Diálogo
Volume 18 Number 1 Article 14
2015
Tacos and Coloniality: A Review Essay
Michael Soldatenko California State University, Los Angeles
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Recommended Citation Soldatenko, Michael (2015) "Tacos and Coloniality: A Review Essay," Diálogo: Vol. 18 : No. 1 , Article 14. Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/dialogo/vol18/iss1/14
This Reflection is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for Latino Research at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in Diálogo by an authorized editor of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Tacos and Coloniality: A Review Essay
Michael Soldatenko California State University, Los Angeles
Abstract: Two recently published books examine the concept of “Mexican food” in the U.S. and Mexico. Gustavo Arellano’s Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America (2012) provides a readable journalistic examination of Mexican food in the U.S., and Jeffrey Pilcher’s Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (2012) offers an academic study of Mexican food presentations in a global setting by an established scholar. Each offers an entry for the field of Mexican food studies. This reading examines correlations of power in the colonial process and develop- ment of contemporary cuisine, drawing the conclusion that the concept of “Mexican food” is multifaceted, and at certain times and places, debatable.
Key Terms: Mexican and Mexican-American cuisine; Spanish colonial cuisine; structures of power; globalization; coloniality; history of tacos; food studies
wo recent books examine the concept of “Mexican While both books support the first selection, a continuum Tfood” in the U.S. and Mexico. Gustavo Arellano’s that links industrial to organic food, they intimate that it Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America offers a might not be possible to think about Mexican fast food, readable journalistic examination of Mexican food in the for example, in the same breath as Mexican indigenous U.S., while Jeffrey Pilcher’s Planet Taco: A Global History cooking. Unfortunately, their suggestion remains un- of Mexican Food provides an academic review of Mexican derdeveloped and they only hint at the second selection food in a global setting by an established scholar. Each text that there may be multiplicities of associated continuums represents an entry into the field of Mexican food studies. marking Mexican cuisine and foodstuffs. I believe that In the following, I would like to engage their ideas about breaking the notion of a continuum might be a better Mexican food and possibly suggest alternative directions way to explore Mexican food. to their analysis. My principle concern is that both authors foster a After reading Pilcher and Arellano, a central conclu- vision of Mexican cooking and foodstuff as a neutral, sion can be drawn that the concept of “Mexican food” is even natural, process that results from cultural exchange, problematic, subject to time, space, and political economy. migration, and historical evolution. This is not to say From one view, each text (intentionally and/or unin- that the authors do not recognize that Mexican food is tentionally) demonstrates that there is no “Mexican” in also a product of globalization/imperialism, culinary Mexican food; in fact, “Mexican” itself may be too recent tourism, national sovereignty, and capitalism (Pilcher, and problematic a construct to help us understand what xv). Unfortunately, the tension between a normative often is termed “Mexican food.” From another direction, process of cultural exchange and the role of imperialism the same books complicate our normative use of the in the construction of Mexican food is muted. In my word “food.” The authors inadvertently obligate us to dialogue with them, I sustain that the only way to make acknowledge three options about food: (1) the existence sense of Mexican cuisine is to nestle the discussion in the of a continuum from industrial food through fast food to jurisdiction of colonialism and power (the coloniality of ethnic cuisine and ending with organic food; (2) to reject power, knowledge, and being). The overlaying of a wide this suggested continuum and accept a variety of auton- variety of colonial projects—from Mexica expansionism2 omous notions of food but still subject to a domain; or of the late pre-Conquest period; to the “exploration” and (3), to accept multiple limited disarticulated continuums.1 expansion into present northern Mexico and the U.S.
