![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
In post-revolutionary Mexico, wheat became the gateway to modernity, the element that would transform indigenous peoples into mestizos and the working class into middle class. Growing wheat or transforming its flour into bread was believed to be a way to introduce peasants into the money economy. Meanwhile, having bread or cakes represented the adoption of cultural practices associated with the middle and upper class. This article explores the consumption of wheat bread and cakes, the values identified with these foodstuffs and how changes in eating practices were propelled in mid twentieth-century Mexico. Wheat consumption, I argue, symbolized the process of mestizaje which meant the adoption of western and middle-class practices by the poor and the peasantry in order to modernize the nation. Therefore, modern Mexicans began to eat sandwiches and celebrate birthdays with cakes instead of corn-based meals such as tamales and atole.
Notes
1 I carried out thirty-five interviews—twenty in Mexico City and fifteen in Guanajuato. My interviewees ranged from lower- to upper-class women.
2 Penny Summerfield, ‘Culture and Composure: Creating Narratives of the Gendered Self in Oral History Interviews’, Cultural and Social History, 1:1 (2004), 65–93.
3 Penny Tinkler, Smoke Signals: Women, Smoking and Visual Culture in Britain (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 3.
4 Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race, and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2012). See also Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, Power, History: Latin America’s Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2001), 9, and Jeffrey M. Pilcher, ‘¡Que vivan los tamales!’: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1998).
5 On modernization, material conditions, and culture in the late Porfiriato and the early decades of the twentieth century, see Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900–1931 (Durham, NC/London: Duke U. P., 2001), 17–33, and Steven B. Bunker, ‘ “Consumers of Good Taste”: Marketing Modernity in Northern Mexico, 1890–1910’, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 13:2 (1997), 227–69 (p. 228).
6 For an interesting discussion on food in the nineteenth century, see Jeffrey M. Pilcher, ‘Tamales or Timbales: Cuisine and the Formation of Mexican National Identity, 1821–1911’, The Americas, 53:2 (1996), 193–206.
7 Quoted in John Lear, Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City (Lincoln, NE/London: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2001), 56.
8 Julio Guerrero, La génesis del crimen en México: estudio de psiquiatría social, 2ª ed. (México D.F.: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1996 [1ª ed. México D.F./Paris: Vda de C. Bouret, 1901]), 195.
9 Guerrero, La génesis del crimen en México, 125.
10 José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica (Madrid: Agencia Mundial de Librería, 1925).
11 See the works of Manuel Gamio, Forjando patria (México D.F: Porrúa, 1916); Moisés Sáenz, México íntegro (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1939); and Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, Regiones de refugio; el desarrollo de la comunidad y el proceso dominical en mestizo América (México D.F.: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano Ediciones Especiales, 1967).
12 Pilcher, ‘¡Que vivan los tamales!’, 92. See also Sandra Aguilar-Rodríguez, ‘Industrias del hogar: mujeres, raza y moral en el México posrevolucionario’, Revista de Historia Iberoamericana, 9:1 (2016), 10–27.
13 Cited in Pilcher, ‘¡Que vivan los tamales!’, 91.
14 Rafael Ramírez, La escuela rural mexicana (México D.F.: Sepsetentas Secretaría de Educación Pública, Dirección General de Divulgación, 1976).
15 For a revealing interpretation of the modern State as a racial State, and its reification of racial exclusion and subjugation, see David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State (Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).
16 Ali Mirsepassi, ‘Introduction: Modernity and Culture’, in his Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization: Negotiating Modernity in Iran (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge U. P., 2000), 1–14 (p. 5).
17 Alexandra Minna Stern, ‘From Mestizophilia to Biotypology: Racialization and Science in Mexico 1920–1960’, in Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, ed. Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson & Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2003), 187–210; Joshua Lund, The Mestizo State: Reading Race in Modern Mexico (Minneapolis/London: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2012).
18 Laura Luz Suárez y López Guazo, Eugenesia y racismo en México (México D.F.: UNAM, 2005).
19 See Suárez y López Guazo, Eugenesia y racismo en México.
20 Nancy Leys Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell U. P., 1991), 27.
21 Francisco Bulnes, El porvenir de las naciones Hispano-Americanas ante las conquistas recientes de Europa y los Estados Unidos (México D.F.: Imprenta de Mariano Nava, 1899), 6–9.
22 Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics, 37.
23 William E. French, A Peaceful and Working People: Manners, Morals, and Class Formation in Northern Mexico (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1996), 4; see also David S. Parker, The Idea of the Middle Class: White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society 1900–1950 (University Park: Pennsylvania State U. P., 1998), 13–15.
