Tortillas in New Mexico, steak in Oregon... Bigfoot in California? Why US states are adopting new symbols
Last week, it looked like nothing could stand in the way of the tortilla becoming New Mexico's official state bread. The idea had unanimous support from lawmakers, with the round wrap long being a culinary staple in the Southwestern state.
But on Friday, the plan fell as flat as the Mexican ingredient itself.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham didn't shoot down the proposals because she isn't a fan of the food. Rather, it was because she believes it marked another missed opportunity to debate bills that deal with serious matters as the state faces extraordinary challenges.
'Of course, I enjoy celebrating our unique culture,' she wrote in her veto message, naming many of the official state symbols and songs that New Mexico has adopted over the years.
'The question should not be how many more symbols we can collect — but whether we are meeting the moment with the gravity it demands,' she continued, 'we are living in perilous and unprecedented times. The stakes for our state have never been higher.'
New Mexico's lawmakers were hardly alone in wanting to pad their state's list of symbols this legislative season. Georgia lawmakers recently passed a bill to recognize cornbread as their state's official bread.
The Oregon Legislature, meanwhile, is considering adopting the T-bone steak as an official symbol. And there's a proposal in California to name Bigfoot the state's official cryptid — a creature that has never been proven to exist.
Striking a balance?
Legislating isn't always about taxes, tariffs and other serious issues. Lawmakers sometimes yearn for levity and the rare chance to find common ground.
With the push to adopt the tortilla, which was proposed by Las Cruces fourth-grader Adaline McIntosh, lawmakers debated the kinds of flour needed for the perfect specimen.
Their conclusion: It depends on the meal. They also got a history lesson from state Senator Benny Shendo, a member of Jemez Pueblo tribe who explained that the first bread in what is now New Mexico was made by Pueblo people who cooked blue corn paste on a hot stone.
State Senator Cindy Nava talked about growing up on her mother's homemade tortillas, saying: 'This is much bigger than a simple piece of legislation," Nava told fellow lawmakers. "This is culture and this is cultural awareness that we desperately need.'
From cattle to cocktails
Official state symbols date to the late 1800s, as legislatures throughout the U.S. sought to stake cultural claims and foster pride among their residents. First came flowers and flags. Then came fossils and foods, with the practice growing into a clever marketing tool to boost conversation and commerce.
Oregon already has an official state nut, fruit and pie. But adopting the T-bone would recognize the role that cattle has played in the state's development and its contribution to the economy, supporters say.
It's all about Nashville hot chicken in Tennessee, where a proposal calls for making the popular dish an official state food, joining hot slaw and Memphis barbecue.
Whereas some states adopted milk as their official drink, Nevada is considering a less wholesome option, Picon punch. The home of Sin City is weighing legislation that would add the cocktail that traces its roots to Basque immigrants who settled out West to its list of state symbols.
Shooting for the stars
In North Carolina, lawmakers are considering adopting the Moravian star, a multi-pointed decoration that symbolizes the Star of Bethlehem and has become synonymous with Christmas.
Minnesota might adopt a whole constellation, with legislation pending that would add Ursa Minor to that state's list.
Texas, meanwhile, is considering adding the cannon as an official gun. The Lone Star State already has an official handgun — the Colt Walker pistol. But those who introduced this year's resolution say historic weapons such as the cannon are powerful reminders of the state's struggle for freedom. That includes the first battle of the Texas Revolution, when settlers coined the phrase 'Come and Take It" during a skirmish with the Mexican military over a bronze cannon.
A nod to nature
Colorado's list of symbols now includes Agaricus julius, a mushroom once mistaken as 'The Prince mushroom" that supporters say plays a vital role in high-elevation spruce and fir forests.
Iowa and Michigan are considering adding butterflies to their lists. There are dueling proposals in Michigan, with black swallowtails and monarchs duking it out.
Minnesota lawmakers are mulling adopting an official state fossil — a giant beaver that was about the size of a small bear and roamed the area during the last ice age. It's part of a campaign led by the Science Museum of Minnesota.