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Southwest by the Spanish and eastern-branch Nahuas; framework that transformed these under a European followed by Mexican and U.S. colonial projects in the culinary rationality. The eventual hegemony of French same territories—continuing with European and U.S. cuisine, beginning in the nineteenth century, underscored imperial cultural practices. as well as the industrialization this definition of successful, acceptable, and superior no- of food under capital, all need to be placed at the center of tion of cuisine.5 In this process, the creation of any form the construction of Mexican foodstuff and cookery. The of fusion is structured by European cooking values and migration of agricultural and animal products during the in the process creates a hierarchy of superior to inferior colonial era, the transformation (both as technique and (ethnic and native) foods (Janer, 2007, 385). epistemology) of their preparation, and the approaches Arellano and Pilcher differ in their approach to the to their consumption are each embedded in the power relationship of Mexican cuisine and Mexican foodstuff in relations that are central to the colonial project. If, as the U.S. Arellano stresses that he is not concerned with suggested by Octavio Paz in his 1950 treatise on the state Mexican food in Mexico, but rather with “the infinite of the contemporary Mexican as “hijos de la chingada” varieties of Mexican food in the United States” (9). He (74-77), then the status of Mexican “food” also develops underscores that Mexican cuisine in the U.S. is no less from a series of violent acts resulting from multiple co- legitimate than its sibling in Mexico. For Arellano, both lonial experiences.3 remain Mexican. Unfortunately, by not exploring the In proposing that Mexican food is part of various im- particular colonial experience that is the border, he leaves perial projects, I also suggest that when we look at Mexican unclear why Mexican foodstuff and cooking in the U.S. foodstuff and cookery through the lens of mestizaje, remains Mexican. However, his suggestion to separate hybridity, creolization, syncretism, or miscegenation, these two Mexican foods forces us to recognize that our we need to reread these terms politically. Often hidden use of “Mexican” is unclear. From a different angle, Pilcher behind mestizaje, for instance, is a form of transcultura- begins with a historical picture of aspects of Mexican tion where the original act of violence and the continuous food. While he accepts that he cannot do a genealogy use of power to sustain this hybridity is either erased or for Mexican food,6 he wishes to explore the encounter of covered. For example, can the arrival of sheep to New the native and Spanish palate—in particular their mutual Mexico be separated from the campaign of conquest by disgust. Thus he notes that two distinct palates remained Tlaxcaltecans and Spaniards in the early colonial period?4 in New Spain reflected by different communities that in Thus, the resulting transformation that wool and lamb/ turn revealed diverse social and cultural classes.7 From mutton brought to native communities cannot be sep- these palates, native, native fusion, and creole cooking arated from the colonial project. To talk about Mexican styles appeared and persisted through the colonial period cuisine as an extension of the hybridization of foods, and continued into the Mexican era (Pilcher, 32).8 When outside the nexus of power, is to create the image that one applies the colonial map to these culinary practices, syncretism and miscegenation appear as a neutral and we might argue that the culinary encounter of northern apolitical act. In the same way, the globalization of the Mexico shapes a variety of borderland cuisine distinct taco cannot be separated from U.S. imperialism. from the rest of Mexico. Only by beginning from the point of the colonial The difference between Arellano’s and Pilcher’s ap- project can we understand the formation of Mexican proaches can also be seen in their understanding of north- cuisine. The degradation and even erasure of indigenous ern New Spain/Mexico and the U.S. Southwest cuisines cooking is not the result of some simple act of syncretism. as it relates to Mexican cooking in the U.S. Pilcher begins Rather the racialization project that was at the heart of his story with the flour tortilla, and eventually the burrito, both Spanish and later U.S. colonization, often resulting in while Arellano starts with chili con carne and the Chili the demographic destruction of native communities, was Queens.9 These different openings reflect two ways of specifically directed to the epistemological elimination addressing the borderlands. One can start by emphasizing of all things native. One result was the marginalization the distinct character of the borderlands or by stressing of the culinary memory of native communities. In its U.S. control and implied articulation of the Southwest place was the articulation of New World, European, Asian into the greater U.S. The flour tortilla, Pilcher writes, was and African crops and techniques under an epistemic a distinct product of the frontier, and maybe like, carne
