date to visit the Madrids for several
years, the moment had at last arrived to
spend a day with Enrique and Ruby at
their home in Redford learning, cooking
and eating.
From the moment I walked through
the door, I was immersed in the sights,
sounds, aromas and tastes of border cul-
ture. (Part of Enrique’s mission is to
“preserve endangered flavors.”) Over
Ruby’s superb cappuccino we discussed
philosophy, politics and methods of non-
violent activism. Enrique read from pas-
sages he’d carefully highlighted, under-
lined and earmarked in his vast collec-
tion of books. The day began with a
reading from Morality by Walter Sinnott-
Armstrong: “To determine what is
morally right, we should ask who gets
harmed, how and how much. The
debate should be about how to avoid
and prevent harm.”
We discussed ways in which feeding
people is a radical act – to keep people
hungry is to oppress them. To teach
someone to cook wholesome, tasty food
is to provide them with the wisdom to
feed themselves, their families and their
communities in body and spirit.
Then we moved on to tortillas and to
the research behind the discovery of
Enrique’s famous formula. While travel-
ing extensively in Mexico, Ruby and
Enrique noticed that nearly every tortilla
is perfectly round. Ruby and Enrique
concluded that the making of a round
tortilla is a right of passage – if a person
can make a perfect tortilla, it not only
means that the person is a meticulous
cook, it also implies that they are capable
of growing corn, harvesting it, grinding
it, making the masa and feeding a family.
It turns out that the universe at the
moment of the Big Bang and a testal –
a ball of masa about to become a perfect
tortilla – obey the same simple principle:
uniformity. The early universe expand-
ed out uniformly in all directions to cre-
ate a sphere. The central plane of that
sphere is a flat, perfectly round disk –
exactly like a well-made tortilla.
The tortilla formula is best demon-
strated using wheat flour dough. The
basic idea is to begin with a round ball of
dough about the size of an egg. Place
your dough ball on a floured board, then
use a rolling pin to apply 14 pounds per
square inch of pressure. Roll up 1 inch
and down 1 inch to create a groove.
Rotate the dough 72 degrees. Now roll
again – this time up 2 inches, down 2
inches, with the same amount of pres-
sure, to create a wider groove. Rotate 72
degrees again. Repeat this process,
rolling out further on every rotation, until
you have turned the dough five times.
(Five times 72 equals a full rotation of
360 degrees.) For a more detailed lesson
featuring Enrique himself, please see
“The Social and Scientific Implications
of the Perfectly Round Tortilla,” a short
video on my YouTube channel at
www.youtube.com/alyceobvious.
I refer to many of my own works of
art as “philosoprops,” objects that can be
used to start a conversation about philo-
sophical or scientific concepts (there are
many examples on my Web site at
www.alycesantoro.com). During the
course of the three-day Synergetic
Omni-Solution launch event I served
loaves of Universal Raisin Cake baked in
a solar oven, we ate Buckyballs made of
ice-cream cones, I demonstrated how a
Ruben’s Tube makes sound waveforms
visible in flames, and I taught a group of
desert-dwellers how to harness the wind
and use it to sail around downtown
Marfa. As far as I’m concerned, howev-
er, the quantum tortillas that Enrique
taught a hungry crowd to make at the
Masonic Hall were some of the most
effective and tasty philosoprops ever.
If Buckminster Fuller were around
today, I like to imagine he’d agree that
trimtabs come in many forms and that
the more of them we have at our dispos-
al, the better off we’ll be. Perhaps some
of the most efficient trimtabs may be
found in things so obvious we tend to
overlook them – ancient techniques and
cultural traditions passed down from
generation to generation, for example.
It’s even possible that there are tens of
thousands of trimtabs being rolled out
in households throughout Mexico, on
the Texas/Mexico border and around
the world right this very moment…
For more information, please visit Synergetic -
Omni-Solution.com, AlyceSantoro.com and
BallroomMarfa.org. The author would like to
thank Ballroom Marfa, Toni and Jeff
Beauchamp, the Texas Biennial, the Texas
Commission on the Arts, Jeff Fort, Rob Crowley,
Ruby and Enrique Madrid and all the members
of the community (especially Marfa High School
art students and Marfa Elementary second
graders) who offered the support, skills, expertise
and enthusiasm that made – and continue to
make – the Synergetic Omni-Solution possible.
Cenizo
Third Quarter 2011
11