Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican
Food by Jeffrey M. Pilcher
Oxford University Press, 10/1/2012
Hardcover, 320 pages
Oxford University Press, 10/1/2012
Hardcover, 320 pages
ISBN-13: 9780199740062
nonfiction
Description:
My Thoughts:
Description:
As late as the 1960s, tacos were virtually unknown outside Mexico and the American Southwest. Within fifty years the United States had shipped taco shells everywhere from Alaska to Australia, Morocco to Mongolia. But how did this tasty hand-held food--and Mexican food more broadly--become so ubiquitous?
In Planet Taco, Jeffrey Pilcher traces the historical origins and evolution of Mexico's national cuisine, explores its incarnation as a Mexican American fast-food, shows how surfers became global pioneers of Mexican food, and how Corona beer conquered the world. Pilcher is particularly enlightening on what the history of Mexican food reveals about the uneasy relationship between globalization and authenticity. The burritos and taco shells that many people think of as Mexican were actually created in the United States. But Pilcher argues that the contemporary struggle between globalization and national sovereignty to determine the authenticity of Mexican food goes back hundreds of years. During the nineteenth century, Mexicans searching for a national cuisine were torn between nostalgic "Creole" Hispanic dishes of the past and French haute cuisine, the global food of the day. Indigenous foods were scorned as unfit for civilized tables. Only when Mexican American dishes were appropriated by the fast food industry and carried around the world did Mexican elites rediscover the foods of the ancient Maya and Aztecs and embrace the indigenous roots of their national cuisine.
From a taco cart in Hermosillo, Mexico to the "Chili Queens" of San Antonio and tamale vendors in L.A., Jeffrey Pilcher follows this highly adaptable cuisine, paying special attention to the people too often overlooked in the battle to define authentic Mexican food: Indigenous Mexicans and Mexican Americans.
My Thoughts:
In Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican
Food author Jeffrey M. Pilcher shows beyond a doubt that: "The history of
tacos, like eating tacos, is a messy business." (Location 373) He researches
the question: what is authentic Mexican food? What is mainly viewed as Mexican
fare globally is actually an Americanized version of the cuisine - and beyond
that authentic food is difficult to precisely locate because there are a variety
of dishes that all vary by region.
Pilcher researches the globalization of Mexican
food, as most of us know it today. Along the way he also shares many interesting
stories and historical notes in this very interesting, accessible account. Much
of what is viewed as Mexican food is really Tex-Mex. For example, Pilcher shows
that:
"Following the movement of three basic ingredients
from the Mesoamerican kitchen, corn, chilies, and chocolate, can help to reveal
the emergence of material and cultural patterns that later contributed to the
global reputation of Mexican food. Already in the early modern era, these foods
acquired vastly different images among elite and popular sectors. The importance
of social distinctions can readily be seen in the case of yet another New World
plant, the tomato." (Location 635-638)
For those interested in the history of a cuisine
and how trade influenced the spread of it, Pilcher is thorough. He exams the
history of Mexican food and follows it to today. Along the way he discusses how
the cuisine was changed and how it spread world wide.
For all the nonfiction fans out there who
appreciate documentation and sources as much as I do, Pilcher includes 46 photos
as well as a glossary, select bibliography, notes, and
an index. (Yes!)
Warning: you will be craving Mexican/ Tex-Mex food
while reading. (Thankfully the weather changed here and with a Fall chill in the
air, I made a big pot of chili. I had been eyeing Taco Bell after work.)
Very Highly Recommended, especially for
foodies who love history.
Jeffrey M. Pilcher is Professor of History at
the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Que vivan los tamales!: Food and the Making of
Mexican Identity; The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and
Meat in Mexico City; and Food in
World History. He also edited the Oxford Handbook of Food
History.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy
of Oxford University Press and Netgalley for review
purposes.
Quotes:
Quotes:
What is authentic Mexican food? Surveys show that
Mexican is one of the top three ethnic foods in the United States, along with
Chinese and Italian. But just as chop suey and pepperoni pizza are not typical
of the foods of China and Italy, few people in Mexico actually eat the burritos
(made with wheat flour tortillas) and taco shells (pre-fried corn tortillas)
that often pass for Mexican in the United States. Of course, there are growing
numbers of cookbooks and websites, celebrity chefs and migrant restaurants, all
claiming to offer “authentic” Mexican, as opposed to Americanized food. Still,
when traveling across the country—or around the world—burritos and taco shells
predominate.
The global presence of Americanized tacos has
provoked outrage from many Mexicans, who take patriotic pride in their national
cuisine. But beyond a common distaste for “gloopy” North American versions,
there is surprisingly little consensus about what is properly Mexican, even in
Mexico. Every region and virtually every town has its own distinct specialties,
which are regarded with deep affection by the local inhabitants. Preface,
Location 20
The search for authentic Mexican food—or rather,
the struggle to define what that meant—has been going on for two hundred years,
and some of the most important battles have been fought outside of Mexico.
Notions of authenticity have been contested through interactions between
insiders and outsiders, they have changed over time, and they have contributed
to broader power relations. Location 41
With the U.S. rise to global power in the
twentieth century, this Tex-Mex cooking was industrialized and carried around
the world. Mexican elites, confronted with the potential loss of their culinary
identity to this powerful neighbor, then sought to ground their national cuisine
in the pre-Hispanic past. This book tells the story of how a particular idea of
authentic Mexican food was invented in the global marketplace by promoters of
culinary tourism in order to compete against industrial foods from the United
States. Location 47
Planet Taco examines this conflict between
globalization and the nation as a battle of images between how foreigners think
about Mexican food and how Mexicans understand their own national cuisine. In
particular, it seeks to show how Mexicans imagined a version of pre-Hispanic
authenticity in order to heighten the contrast with globalized industrial dishes
from the United States. Location 182-185
To understand how a Spanish word, newly used for a
generic snack, became associated with a particular form of rolled tortilla,
requires a shift to the silver mines that connected colonial Mexico with the
global economy. Location 215-217
Meanwhile, a parallel history of early
globalization, the travels of maize and other indigenous crops around the world,
further muddled the image of Mexican food. Location 244-245
But is authenticity obligatory? Are ethnic
entrepreneurs “selling out” if they change the recipe to market their food to a
wider audience? And can ethnicity be acquired second-hand? After all, the
postwar travels of Mexican food around the world offer a classic immigrant
story. The cooks just happened not to be, for the most part, Mexican. To answer
these questions, one must first remember that iconic recipes exist only on the
pages of cookbooks; in practice, they are adapted constantly to suit available
ingredients. What cultural groups share is a general idea of the appropriate
flavors, proportions, and combinations that belong in any particular dish, say,
the traditional spices in a recado negro (Yucatecan spice mixture), or the
proper balance of meat to tortilla for tacos al pastor, or the right variety of
cheese for marketplace enchiladas.25 These opinions vary between regions, social
classes, families, and even with the particular sazón or taste of the individual
cook. One woman’s secret ingredient is another’s outrage. Working-class Mexican
and Mexican American women are often uninterested in notions of authenticity.
That concept is more useful for claiming social distinction or for marketing
restaurants and cookbooks than for getting dinner on the table.26 Location
349-358
The Mexican poet Octavio Paz famously declared,
“the melting pot is a social idea that, when applied to culinary art, produces
abominations.”27 Location 358-360
In the days of the Aztecs, the Taco Bell dog would
have been in the gorditas.13 Location 480
Literally meaning the “little donkey,” the
burrito’s origins are as obscure as those of the taco. Location 792
1 comment:
Thanks for your insights.
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