Introduction

Our machines are disturbingly lively. We ourselves frighteningly inert. – Donna Haraway

“Medirle el agua a los camotes”, which translates nonsensically in English as “measure well the water for the sweet potatoes”, is a typical Mexican phrase that people use when one wants to take a risk or decide wether or not to make an adventurous move. A metaphor used when a friend comes by and tells you “ I want to quit everything and study Anthropology in NY”. If you have been struck by what you just heard, and think its a terrible and crazy idea, but don’t want to break your friends’s heart, then, the easy way out is to respond: “well, measure well the water of your sweet potato, my friend”. 

I didn’t measure well the water for my sweet potato that time, and here I am again, one year later, haunted by the ghost of the sweet potato, trying to do it for the first time…in the literal sense. 

But where do this phrase come from? Apparently, these delicate tubercles, in order to be perfectly cooked and al dente, need the exact amount of water and a meticulous boiling procedure. A wrong step in the measure could ruin its delicious and legendary taste. Such conscientious and stressful operation could just be possibly done by the joining of forces. A meshwork of forces united by the sole, but crucial purpose of filling the tummy, hearts and souls of 21 million human citizens and the incalculable amount of non human, but not because of that less honorable, citizens like street dogs, pigeons, mice, rats, ants, bees and flies (sweet potatoes without flies, is like the earth without the sky).

I will be detailing, later on, the forces involved in this arduous task, the little units that comprise and make possible the softening of the sweet tuber; the spinning of the wheel; the constant motion of life; the fulfillment of bellies.

But for now, I want to place my attention in just two of them as a whole: the human and the machine. Machine and human. The sweet potato cart and his loyal Sancho Panza, the human.  They there go, side by side, in perfect harmony despite their differences. The lone ramblers, marching valiantly through the streets of Mexico City, whistling their battle hymn through the asphalt jungle, fighting against the evil windmills, that in this city take the form of cars that have captured little by little their space, urbanization and the bourgeoise that have close their paths in order to build luxurious buildings or gated communities, thieves that might assault them from time to time; but with their hopes never waning, never stepping back against these (and more) evils. 

Their will to cook to perfection and take the to every Mexican, at their doorstep, the exquisite delicacy of the sweet potatoes (or/and plantains) covered with that typical and saccharine condensed Mexican milk called “La Lechera”, is fierce.

They, in union, and in contrast of me, are the masters in the art of measuring the water for the sweet potatos. No doubt they are like wizards, never saying their secrets, but bringing joy to everyone that dares to hear their call.

 Like those gypsy that wander from town to town in order to show the village people their most daring magic tricks, or stunning inventions, like that is the nature of the sweet potato cart and its human friend, (they are mostly men, but a feminist like me will never cease to dream that there must exist a female companion somewhere, no doubt), who the instant they make their call, people come out of their houses and immediately gather around them in order to show their alchemy called: the absolutely delicious camotes. Oh how much joy they bring to the world!

But, every mythical figure has its counterpart, a rival, something that makes their will decline, and sometimes bring its total annihilation. Don Quijote’s destroyer was Sansón, Harry Potter had Voldemort, Chomsky has Zizek, Luhmann and Habermass, Judith Butler and Martha Nussbaum, the anthropology students at the NSSR: Latour. For the sweet potato cart and its ally is probably time. The passage of time.

What am I talking about? This two comrades are less and less heard and seen in Mexico City. They are an object of extinction. I do not have the exact details of this slow but constant disappearance, I can only speculate thanks to the little online ethnography I did, but probably the reason of this are the monopolies of the convenience stores (7-11’s and it’s Mexican version: OXXOS), the junk food sold and produce by this same monopolies (cookies, salted chips, gross plastic sandwiches, etc). Other of my hypothesis is the association the sweet potato cart has with a culture of poverty; even though the sweet potato cart travels through the whole city, and its definitely part of a collective memory, without distinguishing between poor and rich, it has been associated with the poorer neighborhoods and, at a time when the city has been captivated by this new idea and discourses of “urbanity”, or “refinement”, a “capital of the first world”, the sweet potato cart is rejected as “food for the poor” because of its street nature and its relation to the  working class barrios (the paradox is that street tacos are gaining popularity from the higher classes of society. If I wanted to add theory I could probably use Bourdieu and his habitus, but its definitely not the aim of this).