136 Reflections/Reflexiones Diálogo Tacos and Coloniality: A Review Essay asada, marked the fluid transition between barbarism Queens embodied the vision that many Anglos in Texas and civilization (Pilcher, 48). It was in the borderlands, had about Mexican women.15 Thus, as Mexican food was north of La Gran Chichimeca, where a variety of regional defined by borderland cuisine, Arellano suggests that cuisines—different from the regional cuisines from central chili and tamales represented Mexican food for most or southern Mexico—came to the fore: some of these Anglos until World War II (Arellano, 50). Simultaneously, cuisines will later be reduced to Tex-Mex, New Mexican, Mexican food retained the negative stereotype of the Sonoran, and Cal-Mex, from the possibly late colonial era population it purported to represent. While Anglo in- of norteño cuisines.10 All these styles reflected the Spanish teractions with Mexican food remained a “safe danger” racialization project, often envisioned in the series of (Pilcher, 108), it could never be disconnected from the casta paintings from the mid-colonial era. Thus, like the history of “occupied Mexico.” settlers, frontier folks identified themselves as close to For Arellano, the transformation of borderland “Spanish” and as far from the native as possible. Pilcher cuisine into Mexican cookery is also tied to its indus- finds the same tendency in food traditions: rejection of trialization. Canning companies replaced the chili con the native heritage (48), whether from the natives that carne recipe that Mexicans would have recognized in “[S]elling tacos that the average Mexican derided as inauthentic but the average American gobbled with gusto.” traveled with the Spanish or the local natives.11 Out of the San Antonio area with an Anglo version of chili that this variety of borderland cuisines, even with the addition now could be bought in a can and enjoyed whenever and of U.S. trade goods, the burrito, Pilcher states, came to wherever one desired. Pilcher observes that one of the symbolize the food for all Mexicans (75).12 first Mexican foods to be industrialized was the tortilla. For Arellano, Mexican cooking and foodstuffs made Pilcher presents the story of corn milling with the eventual its U.S. national debut at the 1893 World’s Columbian patenting of dehydrated nixtamal flour by José Bartolomé Exposition in Chicago with the appearance of tamales Martínez, from San Antonio, to the rise of the multina- and chili con carne. It is chili con carne that draws his tional corporation GRUMA Molinos Azteca-Maseca initial attention. Arellano traces the general story of this (115-116; Arellano, 201-205)). Pilcher further traces preparation as it made its way out of Texas at the end of the the canning of other products associated with Mexican nineteenth century and entered the Anglo diet as chili.13 food like chili peppers, enchiladas, and salsa, followed The success of this crossover was the transformation of by menudo, mole, and other products. This process was chili con carne to the Anglo palate and its subjection to reproduced as frozen foods came on the scene, now with canning. “A cheap mixture of meat, beans, and spice of other Mexican products and frozen dinners coming to varying heat, affordable and canned, became an easy the market (Arellano, 180-200). meal for a burgeoning, starved nation” (Arellano, 35). Pilcher and Arellano, the former more successfully, In the process, Arellano notes, the “only thing Mexican sustain a tension between authentic Mexican food and about it was the mongrelized Spanish in its name” (37).14 American Mexican industrial food (Arellano, 87-90; There is another story about chili that Pilcher ex- 157-158 and Pilcher, xiii-xv; 232). Yet both are attracted plores more fully: the Chili Queens (and one could add to the transition of Mexican food into fast food, in par- the tamale pushcart vendors as well). While Arellano ticular the story of Glen Bell and Taco Bell. While the notes that the Chili Queens were the “first superstars of idea of eating a tortilla wrapped around stuffing has been Mexican cooking in this country” (33), Pilcher expands around since the tortilla came into the historical picture, further that this attraction came from the existing racism the taco as a self-contained meal appears to be a more in Texas and the rest of the Southwest, resulting from recent invention. Arellano notes that the mention of the U.S. colonization of subjugated northern Mexico. The taco cannot be traced before the late nineteenth century Chili Queens presented a form of culinary and sexual (Arellano, 52). Thus there are at least two histories of the danger, alluring and treacherous, while at the same time taco in the U.S. in the 20th century. The first story is the reinforcing the Southwestern fantasy heritage. The Chili result of the continuous pattern of migrants who came to
