The "Authentic" Taco and Peasant Women: Nostalgic Consumption in the Era of Globalization

Abstract

On the streets of Mexico City and Toluca, "Marias" (indigenous women) sell handmade tortillas, tacos, and tlacoyos (dough with filling) using maize of varying colors (blue, green, pink or violet, and white) harvested from farmlands near these cities. This phenomenon is to a great extent a nationalistic nostalgia for "authentic" Mexican food by middle and upper social classes. It is also part of a sociocultural crossbreeding process that allows promoting multiple identities before the imposition of the market-controlling state and the homogenization of the consumption of the above-mentioned food. One of the aims of this article is to demonstrate that this nostalgia is one of the reactions to the globalization process. I also attempt to show how this nostalgia reactivates indigenous-farmer subsistence strategies, whose main characters are women, who cultivate, prepare and sell such "authentic" meals.