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A Review of “Comida, cultura y modernidad en México: Perspectivas antropológicas e históricas (Food, culture and moderninity in Mexico: Anthropological and historical perspectives)”

This is an important collection because it provides a rich picture of contemporary Mexican food and culture based on original ethnographic observations, and complements Jeffrey Pilcher’s historical study Que Vivan Los Tamales: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (1998). It offers a rare treat by describing the food culture of a developing country that is just beginning to show the signs of a food movement. The debut of this timely book took place in Mexico City a few days after La Jornada, a progressive newspaper, published two articles on the emerging food crisis in this Latin American country. One article lamented the transnational corporations, which are pushing small farmers off of their land and forcing them to join the urban poor of Mexico City.1 The other reported on more than 300 organizations that demand the end of importing genetically modified foods into Mexico.2 This book grew out of a very popular course that the editors organized on “Cuisines and Food Culture in Mexico” at the National School of Anthropology and History (Escuela Nacional de Antropologı́a e Historia) in Mexico City. Catharine Good Eshelman is a full professor and Laura Corona de la Peña is a researcher at the same institution. The authors of the 18 chapters in this collection did ethnographic fieldwork and historical research in Mexico City as well as in the countryside to illuminate three issues. They describe indigenous foodways, examine how the industrial food system has affected the lives of particular Mexicans, and document forms of resistance. The first two chapters provide a theoretical framework based on the work of Sidney Mintz, Catharine Good Eshelman’s former professor at Johns Hopkins. Eleven others describe the spread of fast or industrial food and the persistence of traditional cuisines in different parts of Mexico City. Four more chapters describe traditional foodways among the Purépechas (Tarascans) in Michoacan, the Nahuas of the Sierra Norte de Puebla, the Totonacs of Veracruz, and the Mayans and Spanish-speakers in the Yucatan. The concluding