Informant38

ceux qui n'ont pas connu l'Ancien Régime
ne pourront jamais savoir
ce qu'était la douceur de vivre:

The flow of immigrants north from Mexico since Nafta is inextricably linked to the flow of American corn in the opposite direction, a flood of subsidized grain that the Mexican government estimates has thrown two million Mexican farmers and other agricultural workers off the land since the mid-90s.
[...]
More recently, the ethanol boom has led to a spike in corn prices that has left that country reeling from soaring tortilla prices; linking its corn economy to ours has been an unalloyed disaster for Mexico's eaters as well as its farmers.

Michael Pollan/NYTimes 22.Apr.07
-

Almost immediately Fidel Castro weighed in from his sickbed writing an article for the Communist Party newspaper 'Gramma', that food stocks for millions of people would be threatened, "...you will see how many people among the hungry masses will no longer consume corn". Forever in lockstep with his mentor, Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, the purveyor of OPEC rigged prices of oil, fleecing both the rich and poor throughout the world, echoed Castro's outrage...

Learsy/Huffington 23.Apr.07
-

Almost immediately after Bush's visit to Brasilia, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro decried the evils of a global ethanol market, claiming it would drive up the price of food around the world. The world's poor would inevitably suffer, they said.
This argument, however, was absent from the regional energy conference held on 16 April in Venezuela, just two weeks after Lula visited Bush at Camp David. Rather than use the forum where 12 South American heads of state were present to attack Lula, Chavez offered his support for ethanol as a regional energy effort.

Logan/ISN Security Watch 24.Apr.07
-

But it's more than just a political football. Many in the U.S. share great hope in ethanol's potential. President Bush, during his State of the Union address in January, pushed for more production by 2017 to 35 billion gallons, up from 5 billion gallons last year.
But there is no doubt, says Pat Westhoff, an associate professor of agriculture at the University of Missouri–Columbia, that ethanol production has contributed to higher food prices. In August the average price paid to U.S. farmers for a bushel of corn was $2.09 — rising to $2.20 in September, $2.54 in October, $2.87 in November, and past $3 in December.
By January, angry Mexicans took to the streets to protest the rising cost of tortillas, the central part of most Mexicans' diet. While many factors contributed to the ballooning Mexican corn industry, U.S. prices are reflected on the international market, Mr. Westhoff says.

Llana/CSM/CBS 22.Apr.07
-
People for whom Mexican food is a fast-food treat will see riots for tortillas as a kind of Mel Brooksian joke. Like rioting for donuts or something.
A more accurate parallel might be something like this.