Mesquite Pods to Mezcal: 10,000 Years of Oaxacan Cuisines

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a pioneer of gastronomy, proposed his famous aphorism “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are” in his 1825 book Fisiología del gusto, o meditaciones de gastronomía trascendente, which has been translated into English numerous times, as Physiology of Taste; Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Similarly, the book Mesquite Pods to Mezcal: 10,000 Years of Oaxacan Cuisines explores the history and identity of Oaxacans through an analysis of the ruptures and continuities in their gastronomic culture (GC). Certainly, GC is the network of meanings guiding human behavior in relation to (1) its relationship with the food-providing land, (2) the selection of edibles from the available options, (3) the culinary transformation of raw food materials into meals, and (4) the concept of commensality.With a transdisciplinary approach, the book offers an overview of Oaxaca's GC through a series of original research studies. Together, the chapters allow readers to identify and understand what Oaxacans eat, how they cook it, and why they eat and cook in this way. This is achieved through presenting various techniques, ranging from the analysis of radioactive isotopes to dietary surveys. The theoretical-methodological framework covers disciplines including geography, social anthropology, archaeology, economics, ethnology, gastronomy, history, nutrition, paleoethnobotany, and sociology, among others.The book contains an introductory chapter and four sequential thematic parts arranged in terms of historical chronology, which group 13 chapters written by different authors. In the preface, Lila Downs, a Mexican American artist of Mixtec descent, presents a brief but masterful exercise of self-awareness with a dialectic between personal history and historical circumstances surrounding the family harvest, cooking, and commensality, as well as the rituals associated with these practices. The acknowledgments section also serves as a testimony by the editors, offering qualitative field information to identify and understand the context, content, and orientation of the work.In the introductory chapter, Andrea M. Cuéllar, Verónica Pérez Rodríguez, Shanti Morell-Hart, and Stacie M. King present the state of research on Oaxacan cuisines, as well as the epistemological premises underlying the approach of the book: to understand something that goes beyond food.The first thematic part, titled “The Roots of Oaxacan Cuisine,” contains three chapters about the relationship between humans and nature for livelihood from the beginning of the Archaic Period to the formation of the first sedentary villages. Chapter 2 analyzes the deep ravines and their adjacent plains in the Mixtec Highlands around the Yuzanú River as spaces where archaic gatherers developed a proto-agriculture through the construction of terraces, with a focus on the management of the soil and water for food production. Chapter 3 explores the ingredients, tools, and culinary features in an archaic rocky shelter located in Mitla, examining their continuities and discontinuities with Oaxacan contemporary food practices. Chapter 4 focuses on Etlatongo, a Oaxacan municipality, by analyzing the relationship between food, edible animals, and politics in the early sedentary villages. It emphasizes the diversification of food consumption beyond basic subsistence, with the emergence of ritualistic food preparations and consumptions corresponding to social events of community life.The second thematic part, “Oaxacan Foodways in the Economic and Spiritual Life,” examines how the growing economic and demographic complexity of certain Mesoamerican human settlements consolidated a system of plant and animal food resources centered around corn, forming the foundation of today's Oaxacan cuisine.Chapter 5 delves into specific domestic economic activities, focusing on the similarities and differences in food resource utilization across four archaeological sites in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca. Chapter 6 analyzes how urban life changed people's diets in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, the Mixtec Highlands, and the Oaxacan Coast. In particular, it demonstrates how the distribution of social work and geography influenced the growth of domestic animal production for human consumption and the easier accessibility of animal proteins for the elites. Chapter 7 identifies the symbolic provisioning of the deceased's souls through cocoa, maize, and meat in funeral offerings from the Late Classical and Post Classical Periods in Mitla, highlighting certain continuities between pre-Hispanic funeral rites and funerary rites in modern times. In chapter 8, a case study confirms specificities of women's nutritional status and reconstructs gender-attributable eating habits.The third thematic part, “Disrupted, Innovated, and Resilient Cuisines,” focuses on the Late Post-Classic and the dawn of the Colonial Periods, illustrating how food and its associated culinary practices serve as a bastion of people's identities. Chapter 9 examines the geographical transfer of cuisines within the Tututepec Mixtec community, shaped by migration to the coastal region while retaining key features of its original Mixtec Highlands. Chapter 10 explains how, in the face of violent conflicts with Zapotec, Mexican, or Spanish invaders, a seed bank was a strategy to preserve both the nutritional integrity and the identity of human collectives settled in the Southern Sierra. Chapter 11 discusses how, during the Early Colonial period in San Miguel de Achiutla, located in the Mixtec Highlands, European food transfers, particularly wheat, did not replace corn or other basic foods in the local diet, even though migrants from Europe typically consumed wheat.The fourth thematic part, “Living Culinary Traditions,” examines the dynamic nature of tradition as a constantly evolving process. Chapter 12 analyzes meals for travelers on Mesoamerican and colonial trade routes, highlighting the efforts of Indigenous freight carriers and their knowledge in preserving the quality of their own food provisions during the journey. Chapter 13 describes the strength and flexibility of the Zapotec people of the Isthmus, particularly those residing in Juchitán, through their current diverse social uses of culinary production, as well as the culinary transferences between Zapotec GC and modernity. Finally, chapter 14, which focuses on the traditional drink Tejate, critically analyzes the substitution of polyculture foods with agro-industrial ones, implying a decrease in the nutritional value and sensory quality of cooking recipes. This is not only a food substitution but also a replacement for ways of life that do not always indicate progress.The comprehensive perspective given in this book could be a point of reference for future disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research on human feeding, cooking, and other food practices linked to the GC of Oaxaca, or even in analogous settings.