24 See Sandra Aguilar-Rodríguez, ‘Alimentando la nación: género y nutrición en México (1940–1960)’, Revista de Estudios Sociales, 29 (2008), 28–40, and, by the same author, ‘Cooking Modernity: Nutrition Policies, Class, and Gender in 1940s and 1950s Mexico City’, The Americas, 64:2 (2007), 177–205.
25 Rafael Ramos Galván, ‘El problema de la nutrición en México’, Salubridad y Asistencia. Órgano de la Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia, 5:1 (Sept.–Oct. 1944), 33.
26 José Calvo, ‘Problemas de la nutrición en la república mexicana como país consumidor de maíz’, Higiene. Órgano de la Sociedad Mexicana de Higiene, 1:2 (1952), 55–56. See also Sandra Aguilar-Rodríguez, ‘Nutrition and Modernity: Milk Consumption in 1940s and 1950s Mexico’, Radical History Review, 110 (2011), 36–58.
27 Ana María Hernández, Industrias del hogar para la mujer obrera y campesina de México Biblioteca Hogar (México D.F.: A. del Bosque Impresor, 1937), 53.
28 The goals of the FUPDM were summarized in a flyer distributed at the organization’s inaugural meeting which stated that its members were in favour of ‘economic improvement, cultural evolution and the acquisition of political rights’ (Jocelyn Olcott, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico [Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 2005], 111–12).
29 Ana María Hernández, Cómo mejorar la alimentación del obrero y campesino: libro social y familiar para la mujer obrera y campesina mexicana, Biblioteca Hogar (México D.F.: A. del Bosque Impresor, 1935 [1ª ed. Irapuato: Imprenta Moderna, 1934]), 135.
30 Aguilar-Rodríguez, ‘Industrias del hogar’, 14–19.
31 See Susie S. Porter, Working Women in Mexico City: Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879–1931 (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2003).
32 Crusty bread rolls (bolillos and teleras) were introduced by French and Austrian bakers during the French invasion of Mexico and the subsequent rule of Maximilian of Habsburg between 1862 and 1867. See Robert Weis, Bakers and Basques: A Social History of Bread in Mexico (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2012), 34.
33 Hernández, Industrias del hogar para la mujer obrera y campesina de México, 63.
34 See Carmen Ramírez Jiménez del Corro, La cocina clásica: recetas garantizadas por la academia de enseñanza moderna de repostería y cocina, Vol. I, 2ª ed. (México D.F.: Stylo, 1950).
35 Eduardo Huarte, El salario y la alimentación de la familia campesina en México (México D.F.: Cooperativa Artes Gráficas del Estado, 1950), 13.
36 Dirección General de Estadística, Sexto censo de población, 1940. Resumen general (México D.F.: Secretaría de Economía/DGE, 1943).
37 Dirección General de Estadística, Séptimo censo general de población, 6 de junio de 1950 (México D.F.: Secretaría de Economía/DGE, 1952–1953), 75.
38 Dirección General de Estadística, Octavo censo general de población, 1960, 8 de junio de 1960: Población económicamente activa, rectificación a los cuadros 25, 26 y 27 del resumen general ya publicado (México D.F.: Secretaría de Economía/DGE, 1964), 280.
39 Pilcher, ‘¡Que vivan los tamales!’, 93.
40 Weis, Bakers and Basques, 4.
41 Crispina Vargas Romero (born 1935); interviewed by the author, Mexico City, 19 August 2005.
42 Carolina Basave Morales (born 1930); interviewed by the author, Mexico City, 31 August 2005.
43 See Aaron Bobrow-Strain, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012).
44 At the end of the 1940s, Bimbo was distributing their products throughout the country. In 1952, Bimbo increased its range of products including sugared doughnuts, and rolls for hot dogs and hamburgers. See Bimbo: una historia de creer y crear, <https://grupobimbo.com/es/nuestra-historia> (accessed 10 October 2019). See also Sonia Iglesias y Cabrera & Samuel Salinas Álvarez, El pan nuestro de cada día: sus orígenes, historia y desarrollo en México (México D.F.: Cámara Nacional de la Industria Panificadora, 1997).
45 Concepción Aguilar Castillo (born 1945); interviewed by the author, Mexico City, 7 September 2005.
46 Esperanza Martínez Juárez (born 1931); interviewed by the author, Mexico City, 19 October 2005.
47 José Emilio Pacheco, Las batallas en el desierto (México D.F.: Ediciones Era, 1981).
48 Richard Wilk, Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists (Oxford/New York: Berg, 2006), 80.
49 Josefina Velázquez de León, Selecciones Culinarias. Sandwichs modernos (México D.F.: Academia de Cocina, Reposteria y Decorado ‘Velázquez de León’, 1946).
50 Elena Zamora Plowes, ‘Apuntes sobre el curso de economía doméstica en el Instituto Social y Familiar’, unpublished manuscript typed by the author (México D.F., 1943).