Diálogo Reflections/Reflexiones 137 Michael Soldatenko Volume 18 Number 1 Spring 2015 the U.S. with their traditional diet of beans, chiles, some Angeles’s authentic Mexican street food had been replaced meat, and the tortilla that served the multiple purposes by Mexicans who played the role assigned to them by of plate, utensil, and food, especially for Mexican workers white patrons, who looked on in approval while chowing in the field. In time this same meal, of course, with other down tacos” (58). Arellano continues to note that often additions, appears in the local ethnic restaurants wherever Mexican food masqueraded as “Spanish” for an Anglo Mexicans might be found. Often this was blended with audience who desired Mexican food without its implied elements of borderland cuisines. Pilcher suggests that this dangers. In most cases, the majority of these restaurants taco and its accompanying dishes reflected an emerging offered the traditional Texas-style combination plates.19 Mexican American identity (131).16 Building on this model, later restaurateurs sought to offer The second story of the taco is the industrialization Anglo eaters a more “authentic” version that one could of the taco for the fast food market from the 1950s to the not find at El Torito20 or its clones. Arellano continues present, or as Arellano phrases it: “selling tacos that the his discussion with the rise of Rick Bayless’ Frontera average Mexican derided as inauthentic but the average Grill and Topolobampo: “The man who helped make American gobbled with gusto” (53). Pilcher and Arellano Mexican food more than fast or sit down, but rather both draw attention to the development of the commercial alta cocina—high-end” (89-90). At the same time, other mechanical taco fryer, which each points out was not chefs fused what they considered native with all other developed by Glenn Bell. What Bell does achieve is to sorts of European cuisines, often drawing from New connect the taco shell to Mexican cooking and foodstuffs Mexican cooking. But like earlier creole cuisine from for the non-Mexican population, in particular the Anglo Mexico, the “savageness” of native foods and dishes was population, with the added fantasy heritage of Taco Bell’s to be subject to French techniques.21 This approach gave faux adobe walls and mission style bell tower (Pilcher, us New Southwestern cuisine.22 Increasingly, the move 141). Pilcher points out that the rise of Taco Bell and toward authenticity or fusion reasserts the centrality of other similar shops took place at a time of segregation. French-style cooking resulting in the homogenization Therefore, Bell and others offered access to the “danger- of haute cuisine worldwide. Again, a European episteme ous” world of Mexican cookery—from a distance. “The determines the authenticity or the success of a fusion rise of the taco shop in the postwar era made it possible reflecting the colonial cognitive system.23 for non-Mexicans to satisfy their desire for exotic food Of course, throughout this period, Mexican restau- without venturing across lines of segregation” (Pilcher, rants that served a Mexican clientele existed alongside 142). At Bell’s shop, one could encounter what would these other establishments. Víctor Valle and Rodolfo become the defining characteristics of Mexican cooking Torres note that in the early 20th century, many of these in the U.S.: tacos, tostadas, burritos, beans, and chili, as eateries blurred “the boundaries between private and well as the chiliburger (Arellano, 63). Bell’s taco debuted public spaces, serving as living rooms for the homesick, in 1951, and by 1964 he had launched his franchising archives of culinary memory, and cozy places for politicos, platform. Eventually Taco Bell would be the world’s largest artists, and journalists to arrange their affairs” (80). Often Mexican fast food chain, soon followed by many others they reproduced the borderland style as well as the move like Del Taco or Taco John (Arellano, 49-50; 60).17 toward the search for a more “home-made” Mexican food, Pilcher and Arellano also define the role of the restau- without the ethnographic culinary tourism we could rant in the development of Mexican cooking. There are witness in the Anglo defined Mexican restaurants. Rather, two types of “Mexican food” restaurants: those that serve U.S. imperialism in Mexico and the development of capital primarily an Anglo clientele and those that can be de- continues to create the conditions for a continuous flow fined as ethnic restaurants serving Mexicans. Arellano of labor to the U.S. This flow helps ethnic Mexican family is attracted to restaurants that served Mexican food to restaurants remain in touch with regional cooking and an Anglo audience. He writes about the restaurants in its changes. Thus, the history of Oaxacan-style restau- the Olvera Street area of downtown Los Angeles where rants in Los Angeles reflects this migration pattern and Anglo businessmen and politicians continued their con- complicates endeavors to homogenize Mexican food.24 struction of the Spanish fantasy heritage at the expense of Connected to the restaurant is the appearance of the the tamale vendors in the early twentieth century:18 “Los taco truck. While for some folks the connection to the
