Michicanxs of Aztlán
Stories of Chicanx Culture in Michigan

In the Kitchen


This final story explores the concept of "mestizaje" through the Mexican food experiences passed down to me through my Irish mother, who had been taught how to cook by my Mexican grandmother.


As a child, I was always looking for a reason to go into the kitchen when my mom was cooking. Every legitimate excuse I could conjure up to be in there, the better sense I could gain of how long we had left to wait before eating. Our kitchen was small, so in retrospect, it must have been disruptive to have unnecessary bodies in the way. Regardless, whenever my mom was cooking, me and my siblings could be found consistently walking into the kitchen to “get a glass of water,” to “throw something away,” or just to “pass through” to the basement.

That was many years ago, but the scene is still so clear to me. My mother moving frantically back and forth between the stove, the counter, and the sink. Beads of sweat glistening on top of the white skin on her forehead and upper lip. I remember noticing that she used the same pan to make French toast as she did for mole. It had never occurred to me to think about how my mother—who is of Western European descent—learned to cook Mexican dishes like chicken mole and carne asada.

Long before I was born, my Mexican grandmother, Tina, began teaching her how to cook. My grandparents would host Sunday dinners, and my mom would go over early to help. At first Tina was guarded about passing on these recipes—partially because she worried that other people wouldn’t make them correctly. Eventually, my mom was equipped to make a handful of Mexican dishes on her own. This is what I grew up eating, and these dishes were one of the largest connections I felt to Mexican culture. I tell this story because I think it highlights the non-biological aspect of cultural continuance. That is, this story shows how, despite the fact that she is not Mexican herself, my mom was able to pass on Mexican traditions to me—not only by feeding me, but also by eventually teaching me how to cook.

Despite any positive usages that Xicanos or other people can garner from mestizaje, it cannot be minimized the extent to which mestizaje has been used violently against the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island—the Americas. In Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization, Guillermo Bonfil Batalla puts forth the argument that Mexico is not a mestizo nation, as is often claimed, but an Indigenous nation. From this perspective, Mesoamerican culture has remained central to Mexicans into the present moment, having been absorbed into the national identity of Mexico once it claimed “independence” from Spain. I agree with Batalla’s analysis that these Indigenous cultural practices persist into the present, that mestizaje has been used as a way to strip Mexicans of our Indigenous identities, and that mestizaje is an inappropriate way of understanding the mixing of cultural practices under colonial conditions: "...the mestizos are a contingent of "de-Indianized" Indians. 'De-Indianization' is a different process from the biological one of racial mixture. To use the term mestizaje in different sorts of situations...carries the risk of introducing an incorrect view. It is an inappropriate way of understanding non-biological processes, such as those that occur in the cultures of different groups in contact, within the context of colonial domination" (17). For Batalla, mestizaje runs the risk of introducing racial mixture as primarily a biological process, and has been systematically deployed through out Latin America specifically to De-Indianize Indians. While his book was published more than 20 years ago and focuses on Mexicans in Mexico, I would argue that this same dynamic also rings true today for many Xicanos in the United State as well.

Some Mesoamerican practices persist in a similar way to how Batalla describes them among rural Mexicans, yet the shifting context in the United States adds another layer of colonialism in between Chicanxs and Indigenous identity. In terms of food practice, the more important question might have to do with decolonizing our food ways. Enrique Salmón (Ratamuri) explain that “whenever I partake in Eloisa’s tamale recipe or my mother’s way of preparing salsa, I am eating the memories and knowledge associated with those foods…[i]t becomes a form of mimetic regeneration to eat one’s family’s recipes” (8). But while this form of knowledge is extremely important, he also emphasizes the importance of understanding the politics of food—how food production impacts the environment, how science disrupts the genetics of food and thereby our bodies, etc.

This is an extremely important point to make both within the contexts of cultural regeneration and social justice activism. For often times cultural initiatives are void of the radical political analysis necessary to confront the modern systems of power that colonize both our food and our identities. Conversely, social justice spaces are often void of the radical nature of cultural survivance and the need for many people to approach social justice organizing from specific cultural perspectives. Xicanos are in a unique position to bride the gap between culture and politics, because we have been re-made by a movement (El Movmiento) that was in many ways based on this very premise.

Works Cited

Salmón, E. (2012). Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity, and Resilience (2 edition). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Batalla, G. B. (1996). Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization. Austin: University of Texas Press.