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‘Like the Papacy of Mexican Cuisine’: Mayoras and Traditional Foods in Contemporary Mexico
Abstract
In 2010, UNESCO declared Mexican traditional cuisine as Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The figure of the mayora—the wife or concubine of the Spanish American Hacienda owner and therefore principal cook in the Estate household during the colonial period—has over the past couple of decades been recovered, revalorised, and promoted in Mexico as a purveyor of ancestral culinary knowledge among First Nations (pueblos originarios). Native ingredients, techniques, and practices, mostly transmitted orally and almost exclusively by women, have been reinterpreted and included in the culinary repertoire of high-end restaurants, with mayoras acting as ‘traditional cooks’ (never ‘chefs’) and guarantors of the intergenerational transmission of ‘traditional Mexican food’.We seek in this chapter to critically explore the political, socio-economic, and cultural processes by which mayoras have come to represent Mexican culinary authenticity whilst at the same time ‘elevating’ this cuisine to fine dining. In particular, we are interested in explaining how and why First Nation female household cooks so emblematic of Mexico’s settler-colonial past have been recharged with distinctive economic value, cultural authority, and political power at the start of the twenty-first century.
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Abstract: Through multi-sited fieldwork carried out in 2011 and 2014-17 in central Oaxaca and an analysis of secondary sources, this paper scrutinizes the rise of a culinary celebrity, Zapotec cook Abigail Mendoza Ruíz of Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, in the broader context of a Mexican cultural politics of food as heritage. Focusing on food-related biography this essay reveals vernacular dy-namics of heritagization of native foodways and the role renowned female cooks (cocineras) have played in this process. I scrutinize negotiations and contestations as well as open conflicts related to the representation of heritage, the politics and rights between different actors engaged over the years in (re)constructing a social imagery of ethnic female cooking for the benefits of the tourism industry, and, more broadly, state attempts at re-branding Mexico as a safe gastronomic destination. Keywords:gastronomic heritage, gender, culinary tourism, Oaxaca, Mexico. Resumen:A través de un trabajo de campo multi-situado realizado en 2011 y 2014-17 en la región central de Oaxaca y del análisis de fuentes secundarios, este texto analiza el surgimiento de una celebridad culinaria, la cocinera zapoteca Abigail Mendoza Ruíz de Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, en el contexto más amplio de la política cultural mexicana de la comida como patrimonio. Centrarme en la biografía relacionada con la alimentación me permite revelar las dinámicas vernáculas de la patrimonialización de las prácticas alimentarias-culinarias nativas y el papel que han desempeñado en este proceso las cocineras de renombre. Escudriño las negociaciones y las disputas, así como los conflictos abiertos sobre las representaciones del patrimonio, la política y los derechos entre los
Cocineras tradicionales—traditional female cooks—are women of Mexican indigenous descent who embody the status of food tradition bearers and the “ethnic” components of Mexican foodways. In the climate of enthusiasm generated by the 2010 nomination of “traditional Mexican cuisine” as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO, cocineras tradicionales are esteemed social figures and both a driving force and a symbol of Mexico’s current food and tourism policies. This article is an examination of the power relations surrounding the making of this heritage identity. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Mexico City and the state of Oaxaca among cocineras, heritage agents, and cultural activists, it demonstrates how the economics and politics of culture turn food into a tool and a product, describes the strategies employed by various actors in this realm, and examines the ways in which recognition and material rewards are allocated in the field of food heritage.
¿A qué reenvía el éxito del patrimonio que tiene curso en la mayoría de las sociedades contemporáneas? Si él manifiesta la producción de reglas y normas promovidas por instituciones internacionales, y que fija una ambición claramente universalista, el patrimonio, en cuanto a sus usos y su puesta en marcha, no refleja menos la expresión de elección, de esperas, de estrategias o de dinámicas de actores y de grupos locales con intereses múltiples y a menudo divergentes. El caso del patrimonio alimentario, más particularmente de la “rutas gastronómicas” en México, pone al día las puestas contradictorias que se juegan alrededor de la patrimonialización, y las formas narrativas en las cuales se apoya. Más allá, el patrimonio alimentario interroga la relación de las sociedades a su historia.
