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Related Pieces
Piece Description
When Americans debate how to regulate the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans crossing the border to work in the US each year, they sometimes forget the toll migration takes back home. That toll is especially high in rural areas, where families are divided, villages are deserted and cherished traditions are gradually slipping away. But in the tiny pueblo of Zoochila, in Mexico's southeast Sierra, a group of would-be entrepreneurs is brewing up a reason to keep their friends and neighbors from leaving. "The idea is to create a source of work so that people don't have to go," explains Francisco Siguenza, the pueblo's volunteer treasurer. Instead of exporting workers to America, Siguenza and about 20 other Zoochilan men hope to send thousands of bottles of top-quality, hand-made mezcal-- a fiery local liquor made from the spiky maguey plant.
Broadcast History
Aired 04/21/04 on NPR's All Things Considered
Timing and Cues
INTRO: Every year millions of people leave their homes for jobs overseas. The money they send back is one of the biggest sources of foreign capital for the world's poorest countries. But some people in those countries are turning to the global economy for ways to stay put. That's the dream of an enterprising group of townsfolk in Zoochila, in the mountains of southeastern Mexico, where fully half the men have left for Los Angeles. Our report is from Marianne McCune.
OUTRO: That piece was produced by Marianne McCune for Homelands Productions.
Additional Files
- Mezcal Intro (mezcalintro.doc)
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Posted on July 21, 2006 at 11:50 PM | Permalink
Review of Mezcal Dreams
Part of the Worlds of Difference series by Homelands Productions, producer/ presenter Marianne McCune serves up a interesting picture of Zoochila, Mexico and the effect of its men leaving home for work in the US. McCune tells of the towns efforts to be more self sufficient through Mezcal production by featuring the voices of residents and the sounds of the village celebrations and local distilling industry, but in listening, it's like looking at a great landscape that's a bit out of focus, or where there's always someone in the picture throwing off the composition of the picture.
This piece is sound rich, but doesn't seem to let those rich sounds breath or even establish in the foreground for long enough, before McCune's narration and writing pops up again.
Despite these slight drawbacks this piece would go well on a food program and will finally clear up the difference between mezcal and its cousin tequila.