Taco Diplomacy? How food fortifies the U.S. melting pot
By hola | Published | No Comments
(photos by Jessica Perry)
What does it mean to be American in a globalized society? To historian Jeffrey Pilcher and syndicated columnist Gustavo Arellano, our collective identity simultaneously shapes and is shaped by foreign foods. More specifically, they say, to be American is to embrace taco history.
These two witty writers and Smithsonian curator Rayna Green engaged in a lively and hilarious discussion at the Smithsonian Museum of American History’s Warner Brothers Theater last Saturday, Feb. 9. As a prelude to the lecture about the tamale, tortilla, tacos, and Arellano’s favorite—tequila—there was plenty of “vitamin t” for sale at the food trucks that pulled up outside the museum before the lecture.
“Only in America can a child of a Mexican immigrant say ‘bueno’ to a Salvadoran making Mexican food,” Arellano joked later about his reaction to the street vendors. Hungry museumgoers enjoyed it as well; they swarmed the trucks before filing into the theater to A serenade of pre-recorded mariachi music.
Arellano, author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America,” left the crowd hysterical after he admitted that his original goal was to make fun of Mexican-American food. He joked about “tater tot breakfast burritos,” “tamales in a can” and other “abominations” that Americans are familiar with.
“Now we have Mexicans in the U.S. so we don’t have to subject ourselves to tamales in a can,” quipped Arellano, who also writes the syndicated “Ask a Mexican” column.
He also discussed the history of Mexican-American food, focusing on a different trend from each decade. Regional Mexican cuisine, for instance, is popular in the United States right now. Through the process of writing his book, he said he re-evaluated his view of the “inauthenticity” of Mexican-esque dishes, concluding that U.S. and Mexican influences are often so intertwined as to make them inextricable. Consequently, “Tex-Mex” is Mexican food—at least to him, he said.
Pilcher, who wrote another “vitamin t”-centric book, “Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food,” discussed changing views of immigration in the United States.
He focused more on “Diaspora” issues such as the tacos of deployed military members and surfers, as well as how the taco has proliferated worldwide. Pilcher raised some interesting points about the exchange of food ideas between the two countries, focusing on how immigrants profited economically by marketing Mexico’s unique flavors in the United States. He also predicted that our shared love of Mexican food will help the country’s immigrants continue to assimilate into U.S. life.
The lecture compliment the museum’s exhibition, “FOOD,” which gave me a chance to mull over the implications of Pilcher’s comments. Here in D.C., we are only too aware of growing political polarization. Immigration, in particular, comes to mind as just one of the hot button issues dividing our country. But as Pilcher argued, maybe the merging of our cultures is helping to foster a more widespread acceptance of the new American demographics. Maybe it always has.
The taco might not really have the Aztec or Mayan roots we romanticize (according to Pilcher, out-of-work Mexican miners first brought them across the border). But that doesn’t weaken our connection to the taco—through good times and bad, changing migratory patterns and social trends.
Food has a dynamic relationship with the American melting pot. It reflects and shapes our identities as individuals, communities, regions, and nations. It’s both a tool of social assimilation and a mirror of historical changes, as these two lighthearted writers emphasized.
The afternoon’s lectures were not just about tacos—well, they were, sort of—but perhaps more importantly they examined how historical knowledge can help a society understand itself and the changes it’s going through. And if it takes food to unite us, I surely will not complain.
— Jessica Perry
Recent Stories
