Que Vivan Los Tamales! (Dialogos (Paperback)): Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Diálogos)

New
Paperback
1998
$47.49

Connections between what people eat and who they are--between cuisine and identity--reach deep into Mexican history, beginning with pre-Columbian inhabitants offering sacrifices of human flesh to maize gods in hope of securing plentiful crops. This cultural history of food in Mexico traces the influence of gender, race, and class on food preferences from Aztec times to the present and relates cuisine to the formation of national identity.
The metate and mano, used by women for grinding corn and chiles since pre-Columbian times, remained essential to preparing such Mexican foods as tamales, tortillas, and mole poblano well into the twentieth century. Part of the ongoing effort by intellectuals and political leaders to Europeanize Mexico was an attempt to replace corn with wheat. But native foods and flavors persisted and became an essential part of indigenista ideology and what it meant to be authentically Mexican after 1940, when a growing urban middle class appropriated the popular native foods of the lower class and proclaimed them as national cuisine.

Synopsis

Connections between what people eat and who they are--between cuisine and identity--reach deep into Mexican history, beginning with pre-Columbian inhabitants offering sacrifices of human flesh to maize gods in hope of securing plentiful crops. This cultural history of food in Mexico traces the influence of gender, race, and class on food preferences from Aztec times to the present and relates cuisine to the formation of national identity.

The metate and mano, used by women for grinding corn and chiles since pre-Columbian times, remained essential to preparing such Mexican foods as tamales, tortillas, and mole poblano well into the twentieth century. Part of the ongoing effort by intellectuals and political leaders to Europeanize Mexico was an attempt to replace corn with wheat. But native foods and flavors persisted and became an essential part of indigenista ideology and what it meant to be authentically Mexican after 1940, when a growing urban middle class appropriated the popular native foods of the lower class and proclaimed them as national cuisine.

$47.49

Quantity

2 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 234
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 15 Apr 1998
ISBN 10: 0826318738
ISBN 13: 9780826318732

Media Reviews

This fascinating and very readable account indicates how much we can learn about people from a study of the food they eat. Vivan los tamales!
A delightful approach . . . . This well-written book highlights the interaction of the regional and national and the role of women in developing a national identity.
[A] delightful approach . . . . This well-written book highlights the interaction of the regional and national and the role of women in developing a national identity.
Que vivan los tamales! provides the foodies with a great addition to their librar[ies]. . . . Politics, society, economy and food history converge like a grand stew with all the right fixings.

Author Bio

Jeffrey M. Pilcher is associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota. He is also author of Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity, The Human Tradition in Mexico, and Food in World History.