Mestizaje and Gastronomy

Unwrapping the history of Mexico’s real national snack (the taco) uncovers classism, dynamite, and shifting definitions of culture.

Jeffrey Pilcher¹

Is it a tortilla with peanut butter and jelly, or jalapeños piled on Wonder Bread? Is it a Coney made with tortillas, or a Kaiser roll smothered with salchichas y salsa mayonesa?”

Trinidad Sánchez, Jr.²

When culinary cultures collide, especially when they are in close geographical proximity, they enter into dynamic and complex exchanges. Often what results is an introduction to different foodstuffs, adaptations of distinct food products and different cooking styles and techniques that in turn result in facets of fusion, hybridity and mestizaje.

Whether as a result of colonization, global food exchanges, or exigencies of memoria del paladar, Latinos have brought various culinary traditions into interplay in their everyday lives, wherever they live. Whether eating “Korean Tacos,” prepared by a Korean who grew up in East L.A. or enjoying a “tamal” in a Chinese dumpling restaurant in L.A.’s San Gabriel Valley, distinct food cultures have come into contact, producing fluid culinary exchanges.

In this collection of essays, we explore the dynamic relationship of an ecology of gastronomy. Here authors discuss what U.S. Latinos and Latin Americans eat, and the ways in which Latinos have had to engage in what the Puerto Rican scholar and cultural historian Angel G. Quintero Rivera has called the culinary arte de bregar (toiling and struggling),³ between various food traditions and issues of colonality. As the noted Italian food historian Massimo Montanari has observed, “Food opens up cooking to all kinds of inventions, exchanges and influences and it is the principal outlet for entry into contact with different cultures.”⁴

Just as with the fusion and mixing of race, language, and religion, Mexican food offers us an interesting example of the melding of culture and traditions. While not a monolithic structure set in stone, Mexican cuisine is an organic entity constantly evolving and mutating. Mexican food and food systems have gone through a long and complex evolution, defined by the forces of geography and external influences, from the biological conquest and imposition of European foodstuffs (plants and animals) to the introduction of New World products into the European diet. In our own day, increased modernization and globalization of Mexican food and foodstuffs have brought about important consequences for the diets of both Mexican and Mexican Americans.

If we focus on Mexican and Mexican American cuisine in the U.S., we can find a complex culinary history, from early twentieth century interest in Mexican cooking, as seen in the cookbooks of Diane Kennedy, to the enormous explosion of attention paid to Mexican cuisine in the books, restaurants, and TV shows featuring Rick Bayless. Through the studies of this issue we hope to provide an understanding of how mestizaje has come to shape the nature of Mexican food in both Mexico and the U.S.

Any city in the U.S. with a large Latino population, the fastest-growing group of North Americans, is home to a plethora of Latino restaurants, grocery stores or “food trucks,” be they Mexican, Central American, Cuban, South American or fusion Asian Latino. Regional Latin American products—witness the ubiquity of Goya or Herdez products—are available in the “Hispanic” section of most major supermarkets, alongside their Asian and Mid-Eastern brother and sister products. It is not only the increased visibility of Latino ingredients, but also the presence of Latino chefs, cooks, and staff who have found their way into the production of food in various U.S. restaurants. Here, we wish to call attention to the number of Latino chefs and cooks, not just in Mexican restaurants, be they traditional Mexican or Mexican American, but also “New Wave” and high-end establishments populated by Latino and non-Latino “foodies.” The presence of Latino cooks in non-Latino restaurants, especially Asian restaurants (Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese), should also be noted.

While the number of Latino and “Hispanic” oriented cookbooks, like those on Spanish tapas, abound and are ever-present, there are few scholarly works on the...