food and drink

The Origin of Some of Your Favorite English Words is Surprising

guacamole
CREDIT: Jürgen Stemper / Bloemche / Flickr
By December 2, 2015 at 6:28 pm

Look, Mexico has had a bigger impact on America, more than anyone even realizes.  Proof? These words that come from Nahuatl, the language of the Mexicans, have made it into common day use, like…

Avocado

avocado

Let’s see, there’s avocado that comes from the Spanish word aguacate, which in turn comes from the word āhuacatl. In Nahuatl, it means both avocado and testicle. See the resemblance?  Mind. Blown.

Guacamole

guacamole

A related word is āhuacamōlli, or guacamole, which means avocado salsa — or salsa made from testicles… we kid!

READ: If You Speak Spanish, You’ll Understand Some Arabic

Tomato

tomato

In order to make this delicious salsa you need tomatl or tomato. TomAto, tomato…

Jalapeño

jalapeno

You can add a little kick to your āhuacamōlli with xalapan (jalapeño), a word derived from the Xalapa region of Veracruz.

Mezcal

Mezcal

And who doesn’t need a little mexcalli or Mezcal to take the edge off?

Find out what other words come from Nahuatl here.

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Peru’s Gold Mines have become Death Beds

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Peru’s Gold Mines have become Death Beds

By Adriana Venegas December 2, 2015 at 6:35 pm
CREDIT: SEEKER STORIES / YOUTUBE

The Human Cost of Gold

Gold has been incredibly valuable to human beings since it was first discovered. It’s even become valuable to our daily slang, we use it to describe anything that’s amazing or awesome.

But not everything is awesome about gold.  The true cost, which is increasing, is affecting people all over the world, especially in Cajamarca, Peru, home to the largest gold mine in Latin America. There, the mining doesn’t take place with small pails and plates like back in the day. There’s big machinery and A LOT of cancer-causing chemicals — cyanide and mercury — used to treat the sand and extract tiny specs of gold. Those chemicals are polluting the water the flows into the populated regions of Cajamarca and people are not healthy or happy.

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And with good reason. The companies that are reaping the benefits of the gold promised economic improvement in the area and never delivered. Diego Cupolo, a photojournalist, who’s been documenting the area, says that even though the value of gold is still high, it’s undervalued “because we pay for it with the lives of people that live in Cajamarca or any  gold-mining region in the world.”

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Gold, Mining, Peru