Vegan? In Mexico?!

In all my years as a vegan, no place has tested my commitment to the cause more than Mexico. In January of 2018 I decided to give up eating all animal produce, which started as little more than a challenge to myself to see if I could do it. I was already not eating meat, and I hardly ever bought cheese, eggs or fish as part of my student food-shop, so I thought I’d give veganism a go. In the end, I found it so doable that I kept it up. Until Mexico.

Whatever ideas you may or may not already have about Mexican food, you cannot really understand the cuisine without a basic awareness that maize is the foundation of the vast majority of what Mexicans eat. Maize, normally in the form of a corn tortilla, is paired with some kind of guisado (topping) which will most often be some kind of meat. Whether the maize-meat pairing takes the form of a taco, sope, gordita, memela, flauta, tlayuda, tlacoyo, or one of the many other dishes that is really just a taco in disguise, the basic idea is the same: corn and carne. Beyond the much-needed salsa which gets doused over the dish, you might be hard-pressed to find much nutrition at the typical Mexican street-food stall, never mind a vegan option. I have spent many a meal feeling sorry for myself, gnawing on something plain, surrounded by every type of meat you could imagine from barbecued beef to tongues and intestines. In the UK, I generally don't find being vegan to be too much of a compromise; there are options for everything and I operate in my own kitchen where I have everything I need to make delicious plant-based food. Out here, the compromise feels more like a burden that I begrudgingly hold over myself, losing clear sight of what is driving me to so often go without.

People often ask me why I am vegan, and I normally reply that there seem to be too many reasons to be vegan and not enough not to be. After spending over four years of my life making this subtle sacrifice, I feel that my commitment to the cause of animal-welfare is stronger now than it was when I started out, so that is perhaps now my main motivation. However, there are of course the significant environmental factors as well as the health-related benefits of plant-based eating. I like that it encourages me to think a little more about the food I put into my body. I appreciate the fact that good vegan food requires some creativity and effort, and fortunately I love cooking. After such a long time negotiating a vegan diet, I have a good sense of what a balanced and nutritious plant-based meal looks like, and of where I may need to supplement if my energy levels start to drop. Veganism helps eating become a more mindful and intentional practice, and although I can’t pretend that I always eat mindfully or intentionally, in general I find being vegan a rewarding facet of my lifestyle. However, operating in a country like Mexico where there is often more sacrifice than reward has made me reflect on the extent to which I am prepared to abstain from delicious food for the sake of my moral sensibilities.

So here goes... I ate a tuna steak burger last week. I had been feeling fed up of underwhelming meals, and a friend told me about a place that did amazing seafood - the food group I miss most - and I decided several days in advance that I would indulge. My burger was chewy in a way that nothing vegan could ever be. It was more satiating than most of the meals I have eaten in the last 2 months. I sat through it with my eyes closed and my mind focussed, each bite a gift from the ocean via the lovely Mexican women who put it together with avocado and onion rings. I don't regret it; quite the opposite. I feel proud of myself for resisting for as long as I did, and grateful for the extreme pleasure I experienced in that sitting (extreme may even be an understatement - ask the friends who accompanied me through the week-long anticipation period all the way to my post-burger glow).

The last time I was here I ate odd bits of cheese. It added an inordinate amount of enjoyability to the special meals that I chose to upgrade with dairy, and I had planned to bring a similar (or perhaps more liberal still) level of flexibility to my eating during this present trip. I have always found it easier to be vegan when being strict with what I do and don’t eat – I get less tempted by things when there is little room to slip down the slope of flexitarianism - but I know that for many other people they find it far more sustainable to indulge from time to time. It’s all just personal preference, and I can see much more value in this kind of approach now that I often feel so disappointed by the food I'm eating, where back home I didn’t find it too hard to feel healthy and satisfied by my meals.

So here I am, bending my vegan rules. I would like to emphasise that ‘my rules’ are entirely personal to me; ‘vegan’ isn’t a cut-and-dried model of how to live your life, but rather a spectrum of sensitivity towards the consumption of exploitative produce. Every vegan can always be more vegan. There is exploitation deeply engrained in a very large part of the things we consume, from meat and honey to clothes and cosmetics. Everyone chooses where to draw their own line. For example, I have always been lenient with alcohol; a lot of drinks contain animal ingredients but I make the decision not to pay too much attention in this arena. I don’t buy leather anymore, but continue to wear the things I have from before. I avoid cosmetics that test on animals or contain animal produce, but there remain many ways that I can reduce my exploitation footprint and perhaps this is just a universal truth of consumption within the context of capitalism.

I try hard not to be a preachy vegan. I am invested in the cause; I think it is important to be aware of the ways that we perpetuate harm and suffering with the simple decisions we make on a daily basis, but I know that little good comes from shoving it down peoples’ throats and forcing them to jump on the defence of their choices. I instead try to lead by example, offering advice and help if it is solicited, and leaving people to their own decisions if not. I don’t expect that my being vegan will change the world, but it changes the idea I have of myself and the contribution I make to the mess in which we humans currently find ourselves. At the end of the day, this is the main thing all of us have to reconcile: the relationship between our values and our actions. Being vegan is one way I walk this line, and I accept that for other people it might look different. That is OK. I don’t pretend to be the most ethically aligned activist, or to know better than anyone else. We are all just trying to get on with things in the best (or least-bad) way we can find, and we would all benefit from a little more tolerance of the different strategies people employ as they stumble their way through this big old random energy fart called LIFE.