138 Reflections/Reflexiones Diálogo Tacos and Coloniality: A Review Essay taco truck may arise only in terms of a local city’s attempt talent, virtuosity if you will, that result in el arte culinario to control food trucks, in many cities, like Los Angeles, casero (90-92). For this transformation to make sense, she the taco truck has become a place to explore not only notes that we can no longer accept a hierarchy of senses Mexican food but a wide variety of fusion dishes, like those that leaves smell, taste, and touch as inferior to hearing created by the Korean BBQ-oriented taco trucks. And and seeing. These cooks-as-artists take all five senses and yet we should not assume that the existence of “mobile form a non-verbal cognitive logic that she calls sazón (51). Mexican food” is new. As Arellano and Pilcher point out, She further describes that the artistic value of the meal tamales were sold from push carts in San Francisco and or dish is experienced by being present in the moment spread nationwide in the early 20th century, especially (101-104): “El arte culinario casero, therefore, reflects an after the Chicago Exposition in 1893.25 Of course the use artistic creation that does not fall under Western canonical of the push cart to sell Mexican foods is still visible in definitions of aesthetics, but that also goes beyond the many U.S. and Mexican cities today—selling everything notion of minority oppositional art” (107). from ice cream to elotes (corn on the cob with cheese and Like Pilcher and Arellano, Abarca rejects any notion chile), camotes (sweet potatoes), popsicles, and the most of authenticity. She notes that Mexican cuisine cannot be “American” of foods, the hot dog. From my perspective, restricted to any particular register. If we begin from the the move from the push cart to the food truck was not research that any endeavor to identify “authentic Mexican a great leap. There exists a long history of the Mexican food” must remain tied to predominant cultural norms, loncheras, or motorless trailers, paralleling mobile catering we could conclude that any notion of Mexican food is to the current food truck. inauthentic. But as I reflect on my remembrances of home Pilcher began Planet Taco with the question of what cooking (mom’s and my mother-in-law’s), or Abarca’s is authentic Mexican food. Both Pilcher and Arellano notions of sazón, perhaps her argument is that home respond that the multiplicities of Mexican cooking and cooking, as a form of art, suggests that possibly we have foodstuffs make the search for authentic Mexican food a been approaching the notion of authenticity the wrong fool’s errand. And yet as I finished reading both books, I way. When Abarca states that home cooking, “el arte could not help recalling my mom’s and mother-in-law’s culinario casero, opens the door to developing theories cooking. This allowed me to realize that something was about the aesthetics of the moment” (101), it can lead us missing in both books: Mexican food cooked in the home to think of authenticity through an existentialist lens that kitchen. I turned to a recent book by Meredith Abarca, concerns one’s engagement with the world that avoids Voices in the Kitchen, to help me explore this area. In her and transcends those cultural norms.26 Maybe the search research, Abarca seeks to understand how working-class for an authentic Mexican cuisine is really the search for women symbolically or literally transform the ideologies that moment when my mom or mother-in-law engaged embedded in the construction of the kitchen as their place in cooking, allowing her sazón free reign, stepping away into their own social space (20). Through her work, she from the cookbook, contrivances and established norms concludes that women recreate the kitchen from a site of of Mexican cooking and foodstuffs. The moment, siting at oppression and aggression to one that is their own space the table to eat their creation, was a point of constructing of social, economic, and personal agency (36). While this an expression of Mexican food. process is important, there is only one part that I would like to borrow from her discussion to then connect to ENDNOTES the issue of authenticity. 1 I borrow this last idea from Janer who writes that one One of the points that Abarca makes as she engages might talk about a cuisine shared by the Caribbean (her charlas) with working-class women who cook is how region, but each island’s cooking starts at a different they can also be cooks-as-artists. She argues that these point on a continuum with varying degrees of European women can transform quotidian cooking into artistic cre- and African cuisine (2007, 399). The analogy she uses ations (79). She rejects the notion that culinary talent and is drawn from music. its epistemic framing cannot occur in the home kitchen 2 Mexicas were a Nahua people who settled the twin cities and exists only in particular gastronomical expressions. of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, and entered a period Rather, she observes that women develop the skills and of expansion until the arrival of the Spanish.
