Planet taco : a global history of Mexican food / Jeffrey M. Pilcher.
Pilcher, Jeffrey M., 1965-
2012
TX716.M4 P543 2012 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

Items

Details

Title Planet taco : a global history of Mexican food / Jeffrey M. Pilcher.
Author Pilcher, Jeffrey M., 1965-
ISBN 9780199740062 alk. paper
0199740062 alk. paper
Imprint Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2012.
Language English
Description xv, 292 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.
Call Number TX716.M4 P543 2012
Dewey Decimal Classification 641.5972
Summary 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 this book the author 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. The author 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 he 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 Los Angeles., the author 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.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (p. 268-282) and index.
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
Introduction: A Tale of Two Tacos
Part I. Proto-Tacos
Maize and the Making of Mexico
Burritos in the Borderlands
Part II. National Tacos
From the Pastry War to Parisian Mole
The Rise and Fall of the Chili Queens
Inventing the Mexican American Taco
Part III. Global Tacos
The First Wave of Global Mexican
The Blue Corn Bonanza
Conclusion: The Battle of the Taco Trucks
Glossary.

Browse Subjects

Show more subjects...

Statistics

from
to
Export