Heritage cuisine and identity: free time and its relation to the social reproduction of local food

ABSTRACT

Mexico City is the world’s fourth largest metropolis with more than 20 million inhabitants. Due to its integration with a global world, the dietary habits of its population have undergone significant transformations, which include an increased consumption of industrialized products. At the same time, there is a growing interest in local food consumption, linked to aspects such as health, the environment and cultural identity. One of the most consumed traditional foods in central Mexico is slow-cooked lamb (barbacoa de borrego), a dish prepared with the Mayan ‘pib’ cooking method, which consists of using an earthen oven in which the animal is placed, wrapped in maguey cactus leaves and cooked throughout an entire night. Texcoco is a small city 40 kilometres outside of Mexico City whose fame for preparing barbacoa attracts thousands of visitors every weekend. The purpose of this work is to analyse the role that personal identity and free time play in the reproduction of heritage cuisine in contemporary societies. It concludes that tourism practices enable the continuity of certain local foods, reinterpreted in the light of urban consumption.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage cuisine
• local food
• identity
• free time
• socialization
• central Mexico

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Humberto Thomé-Ortiz is Doctor in Agrarian Sciences from the Autonomous University of Chapingo; Full-time faculty at the Institute for Agricultural and Rural Sciences (ICAR) of the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico; Member of the National System of Researchers. His research areas are Local Agro-food Systems, Territorial Development, and Agro-food Tourism. He is principal investigator of the Project “Assessment of the recreational dimension of wild edible mushrooms, their socio-economic interest and their rural development prospects” funded by the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology. His most recent publication is “Traditional Mexican Cuisine and Tourism: New Meanings of Heritage Cuisine and its Sociocultural Implications”.

ORCID

Humberto Thomé-Ortiz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6714-3490

Notes

1. These characteristics were determined by a profile of barbacoa consumers in the Texcoco market based on interviews of 300 people during the month of January in 2013. These three characteristics constitute the most distinct features of barbacoa consumers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología of Mexico (CONACYT) through the SEP – Basic Science Joint Fund 2014 [242500]; and by the Ministry of Public Education through the 2013 Faculty Improvement Program.