Sugar Cane

The Persian Gulf crisis has given new life to Brazil's program to run its vehicles on sugar-cane alcohol instead of gasoline. Shortages of the costly sugar-cane fuel and an abundance of inexpensive foreign oil had turned Brazilians off to alcohol. But as oil prices have skyrocketed in the wake of Iraq's takeover of Kuwait, another look is being taken at one of the world's leading alternative fuel programs, called Pro-Alcohol here.

Re "Cuban Teen Makes Revolutionary Choice," Aug. 22: Agustin Gurza tells us that Laura Pina is not your average Cuban kid. That is an understatement. Her mother is an American expatriate (a prize for Castro's Cuba) and her father is a member of one of Cuba's most famous musical groups. Laura did not have to go into the country to cut sugar cane as most Cuban youths are forced to do. She can afford to pay dollars to attend nightclubs and buy $70 Levi's. And she says it's getting awkward?

Thank you for your article on alternative fuels. Your section on methanol puzzles me, however. You say its use puts formaldehyde into the air. I've been told by Los Angeles City's Fleet Services Department (which has been part of the state's test program for 10 years) that the use of a catalytic converter prevents this emission. Your article suggests methanol must be made from corn but it can actually be made many things; rice bran, sugar cane, garbage and much more. You state the technology presents daunting problems but actually methanol can be distilled in one's back yard and the mash that's left over makes an excellent cattle and hog feed.

In the new documentary "The Price of Sugar," Haitian immigrants are featured living in medieval squalor and their barefoot children work next to elderly men, cutting sugar cane on Dominican plantations that supply U.S. households. Their remote shantytowns are enforced by barbed wire fences and patrolled by shotgun-wielding guards. There's little medical care and barely enough food to survive. "There is no death worse than this," a worker named Jhonny Belizaire says in the film.

Rum has been produced in the West Indies since the 16th Century-later figuring in an infamous three-way trade involving slavery--and is still big business here. Made from molasses, a byproduct of sugar cane, the liquor is made almost everywhere in the world where sugar cane is grown. But the most famous, and perhaps best loved, rums are produced in the Caribbean--in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Antigua, Barbados, Martinique, Trinidad, the British and U.S.

It's doubtful that Mary Poppins would have extolled the virtues of sugar as a medicine chaser if she had known about the horrific plight of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic. According to "The Price of Sugar," a riveting new documentary from director Bill Haney, the migrant laborers there who cut down sugar cane are pressed into virtual slavery.

Ho Sai Gai, possibly the most decrepit Cantonese restaurant in California, once occupied this site. What a change. As Mandalay, the room has developed a lot of style: Banner-like drawings of Vietnamese maidens hang from the walls, banana trees are spotted around the room, the chair backs are in the shape of the letter M, for Mandalay, of course. It has an air that faintly suggests some low-profile, savagely exclusive nightclub.

The crop that defined Hawaiian agriculture for more than a century vanished this year from the islands of Oahu and Hawaii as workers hauled in their final harvests of sugar cane. For those who had spent a lifetime on the plantations, saying goodbye to sugar was like losing a relative. The pain continues to show in the high unemployment figures in rural areas. But a silver lining is beginning to glint through the gloom.

Despite its tongue-twisting name, this Brazilian import, which muddles cachaca (distilled from sugar cane) with lime and sugar, is fast becoming the drink du jour, as restaurants pair it with a variety of cuisines. ORTEGA 120 This newly opened beachside restaurant serves its own caipirinha de fruta with frozen peaches and peach schnapps. It teams handily with Ortega's modern Mexican cuisine, such as bite-size tacos de atun crudo with ahi tuna, jicama and mango salad, and ceviche de tilapia.