Mexican Fods

The Mexican cuisine included on the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (unesco) Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity is not just any Mexican cuisine: concretely, what is recognized is traditional Mexican cuisine. This is the mestiza cuisine still valid today, with its diverse roots: to pre-Hispanic indigenous cooking first of all were added culinary customs brought by the Spanish, which in turn incorporated elements from Asia, Africa (particularly Arab traditions), and other countries of Europe. During the viceroyalty, the direct influence from Asia increased through the goods, particularly spices, brought by the Nao galleons from China and Africa at the cost of slave labor. Throughout the nineteenth century, European influences continued, particularly from France, because of the immigration beginning in the 1830s, the armed intervention of Napoleon III and the ill-fated Maximilian of Habsburg in the 1860s, as well * Writer and gastronomic researcher. Photos by Adalberto Ríos and Adalberto Ríos Lanz.

as the curious “Frenchification” under Don Porfirio Díaz at the end of the century, with his black frock coat and top hat, he who as a young man in his native Tuxtepec had been a shoemaker and carpenter. From nineteenth-century France, we received dishes, techniques, and terminology. Among them are the words “restaurant,” “menu,” “chef,” “buffet,” “consommé,” “mayonnaise,” “champignon,” “omelette,” “vol-au-vent,” “crêpe,” “canapé,” “mousse,” and “soufflé.” The gastronomical term “haute cuisine” is very debatable when applied to our culinary tradition, since, while in France it has a clear, precise meaning that applies to the food of the rich as distinct from that of the poor, in Mexico, it only confuses matters. The fact is that traditional Mexican cuisine is the food of the people, the kind recognized by the unesco, and that is the highest gastronomical form because of its authenticity, antiquity, constancy, current relevance, territorial and demographic coverage, day-to-day use, and also its festive character. To accept something else as Mexican haute cuisine would be to accept that the popular cuisine is baisse cuisine; more than an injustice, this would simply be completely untrue. When the best and most luxurious authentic Mexican restaurants and the most privileged private dining rooms in the country serve real Mexican food, they are actually decking themselves out with the country’s most common popular dishes: mole sauces, adobo marinades, pit-roasted meat, braised pork carnitas, a long list of other dishes, and, of course, tortillas. Any restaurant in Mexico, from Tijuana to Tapachula, even if its specialty is international cuisine or any other, will include enchiladas or chilaquiles, the most pristine expression of the poorest tables, on its breakfast menu. Mexico’s popular traditional cuisine is the kind that adorns and is boasted of at genuine Mexican aristocratic and plutocratic banquets. Quite another matter is fusion cuisine —frequently “confusion” cuisine— or what is called “signature cuisine,” which uses Mexican ingredients or dishes as a starting point. The supposed connoisseurs call it haute cuisine and even Mexican nouvelle cuisine. But our authentic traditional cuisine, the highest, is popular cuisine, and that is what the unesco recognized.