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  • Traditional Regional Cuisine as an Element of Local Identity and Development: A Case Study from San Pedro El Saucito, Sonora, Mexico
  • Juana María Meléndez Torres (bio) and Gloria María Cañez de la Fuente (bio)

Introduction

Food is a fundamental part of any society’s culture. Our relationships with edible natural resources and technological development continue to evolve and influence what we eat in terms of how we obtain our nourishment and even how we prepare it. The way these things are changing isn’t separate from the changes seen in the international division of labor, the development of new markets, and developments in the food industry, which have made possible the appearance of new foods and new ways of conserving, producing, and preparing industrial products. This transformation is also seen in the timing of consumption, meal schedules, where we eat, and with whom. Likewise, it is found in the emergence of other spaces of socialization related to how we feed ourselves, to leisure, or to gathering socially outside of the home. Currently, work, fashion, and marketing are all aspects that influence the way we eat.

On the other hand, in order to characterize and understand the evolution of our diet and cuisine, it is necessary to know how these are linked to production, to the ways edible products are obtained, to the consumption and distribution of food, as well as the social, economic, [End Page 599] and cultural contexts that sustain them. In other words, we must understand the regional food system1—on which our dietary repertoire depends—as well as the distinct historic, socioeconomic, and political aspects which, together with wider processes such as globalization, have influenced how we feed ourselves and the culinary practices of communities and have allowed large transnational corporations to impose new patterns of production, commercialization, and consumption. An example of this is the great variety of products, many of them from foreign places, that are now found in the market, influencing the development of new dietary preferences and culinary practices.2

At the same time, food—and particularly cuisine—is related to history, to what we are and where we belong; in other words, it has to do with our identity. Mintz (2003:28) suggests that eating is not a purely biological act:

Foods that are eaten have stories associated with the past of those eating them; the techniques used to find, process, prepare, serve, and consume those foods vary culturally and have their own histories. And they are never simply eaten; their consumption is conditioned by their meaning.

In this sense, food should be seen as a complex social fact in which differentiating and differentiated production and consumption processes (as much material as symbolic factors) move together (Alvarez 2002:62). But it is in traditional cuisine that the food knowledge and culinary practices that continue to form part of our heritage and cultural identity are solidified. This includes culinary wisdom, customs and rituals, as well as the methods of food preparation that are recognized and passed down from generation to generation. In this way, traditional regional cuisines embody a socially and historically constructed heritage, a heritage that has been enriched and modified over generations and which has been re-created and transformed locally. As Padilla (2006:2) explains:

Cuisines constitute a synergy between diverse aspects of community life: agriculture; diet; traditional markets; methods of preserving food; traditions; and processes ranging from old technologies to the most recent innovations. Cuisines are also at the center of processes of regional cultural exchange that have shaped identities with the coming and going of the community’s inhabitants. Undoubtedly, dynamics such as globalization and its homogenizing effects are present in culinary dynamics. However, far from believing that we [End Page 600] must implant ourselves on the global plane, we assert that traditional regional cuisines and their continuous process of enrichment grow and are reproduced in local spaces, that is to say in our space, the space we inhabit and know and which is transformed by multiple social forces.

Likewise, Padilla indicates that the knowledge and practice of traditional regional cuisines constitute part of the intangible heritage of each society and community. They...

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