectacular Nature.

She can be reached at sgdavis@uiuc.edu

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Friday, May 30, 2003 By: Jose Gregorio Pineda & Jose Gabriel Angarita

VenAmCham's Jose Gregorio Pineda (chief economist) and Jose Gabriel Angarita (economist) write: According to official figures issued by the National Institute of Statistics, the unemployment rate came to 19.8%, meaning 2.3 million of the approximately 12 million members of the country's labor force are out of work. The figure for the first quarter of last year was 15.1%, meaning that another 640,000 people have lost their jobs during the period. February's unemployment rate was 20.7%, but that has not brought much of a reduction in absolute numbers, given the expectations for the rest of the year.

However, some institutions like the Venezuelan Workers' Confederation (CTV) insist that the INE's statistics are skewed, and underestimate the number of people out of work. The labor movement calculates a 25% unemployment rate, with about 3 million people jobless.

Our estimates put the unemployment rate in the neighborhood of 25% as of the end of this year. The projected upward trend is based on the enormous contraction of the Venezuelan economy, which will undoubtedly continue through the end of the year, though to a lesser extent than in the first quarter.

The year-end unemployment rate will depend on the government's ability to take measures that enhance confidence among the economic agents, and to relax the foreign exchange restriction under which the economy is laboring, so that companies will be in a position to create new jobs, and hence, improve the Venezuelan people's deeply depressed standard of living.

Friday, May 30, 2003 · Last updated 7:33 p.m. PT <a href=seattlepi.nwsource.com>THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico will keep evaluating oil market conditions before making any decision to change its crude oil export levels, the country's energy department said Friday.

Mexico raised its exports to 1.88 million barrels per day beginning in February as concerns about Iraqi crude supplies and a strike in Venezuela caused world prices to soar.

When the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed last month that it would cut output in June, Mexico deferred a decision, saying it would wait to see market conditions at the time. Mexico isn't a member of OPEC, but has cooperated with the group on supply levels in recent years.

"The expectation of low growth in the main world economies, as well as the renewal of oil activity in Iraq, are elements that will impact, without any doubt, international oil market fundamentals," the energy department said.

The department said Mexico will monitor closely the results of the June 11 meeting of OPEC ministers, to which Mexico has been invited as an observer.

State oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, produces around 3.3 million barrels a day of crude oil. Of total exports, about four-fifths of that go to the United States.

The Kansan Esther Bohn Groves

A pastor in Colombia, Latin America, heard gunshots. Looking out his window, he saw three paramilitary men walking away as a man shot in both legs dragged himself to the pastor's door and scratched on it.

If he opened the door to help, he and the wounded man would both be killed. As he agonized, two of the paramilitaries returned in a taxi, dragged the shooting victim into it, and went off. A local policeman came to the door and asked about the gunshots. The pastor replied someone had been shot and taken away. Then the three paramilitary men returned with the taxi and took the policeman away.

Elsewhere, a youth discovered two brothers and a friend had been tortured, killed and dismembered. The family tried to bury remains, but a helicopter above them began shooting, and they ran for their lives. Warned they had 15 days to leave home or be killed, they fled, and with help from aid organizations, settled in a community for the displaced. But in the tin-roofed, whitewashed church there, two armed men shot a Sunday-school teacher dead in front of the children.

These incidents are only a few describing violence in war-torn Colombia, said Steve Ratzlaff, of Lincoln, Neb. He visited the country on a learning tour sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee and told about it recently at the MCC warehouse in North Newton. The tour's purpose, he said, was to learn about causes of violence in Colombia and how the United States is involved, and to extend moral support to churches and peace-and-justice advocates there.

With intimidation, assassination, kidnapping and disappearances, the guerrillas, paramilitaries (mercenaries hired by the wealthy to protect their land and responsible for 70 percent of political assassinations), and state army terrorize people. Ratzlaff reported 33,000 persons were killed last year, and 1,000 flee their homes every day. Colombia is first in assassinated labor leaders, first in kidnappings, second to Russia in assassinated journalists and second to Sudan in number of refugees. As a Colombian said, "Sadness is a part of who we are."