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3 By turning to Paz, I wish to underscore the violence made choices in terms of how to recreate and create behind the colonial project. I do not want us to assume dishes and techniques based on a considerably large but that the movement of agricultural and animal produce new pool of ingredients and a number of imperfectly and forms of preparation are neutral. Here, we can remembered traditions” (399). draw on the folks who write about the coloniality of 8 At the center of this picture was maize. Pilcher adds power, especially as tied to culture and knowledge. After that Europeans attached the stigma of alien, strange, writing this, I came across an essay by Adolfo Albán and poor to maize. This stigma would be attached to Achinte: “El ejercicio del colonizador, con el fin de en- many foods from the Americas; these foods, like the contrar equivalencias en los productos, intentando que population and the land, were perceived as erotic, dan- su paladar ‘leyera’ los nuevos códigos gustativos de los gerous, and exotic (41). Nonetheless, Mesoamerican and sabores encontrados, ejerció una ‘violencia epistémica’ Spanish cuisine adopted from the expanded repertory (Castro-Gómez, 2005) que tuvo como consecuencias el of foods and practices that came from colonization. cambio de nombre de muchos productos, el desprecio However, in these new culinary cultures, native culinary por sabores, aromas y preparaciones de los pueblos knowledge remained secondary to European. Cooking originarios, o la apropiación de los mismos, ignorando was a Eurocentric endeavor (Janer, 2007, 391). los contextos socioculturales y religiosos que estuvieron 9 For over a century, Tejanas in San Antonio, using local asociados a la utilización e ingesta de determinados ingredients and family recipes, would set up makeshift productos y alimentos” (15). tables in the plazas and serve hot bowls of chili. They 4 John M.D. Pohl, “Santiago and the Conquest of Mexico,” became known as the “chili queens” and became an presentation at California State University Los Angeles important community institution. Unfortunately they at the “Teotihuacan to Tenochtitlan: Cultural Continuity also were interpreted through the Spanish “fantasy in Central Mexico, a Conference in Homage to Alfredo heritage (Pilcher, 106). López Austin” (February 2012). Building on John Poole’s 10 Pilcher writes that Northwest and Tejas/Nuevo article “Creation Stories, Hero Cults and Alliance Santander cuisines depended heavily on livestock, Building: Postclassic Confederacies of Central and particularly mutton for the former and longhorns for Southern Mexico from 1150-1458.”