California lawmakers are considering adding two things to their state list: solar energy and Bigfoot. California has the country's largest solar market, according to industry groups. As for the legendary creature, Bigfoot's proponents say it's part of popular culture and inspires searches that boost tourism in rural parts of the state.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
a day ago
- Reuters
Mexico's president denies Reuters report on US push to investigate narco politicians
MEXICO CITY, June 12 (Reuters) - Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Thursday denied a Reuters report about the U.S. pushing Mexico to investigate politicians with suspected links to organized crime. Sheinbaum, in her daily press conference, called the story "fake news" and questioned the timing of the story, which was published the morning Sheinbaum met with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau. "Don't you find it strange that when we were in the meeting, a story came out from, I think it was Reuters, saying that they were asking us to give names of Mexican politicians... There's nothing more false than that," Sheinbaum said. The story published on Wednesday, based on four sources, said the request had been raised at least three times by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his team in bilateral meetings and conversations with Mexican officials. The U.S. asked that politicians suspected of being tied to the cartels also be potentially extradited to the United States if there are criminal charges to answer there. "We stand by our reporting," a Reuters spokesperson said. The Reuters story did not assert that Mexico had been asked to hand over names of Mexican politicians, but that the U.S. had pressured the Mexican government to investigate current elected officials, even if they were from the president's own Morena party. A crackdown - potentially targeting high-ranking elected officials while they are in office - would mark a dramatic escalation of Mexico's efforts against drug corruption. But it carries political risks for Sheinbaum, as some of the allegations involve members of her own party, a member of her security cabinet told Reuters. Reuters was unable to determine if the U.S. had provided Mexico with a list of politicians suspected of links to organized crime, or evidence against them. Nor was Reuters able to independently confirm if any individuals flagged by the U.S. had engaged in any wrongdoing.
NBC News
a day ago
- NBC News
Russia is amplifying conspiracy theories about the L.A. protests
Protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles have triggered a flood of falsehoods and conspiracy theories online, and Russia has sought to exploit and amplify them, experts say. Russian media and pro-Russian voices have embraced right-wing conspiracy theories about the protests, including one that alleged the Mexican government was encouraging the demonstrations against President Donald Trump's immigration policies. Mexico has strongly rejected the accusation — which was repeated by Trump's chief of homeland security — as utterly false. The episode illustrates how foreign adversaries are taking advantage of genuine divisions among Americans, a tried-and-true strategy in information warfare, analysts say. Right-wing American voices online are pushing the idea that the protests in Los Angeles are not what they appear and that a secret, leftist cabal tied to Democratic politicians and the billionaire philanthropist George Soros is orchestrating unrest, experts said. 'We are following a playbook that we've followed many times before. We're seeing a lot of the same tropes, even a lot of the same exact conspiracy theories that we've seen circulate around previous protests,' said Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University who studies social media disinformation. There were echoes of how falsehoods spread during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, he said. 'People are, as they tend to do on social media, believing the messages that they're inclined to believe,' Linvill said. 'And influencers are taking advantage of that, oftentimes with false or sort of purposefully misleading content.' Right-wing users have posted baseless assertions that the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, has ties to the CIA and is orchestrating protests to oust President Donald Trump. 'Bass is a political warlord. She's utilizing her expertise to encourage these riots—to try to topple Trump & you,' wrote conservative podcast host Liz Wheeler on a post on X. Moustafa Ayad of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international nonprofit that focuses on 'safeguarding democracy,' said there were parallels to how social media users have reacted to previous protests or to hurricanes that struck the Southeast last year. 'I liken it to the aftermath of Milton and Helene last year,' Ayad said. 'We have a crisis or a conflict point that is occurring, and there are numerous narratives that are being spread online that the government is somehow involved in the protests, paying protesters, or this is a deep-state plot against the United States by the CIA and other government actors,' Ayad said. From the political left, narratives online have focused on how the federal government and the military were allegedly preparing to use lethal force, while right-leaning voices warned of plots to oust Trump and cause chaos in American cities, according to Ayad. 'It's a bit like being on a seesaw, just gyrating between those two things,' he said. 'Sadly, there's this giant reinforcing loop that just builds further steam as the protests continue day to day.' Baseless claims of Mexico fomenting violence Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday repeated baseless assertions online that the Mexican government was encouraging violent protests. Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, quickly responded, rejecting the accusation as 'absolutely false' but saying she was confident that the 'misunderstanding will be cleared up.' The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Conservative and pro-Russian social media accounts cited an outdated video of the Mexican president as the basis for their claims she was fomenting protests in Los Angeles, according to NewsGuard, a fact-checking website. The video was taken from a press conference on May 24, nearly two weeks before the start of the L.A. protests. The Mexican president's remarks were taken out of context. Sheinbaum was referring to a proposed tax by the Trump administration on any income earned by Mexican immigrants that is sent on to their families in Mexico. She criticized the proposal and said at the time: 'If necessary, we'll mobilize' against the tax. Conservative commentator Benny Johnson then posted the May 24 clip of Sheinbaum after protests began last week in Los Angeles and wrote that she was calling for protests in the United States. The post has received 6.7 million views. At a news conference on Monday, Sheinbaum made clear her government opposes any violence associated with protests. 'We do not agree with violent actions as a form of protest.' An opportunity for Russia Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think tank's Alliance for Securing Democracy, said Russia's information operations online were embracing pro-Trump portrayals of the protests as a leftist violent assault. 'Russia is in effect cheering on Trump's response and suggesting that it's warranted,' Schafer said. 'They have certainly intimated that these protests are being staged or funded by the radical left.' Russian news outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted a Russian blogger in L.A. saying the protesters were not migrants but 'militants' who arrived on buses. Russian nationalist commentator Alexander Dugin wrote on X that the protests were an insurrection, a 'nationwide conspiracy of liberals against not only Trump but against American people in general.' Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer dubbed the 'Merchant of Death' by U.S. and British authorities who was released in a prisoner exchange in 2022 after spending 11 years behind bars in the United States, also weighed in on the protests. Russian media outlet Pravda quoted Bout comparing the demonstrations to the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine against what was then a pro-Moscow government, with Bout claiming the L.A. protests were highly organized. Pravda also quoted Sergei Markov, a former adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying the United States was in the middle of a 'civil war' pitting coastal states against interior states. Sputnik reposted a viral image of a pallet of bricks, asking why it was near the protest sites. But fact-checkers at Lead Stories geolocated the photo to a construction site about 3,000 miles away, in New Jersey. Beijing accuses Washington of hypocrisy China, however, was taking a different tack. Instead of leaning into pro-Trump narratives and repeating right-wing conspiracy theories, Beijing portrayed America as a country in turmoil. Chinese media and pro-China voices argued the American government's response to protests in Los Angeles was 'heavy-handed and therefore hypocritical' in light of Washington's criticisms of other countries' treatment of dissent, according to Schafer. An affiliate of China's global television network reminded viewers that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had praised protests in Hong Kong in 2019 as a 'beautiful sight' but asked if the American government viewed the L.A. protests in the same way. A pro-Beijing commentator, Li Jingjing, denounced what she called U.S. interference in other countries' affairs even as it denounced protesters on its soil. 'US hypocrisy at its best,' she wrote in a post. The pervasive online image of the supposed pallet of bricks frequently shows up when there are street protests, according to the Social Media Lab, a research team at Toronto Metropolitan University. 'It's catnip for right-wing agitators and grifters,' the lab said in a social media post. 'The fact that these types of fake images are used isn't a coincidence. It's part of a pernicious & persistent narrative that protests against government policies are somehow inauthentic,' it added. The approach is 'meant to make these movements seem less legitimate or less worthy of public support.'
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Republicans fear the Mexican flag at the LA protests. But I see it as a symbol of our power
Republicans are using images of Ice protesters waving Mexican flags atop burning Waymo cars to foment fear among Americans. Like this photograph that Elon Musk tweeted on Sunday: a shirtless protester wielding the Tricolor atop a vandalized robotaxi as flames billow toward the weak sunlight backlighting the flag. His dark curls fall to his bare shoulders. He stares into the camera. Frankly, the image belongs in a museum. I understand my reaction is not the feeling Republicans hope to inspire in Americans broadly this week. Their messaging thus far about the protests against immigration raids in Latino communities has largely been alarmist – proof, they say, of an 'invasion' of 'illegal aliens'. 'Look at all the foreign flags. Los Angeles is occupied territory,' said Stephen Miller on X. According to Adam Kinzinger, a former congressman and more moderate voice, the Mexican flags carried by protesters are 'terrible… and feeding right into Donald Trump's narrative'. 