¡Que vivan los tamales! by Jeffrey M. Pilcher (my informational text example)

 

 

          Jeffrey M. Pilcher’s 165-paged history ¡Que vivan los tamales!: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998) looks at how food in Mexico from the pre-Columbian era to the 1940s has become intertwined with Mexican national identity. Pilcher argues that the early colonial conflict between Mexican natives and Europeans can be seen in the food they ate. The dietary staple of Mexican natives was corn, while the European newcomers ate wheat. With Europeans in power in colonial Mexican society, consuming wheat instead of corn became a sign of wealth and whiteness. Wheat represented a European(ized) Mexican identity and culture that denigrated and disregarded native “corn” Mexican identity.

           However, this European–native conflict did not end in Mexico in the colonial period. Pilcher traces how various Mexican government officials and elites periodically tried to replace wheat with corn through the mid-twentieth century. This was not only a literal replacement, shifting crops and food production towards wheat, but a metaphorical one as well, with Mexican elites attempting to erase all aspects of native Mexican culture (including the traditional role of women). They did this in order to get everyone in Mexico to fit into their narrow, European definition of Mexican identity, but despite multiple efforts, corn and its cultural habits never disappeared. Rather than the “either/or” mentality that was dominant in Mexico before the mid-twentieth century, by the 1940s Mexican identity came to be defined as mestizo, mixed native and European (whether they actually were of mixed ancestry or not). And this shift in national identity that embraced both cultural aspects of Mexican identity resulted in a national cuisine that was likewise mixed, embracing both wheat and corn, as can be seen in Mexican food today.  

           Pilcher’s creative approach to present Mexican history through food and identity makes his arguments and the information and history he presents in ¡Que vivan los tamales! fun to read and easy to understand. Because of this, this history is accessible for a wide audience, from teenagers and adults to historians and the general public alike. ¡Que vivan los tamales! is a well-written, engaging, and entertaining cultural history that should enjoy a wide audience. More history books and informational texts should be written this way.

          --Ashley Cleeves