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14 In the same chapter, Arellano follows the story of the 23 Janer writes: “A world cuisine determined by one local tamal as it entered the U.S. diet. Again, like chili, he tradition [French] passing as universal is the high-brow looks at the industrialization of tamales (canning) version of the McDonaldization of the world” (2007, as the entrance of Mexican food to the Anglo palate 393). (Arellano, 40-49). 24 As Mexican food sold in U.S. restaurants went through 15 De Leon argues that 19th century Anglos in Texas con- its multiple transformations, both authors note a similar structed Mexican women as possessing a “defective story in the writing of Mexican food in cookbooks, with morality” (36-48). various histories, some rooted in Mexico and others in 16 Both authors draw attention to the role of the restaurant the U.S., and Arellano notes that the cookbook industry as entrepreneurial cultural brokers. They explore the has been overwhelmingly controlled/written by U.S. continuum of restaurants serving ethnic Mexicans to authors (90). Not unlike the battle among restaurants foods that were acceptable to the Anglo palate (discus- over authenticity, a similar tension appears in cook- sion continues later). books. Thus the story of Diana Southwood Kennedy’s 17 At the same time, some local taco shops remain closer documentation of indigenous cuisine can be placed in to changing trends in Mexico. Thus, we see the con- dispute with John Rivera Sedlar’s internationalization tinuation of the “soft taco” and the introduction of of Mexican cuisine, Rick Bayless’ interpretation of tacos al carbón. Or building on U.S. trends to provide Mexican regional creole cuisine, or even Fabiola Cabeza consumers with the fish taco (Arellano, 68). de Baca Gilbert’s New Mexican cuisine (Pilcher, 198; 18 Valle and Torres make a similar argument on pages 68- Arellano 100). 70. They note that the restaurant becomes a “quasi-pub- 25 Arellano explores the transformation of the tamal as lic space” that served as both theatre and performance, it moves eastward across the U.S. (using the English, helping to create the symbolic economy (71). grammatically erroneous spelling, tamale). He notes 19 Arellano provides a detailed history of the rise of some the change in preparation of the masa used in tamales of the earliest Mexican restaurants in Texas. was possibly influenced by African Americans from 20 Arellano tells the story of Larry Cano and the found- the South who brought their own versions: “To this ing of El Torito, and how he shifted Mexican cuisine day, the tamales of Chicago and the Mississippi Delta in California away from its presentation as “Spanish” are the only American-born, non-Mexican dominated (74). traditions for tamales that date back to that era …” (46) 21 “In such an intellectual division of labor, a cadre of 26 I think Abarca overdoes her argument that somehow the mostly non-Latino elite chefs appropriates and re- cook-as-artist and art-in-process cannot fit a Western interprets the Latino ingredients and recipes their aesthetics (101). Latino staffs assemble into nouvelle creations” (Valle and Torres, 71). WORKS CITED 22 Pilcher documents the connection between the de- Abarca, Meredith E. Voices in the Kitchen: Views of Food velopment of la nueva cocina mexicana and New and the World from Working-Class Mexican and Southwestern gourmet cooking. He notes that in the Mexican American Women. College Station: Texas struggle between globalization and national sover- A&M UP, 2006. eignty, Mexican chefs reworked nineteenth century Albán Achinte, Adolfo. “Comida y colonialidad: Tensiones tropes of indigenous, creole, and foreign cuisines (190- entre el proyecto hegemónico moderno y las me- 194). In the creation of this haute cuisine, whether in morias del paladar.” Calle 14 [journal] 4:5 (2010). Mexico and the U.S., Mexican-American and indige- Arellano, Gustavo. Taco USA: How Mexican Food nous Mexican cuisines are marginalized (201). Valle Conquered America. New York: Scribner, 2012. and Víctor state that The practitioners and promoters De Leon, Arnoldo. They Called Them Greasers: Anglo of California cuisine, nouvelle cuisine mexique, and Attitudes toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821-1900. Cal-Mex, Southwest, and Tex-Mex cuisines, as well as Austin: U of Texas P, 1983. other variants of new American cuisine, mined the Janer, Zilkia. Latino Food Culture. Westport: Greenwood past to feed a comodifying aesthetic” (88). Press, 2008.
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Janer, Zilkia. “(In)edible Nature: New World Food and Coloniality.” Cultural Studies 21:2-3 (2007). Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico. New York: Grove Press, 1961. Pilcher, Jeffrey M. Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Pilcher, Jeffrey M. ¡Qué vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1998. Valle, Víctor M. and Rodolfo D. Torres. “Mexican Cuisine: Food as Culture.” Latino Metropolis. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2000, pp 67-99.
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