51 Matilde López Castañón de Rangel, ‘Recetario, Guanajuato, recetario y consejos urbanidad recopialdos por Matilde López’, handmade cookbook and notes on eating manners, (Guanajuato, 1940) (private collection).
52 Anon., ‘Hagamos una fiesta a base de sándwiches’, El Hogar, XXVIII:108, 13 de enero de 1941, p. 35.
53 ‘Cartas de Angelina’, Lupita. Una Revista Hecha con el Corazón, II:55, 3 de junio de 1957, p. 47.
54 Carolina Basave Morales, interviewed by the author, 31 August 2005.
55 CEIR de México/Banco de México, Encuestas sobre ingresos y gastos familiares en México—1963 (México D.F.: Banco de México SA/Oficina de Estudios sobre Proyecciones Agrícolas, 1963), 506 & 511.
56 CEIR de México/Banco de México, Encuestas sobre ingresos y gastos, 504–05 & 511.
57 Gloria Ávila Romero (born 1927); interviewed by the author, Guanajuato, 29 October 2005. Romero Yllades was a well-known lawyer; his grandfather was Enrique Romero Courtade, one of the founding members of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario, interim governor of Guanajuato and federal deputy in the 1920s. See Alejandro Vega Godínez, ‘Élites gubernamentales en tres entidades federales de México (2000–2012): un análisis estructural’, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, LIX:222 (2014), 391–422.
58 María Luisa Arteaga (born 1916); interviewed by the author, Guanajuato, 28 October 2005.
59 Popular phrase commonly sang at birthday parties or celebrations.
60 The saint day is a Catholic tradition in which a person celebrates the day of the saint that shares his/her name— it was usually the same day as an individual’s birthday (Hernández, Cómo mejorar la alimentación del obrero y campesino, 146).
61 See Almanaque Dulce, 1947 (México D.F.: Unión Nacional de Productores de Azúcar, 1947); Ana María Hernández, La última palabra sobre cocina, repostería y confitería (Querétaro: Tip. Agencia Mercantil, 1932); Josefina Velázquez de León, Repostería selecta (México D.F.: Academia de Cocina Velázquez de León, 1938).
62 Patience A. Schell, Church and State Education in Revolutionary Mexico City (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2003), 125.
63 Helia Hernández Flores (born 1935); interviewed by the author, Guanajuato, 28 October 2005.
64 This issue included several recipes under the section entitled ‘cakes’ spelled in English. See Almanaque Dulce, 1934 (México D.F.: Unión Nacional de Productores de Azúcar, 1934).
65 Almanaque Dulce, 1954 (México D.F.: Unión Nacional de Productores de Azúcar, 1954).
66 Almanaque Dulce, 1947, 2.
67 Nick Cullather, ‘The Foreign Policy of the Calorie’, The American Historical Review, 112:2 (2007), 337–64.
68 Almanaque Dulce, 1952 (México D.F.: Unión Nacional de Productores de Azúcar, 1952), 3.
69 Julio Moreno, Yankee Don’t Go Home! Mexican Nationalism, American Business Culture, and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920–1950 (Chapel Hill/London: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2003).
70 The link between the nation’s progress and the domestic realm was not unique to Mexico. Nancy Reagin argues that domestic spaces were essential in the creation of a national identity for Germany, too. Her study of domesticity and nationalism reveals how self-perception and identity were reflected in daily life and state policies. See Nancy R. Reagin, Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870–1945 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge U. P., 2007).
71 Almanaque Dulce, 1959 (México D.F.: Unión Nacional de Productores de Azúcar, 1959), 38.
72 Dolores Hernández Santiago (born 1941); interviewed by the author, Mexico City, 25 August 2005.
73 Esperanza Sortibrán Dávila (born 1934); interviewed by the author, Mexico City, 14 October 2005.
74 Concepción Aguilar Castillo, 7 September 2005.
75 Evelia Estrada de Trejo (born 1925); interviewed by the author, Mexico City, 1 September 2005.
76 Aurora Guerrero de Olivares (born 1917); interviewed by the author, Guanajuato, 25 October 2005.
77 Ángela Malo de Borbolla (born 1925); interviewed by the author, Guanajuato, 27 October 2005.
78 In 1890, Agustín Arrieta painted La vendedora de aguas frescas, a portrayal of a bourgeois party in which guests are seen enjoying aguas frescas from a stall set up inside a luxurious drawing-room, while domestic servants play the roles of street peddlers. This was similar to the childhood experiences of Ángela Malo.
79 OCDE, ‘Obesidad y la economía de la prevención’ available online at <https://www.oecd.org/centrodemexico/medios/obesidadylaeconomiasdelaprevencion.htm> (accessed 13 September 2018).
* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.