Ratzlaff said coca production for the drug trade finances guerrilla and paramilitary operations, while the state army has government money and receives $1.3 million a day from the U.S. through Plan Colombia, much of it used for military support, most of the rest for aerial spraying of coca fields to wipe them out and a small amount to ease rampant hunger and social suffering. But his tour group learned coca field fumigation often harms regular crops and, contrary to U.S. claims, may make land unusable for agriculture for years.

Why is our country so involved in Colombia? It's not just the drug trade, the Americans were told. "Most Colombians told us that they thought oil was the ultimate aim. Colombia sits on large oil reserves," Ratzlaff said. Neighboring Venezuela has huge oil reserves, and U.S. policy is to keep an eye on them and to subsidize security of U.S. oil corporations in the two countries.

Four percent of property owners in Colombia own 62 percent of the land and are taking more, he said. "The rich own the press, the soft drink companies, the oil companies, almost any major enterprise." It disturbs him that the U.S. enables this, and that the U.S. is the biggest weapons-maker and gun-runner in the world. "We cannot continue to increase spending on the military and cut taxes. It will prove to be our economic ruin," he believes.

Yet within catastrophe in Colombia is a miracle, Ratzlaff said. "Churches are strong; without them there would be much more death, and there certainly would be less hope. Despite the fact that pastors can be killed for assisting the poor and displaced, they continue to reach out to those who are hurting." At a Colombian "sister church" to Hyde Park Mennonite Church, Boise, Idaho, children greeted his tour group, holding poster hearts that spelled out, "Brothers & sisters, we love you," followed by singing and a meal. Nearly 300 jammed a Catholic cathedral to worship, Ratzlaff said -- "an exhilarating moment of God in the midst of despair and hopelessness. It didn't solve the problem, but it gave us hope that eventually the God of history would prevail."

Father Jorge told them, "One day, hopefully, the good people of the world will work together for peace in the world so that the evil people can't make war."

Esther Bohn Groves writes occasionally for the Kansan. She lives in North Newton.

Colombia's Carrasquilla to Hold Course on Economic Policy As Uribe Quits

Mexican Peso Plunges on Interest Rate Speculation; Brazilian Real Declines

Airbus May Win $800 Million Mexicana Air Order for 20 Planes, People Say

May 30 (<a href=quote.bloomberg.com>Bloomberg) -- Mexican stocks gained for a third day in four, led by America Movil SA, on optimism that strong demand for cellular services in Mexico will help Latin America's largest mobile phone company boost profit this year.

Mexico's Bolsa index rose 51.47, or 0.8 percent, to 6699.18, finishing the week with a gain of 1.7 percent. Brazil's Bovespa index of the most-traded stocks on the Sao Paulo stock exchange climbed 0.1 percent to 13,421.60, ending the week 2.1 percent higher. Venezuela's main stock index jumped for a 12th day, rising 4.1 percent to 12,779.62 and closing the week with a 30 percent rise, the biggest since at least 1994.

Shares of America Movil gained as investors expect the Mexican cellular market, the company's main source of income, will continue to expand at a faster rate than fixed-line services, helping the company's profit climb.

We like the dynamics of the cellular market in Mexico, particularly in comparison to the staggering conditions in the fixed-line market,'' said Robert Hulme, who manages about $29 million in Latin American equities at DNB Asset Management in London. People have been surprised about the resilience for demand in the cellular market.''

Other Markets

In other markets, the main indexes in Chile, Colombia and Peru were little changed, while Argentine shares gained. Colombia's IGBC Index of most traded shares finished the week 7.7 percent higher, posting the biggest weekly gain since Jan. 10.

The following stocks had significant gains or losses in Latin American markets today. Symbols are in parentheses after the company name. In Brazil the preferred share is usually the company's most-traded class of stock.

Mexico

America Movil (AMXL MM) gained 16 centavos, or 1.7 percent, to 9.45 pesos. The shares have gained 26 percent this year.