'I just think that it would be much stronger if they were carrying American flags only,' he said on CNN this week. By this logic, Mexican flags are proof-positive that Mexican Americans are not really American; that we are somehow collaborating on a planned 'invasion'; that we harbor secret loyalties to Mexico; that we're here to displace white people and undermine the American way of life via some Plan Aztlan. In short, none of this is true. In front of Congress Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, cited the presence of 'flags from foreign countries' in LA to legitimize supporting Trump's deployment of the National Guard. This unilateral invocation of Title 10 by the Trump administration, without the consent of the governor, is exceedingly aggressive. So is the deployment of 700 US Marines to be used to crush American protest in an American city. The subtext here is that by many metrics, American's patience for Ice and its antics is wearing thin, even as Ice's deportation numbers are anemic compared to past administrations. The Trump administration realizes something has to change. Fanning outrage about a flag is both a legal pretext to pursue martial law and a diplomatic means of getting consent from the American populace to do unpopular things in the name of security. But what is it about the Mexican flag that triggers so many people? I'd argue that in the American context, the Mexican flag is not a nationalist symbol but something decentered from Mexico as a nation-state. Historically, it was a key banner of the Chicano movement, flown by supporters surrounding Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez during the California grape boycott in the 1960s. It flew alongside the United Farm Workers flag, the American flag and banners of the Virgen de Guadalupe as means of fomenting cultural unity. It also served as a reminder of a fundamental truth: we are from here; we are also from there. We're children of the in-between, or what the Tejanx writer Gloria Anzaldúa referred to as nepantla in her seminal work Borderlands/La Frontera. Nepantla is simply Nahuatl for the liminal space between cultures, identities and worlds. To this end, we might think of the Mexican flag as a symbol of double-consciousness in the Mexican American psyche specifically. We understand our middleness, yet we also understand how America sees and defines us: Mexicans. We take that prejudice and transform it into power. It's through this lens that I see the Mexican flag as just one banner among many, a remembrance of roots but also a shared experience between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants alike. Night after night, you can see captivating scenes with Mexican flags flying in the downtowns of Dallas and Houston and Atlanta and New York, as a solidarity grows between those explicitly targeted by Ice and those soon-to-be targeted by Ice. This is not hyperbole. Today, phenotype and politics are grounds enough for detention: in order for Ice to meet the Trump administration's goal of 3,000 arrests per day, targets have increasingly included student protesters, tourists and even American citizens. The only rule is to meet the metric at all costs. Amid these burgeoning protests, the Mexican flag is a bold articulation: we are like you; you are like us. We have struggled and persist in this place together. See me and don't be afraid; I see you and I am not afraid. To wield the flag amid a protest is to paint yourself a target, to take both your body and your future into your own hands. This is precisely why the Marines have been called in. To intimidate these bodies. Or to destroy them. What Trump fails to realize is that the bones of Mexican people are the metadata of the land in California and indeed the rest of the country. Our place here is in the food, in the street names, in the name of Los Angeles itself. Already, I can hear some within my own community admonishing my defense of Mexican flags at American protests as treasonous or ungrateful or something along those lines. To them I might ask: why is it that the protester's allegiances are held to higher standards than an American president who seeks to turn the US armed forces against American citizens? From Republican leaders, you'll never hear such questioning rhetoric surrounding other foreign flags that fly prominently in America. The Irish flag on St Patrick's Day instantly comes to mind. As does the Israeli flag at both political and non-political events. And, of course, the Confederate flag, though white supremacists have explicitly stated goals of both overthrowing the US government and taking back US land. Heritage is the most commonly used defense. Though wouldn't heritage apply to the Mexican flag as well? I'm reminded of James Baldwin when Mexicans Americans and Mexicans call for restraint from using Mexican imagery in US protests: 'In Harlem,' Baldwin wrote, '…the Negro policemen are feared more than whites, for they have more to prove and fewer ways to prove it.' We think our respectability will protect us. But we know historically and empirically that has not been true. Respectability did not protect Japanese Americans from being interned. Nor did it protect Vietnamese veterans who fought alongside Americans in Vietnam from facing discrimination in the US. Nor did it protect Afghan translators from having their visas revoked. Our American bonafides are not the things that will save us now. Not in the era of detention metrics and collateral targeting and now the prospect of authoritarian violence. It should be said: I don't go looking for these images. For my sins, having clicked on one, the algorithm floods me with them now. Protesters with Mexican flags getting a haircut in front of police. Protesters with Mexican flags forming a human chain. They just keep coming to me. But other images, too. Like one of a guy popping a wheelie past a ton of burning Waymo cars. I mean, come the fuck on – it's cool. The thing that immediately jumps out to me is the frivolity of the image. A body perfectly in balance, perfectly in motion. It moves of its own volition. It is completely in command of its trajectory and space in the landscape. It is beyond the fascist impulse to live so beautifully as this. Luckily, it also is beyond the fascist ability to remove the memory of this body from the land.