And, finally, in relation to my last hypothesis, this urbanization has taken form in more streets. Not more street for pedestrians or sweet potato carts, but for more cars, which makes the city even more chaotic and makes it harder for a food cart to travel freely, like they probably did before. Gentrification might also play an important role here.

As I mention, this are only my suppositions, a more ethnographic work would be worth it in order to unravel the mystery of the object’s extinction, but for now, I would call this the consequences of its rarer sight and sound. Actually this was my main motive for choosing this thing, its destruction, but at the same time the strong memories people still have about them.

So, thinking about how could I could talk about these nourishing warriors of the senses of the people in Mexico City, and help them fight against the evils of extinction, memory was a good solution. Making a homage about all there is to know about them: songs, poetry, articles, movies, characters, pictures, films, interviews, recipes…curiosities. 

Bring back the memories people have about them; collect the; compile them, since the information there is about them is scarce and disorganized, and do a type of online archive for its future query and then, maybe, make a theory about the camote truck in order to do better speculations about their lives, their genealogy, and the importance they have for city life.

I also wanted to dissect the technology of this machine and see its anatomy, its units that comprise this whole, this assemblage of happiness and sonic surprise. So in order to analyze it better, the dissection and anatomy was important. And it was also kind of revealing to get to know how all the little pieces, elements, units, however they want to call them, interact with each other making a sweet potato cart. 

The form and its design was the second reason I chose the object. What is a miniature locomotive doing in the streets of this city making that strange and disturbing sound? And what has them got to do with sweet potatoes? Could they sell something else? or could the sweet potatoes be sold in another way? Who decided it had to be that weird form? And make that strange sound? A meticulous analysis of its parts and design was a way to gather some insights about this.

I have to accept that taking its human sidekick away of the cart has been a difficult task because one without the other make no sense. They are one and the same. One can not live with out the other, or they could, but their lives would be different. Unfortunately, his human translator was always far away from me and the painstaking questions I had for him (my interview via Skype with him was ruined because the center of Mexico City—the location were our encounter would take place—, was fenced in order to protect the Senate and other important monuments from protesters against the energetic reforms our stupid president wants to implement (that sadly took place today). So apparently my beloved sweet potato cart, my Different Things final project, international politics around petroleum, neoliberalism and, ironically, the economic future of a nation and its national identity were united, connected, meshed, entangled… for a glimpse of a moment. 

“Ordinary Affects are the varying capacities to affect and be affected that give everyday life the quality of a continual motion of relations, scenes, contigencies, and emergences.  THEY ARE THINGS THAT HAPPEN. They happen in impulses, sensations, expectations, daydreams, encounters,  and habits of relating , in strategies and their failures, in forms of persuasion, contagion, in modes of attention, attachment and agency, and in publics and social worlds of all kinds that catch people up in something that feels like something”. (Stewart)

The sense of connectedness was never clearer. Latour would be very proud of me.

All this to just only say that, my human subject will be out of the way, but its ghost will inevitably be present. Not just in the form of a sweet potato companion, but, inevitably, in the memories of people, and the different and diverse ways they make sense of an object, a thing: the sweet potato cart.

To conclude. Time passes, and things change, I guess we can not fight against that. “To observe the clouds, I would say, ‘is not to view the furniture of the sky, but to catch a glimpse of the sky in formation, never the same from one moment to the next”, as Ingold would say (2010:5).  So, with this flux and flow in mind, and ready with my hammer, nails and wood and in the most Bogostian sense, I have built a webpage homage/archive/encyclopedia/flatontology/ode of that funny looking locomotive in constant motion that elevates the spirits of mortals with their food, that evokes the most the most visceral reactions in poets, that recreates the most beautiful memories of childhood, that with his nostalgic whistle frightens to death the Mexican dogs, and humbly, learn to measure the water of our sweet potatoes and fight the evils of extinction.