In Ethnicity, Inc. anthropologists John L. and Jean Comaroff analyze a new moment in the history of human identity: its rampant commodification. Through a wide-ranging exploration of the changing relationship between culture and the market, they address a pressing question: Wherein lies the future of ethnicity? Their account begins in South Africa, with the incorporation of an ethno-business in venture capital by a group of traditional African chiefs. But their horizons are global: Native American casinos; Scotlandâs efforts to brand itself; a Zulu ethno-theme park named Shakaland; a world religion declared to be intellectual property; a chiefdom made into a global business by means of its platinum holdings; San âBushmenâ with patent rights potentially worth millions of dollars; nations acting as commercial enterprises; and the rapid growth of marketing firms that target specific ethnic populations are just some of the diverse examples that fall under the Comaroffsâ incisive scrutiny. These phenomena range from the disturbing through the intriguing to the absurd. Through them, the Comaroffs trace the contradictory effects of neoliberalism as it transforms identities and social being across the globe. Ethnicity, Inc. is a penetrating account of the ways in which ethnic populations are remaking themselves in the image of the corporationâwhile corporations coopt ethnic practices to open up new markets and regimes of consumption. Intellectually rigorous but leavened with wit, this is a powerful, highly original portrayal of a new world being born in a tectonic collision of culture, capitalism, and identity.
Winner of the Society for Economic Anthropology Annual Book Prize 2008.
Belize, a tiny corner of the Caribbean wedged into Central America, has been a fast food nation since buccaneers and pirates first stole ashore. As early as the 1600s it was already caught in the great paradox of globalization: how can you stay local and relish your own home cooking, while tasting the delights of the global marketplace? Menus, recipes and bad colonial poetry combine with Wilk’s sharp anthropological insight to give an important new perspective on the perils and problems of globalization.
In this chapter, we examine the fate of three traditional foodstuffs and beverages specific to the indigenous cultures of Mexico which were rejected, despised or prohibited by the colonisers or, later, by the upper classes, and are presently eliciting enthusiasm as health or gourmet foods; a pseudocereal, amaranth (Amaranthus spp., Chenopodium spp.); edible insects; and a fermented drink, pulque, drawn from the sap of the century plant (Agave spp.). Due to the quality of their nutrients, these three products may be considered as 'super-food’, and definitely be classified as ‘traditional food’, since they have been consumed by the autochtonous people of Mexico for centuries. We analyse why these foods were rejected at some point, while the consumption of other traditional foods, such as maize and beans, was never questioned. We show that such dynamics varied according to periods and places: at the beginning of the 16th century, the Spanish clergy prohibited ‘pagan’ offerings, often made of amaranth, and probably disdained its consumption; most Spaniards rejected insects, while they adopted pulque, that the elites started to despise only until the end of the 19th century. Why and how a change in the appreciation of these foods and drinks has occurred over time and why they are valued today, constitute also the questions that we aim at developing in this article.
Mexican writers of the twentieth century have often imagined cuisine to be a symbol of their national identity, a mestizo blend of Native American and Spanish influences. Salvador Novo, for example, a member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua and official chronicler of Mexico City, traced the beginnings of mestizaje to the “happy encounter” between corn tortillas and pork sausage that produced the first taco. The most common culinary metaphor for the Mexican nation was mole poblano (turkey in deep-brown sauce). Authors in the 1920s began attributing the origins of this dish to the convents of colonial Puebla, and in particular to Sor Andrea de la Asunción of the Dominican Santa Rosa cloister. About 1680 she supposedly combined seasonings from the Old World with chile peppers from the New in honor of Viceroy Tomás Antonio de la Cerda y Aragón. Mole thus represented Mexico’s “cosmic race,” created by divine inspiration and served up for the approval of the Spanish crown.
After peace was restored in Mexico following the Revolution of 1910, the country's rulers, like their Porfirian forebears, continued to believe in the need to attract foreign immigrants. However, this view began to shift in die mid-1930s in the face of fears about the arrival of foreigners that were considered undesirable. On matters of immigration, the country did not stray far from the restrictive practices that extended across the Americas from Canada to Argentina, yet in Mexico, unlike anywhere else on the continent, the authorities were forced to confront a dual problem posed by migration in the nation they sought to govern.
Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1987. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 342-356).
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