Grupo Mexico SA (GMEXICOB MM), the world's third-largest copper miner, gained for a fourth day, rising 70 centavos, or 4.7 percent, to 15.55 pesos. Copper futures for July delivery gained 1.3 percent to 78.25 cents per pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Industrias Penoles SA (PE&OLES* MM), the world's largest silver producer, gained 82 centavos, or 4.6 percent, to 18.5 pesos.

TV Azteca SA (TVAZTCPO MM), Mexico's second-largest broadcaster, gained 4 centavos, or 1 percent, to 3.91 pesos. The stock has gained 25 percent since April 1. TV Azteca impressed the market with its recent rally,'' Carlos Perezalonso, an analyst at Grupo Financiero BBVA-Bancomer SA, wrote in a research note. We see positive developments on most operating issues.''

Brazil

Banco Itau SA (ITAU4 BS), the country's second-largest private bank, fell 6.01 reais, or 2.9 percent, to 200 reais, on concern a possible interest rate cut would reduce banks' profit.

Embratel Participacoes SA (EBTP4 BS), Brazil's largest long- distance operator, rose 10 centavos, or 1.8 percent, to 5.69 reais, adding to a 6.3 percent gain yesterday.

Telesp Celular Participacoes SA (TSPP4 BS), the country's largest wireless phone company, rose 5 centavos, or 1.1 percent, to 4.74 reais. We see attractive valuations in the Brazilian cellular companies as good operating performance continues,'' Vera Rossi, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, said in a report. Industry consolidation and reduction in country risk are the major catalysts, we believe, for stock performance.''

Argentina

Acindar Industria Argentina de Aceros (ACIN AR), Argentina's biggest maker of steel rods, rose 3 centavos, or 1.3 percent, to 2.31 pesos, tripling its price so far this year. The company will buy back $40 million worth of dollar-denominated debt as part of its debt restructuring. Acindar will pay $26 million in cash for the 11.25 percent bond due 2004 and ``certain'' of its dollar- denominated debt after holders accepted $650 per $1,000 of principal, the company said in a statement.

Banco Bansud SA (BSUD AR), rose 1 centavo, or 0.6 percent, to 1.66 pesos. Argentina's central bank lowered the minimum capital requirements for private banks and raised them for public banks, El Cronista reported, citing a central bank statement. The central bank said private banks will need to have 8 percent of their assets backed by their own capital, down from 11 percent, Cronista said.

Colombia

Banco de Bogota SA (BOGOTA CB), flagship of the largest banking group, declined 100, or 1.3 percent, to 7900. The stock has gained 64 percent in the last 12 months.

Almacenes Exito SA (EXITO CB), Colombia's largest retail group, declined 100, or 2.9 percent, to 3400, following yesterday's 8.5 percent gain.

Peru

Nonvoting shares of UCP Backus & Johnston SA (BJ PE), Peru's largest brewer, rose 3 centimos, or 2.2 percent, to 1.39 soles, recovering from losses earlier in the week after protesters seeking higher wages and lower taxes blocked highways all across Peru. The army reopened roads two days ago after President Alejandro Toledo declared a state of emergency.

Edegel SA (EDE PE), Peru's biggest privately owned electricity generator, rose 5 centimos, or 4.6 percent, to 1.15 soles, near a six-year high. The stock gained for a third day. Spain's Endesa SA (ELE SM) owns the company.

Venezuela

Mercantil Servicios Financieros CA (MVZ/A VC), holding company for Venezuela's largest bank, surged 200 bolivars, or 11 percent, to 2000 bolivars. The company said earlier this month first-quarter profit soared 53 percent. Shares have risen 52 percent since May 20.

CA Electricidad de Caracas (EDC VC), a subsidiary of AES Corp. and Venezuela's largest publicly-traded power company, climbed 8 bolivars, or 4.3 percent, to 193 bolivars. The company said earlier this month its first-quarter loss narrowed on operating cost cuts. The shares have risen 61 percent since May 19.