The multifunctionality of heritage food: The example of pinole, a Mexican sweet

Abstract

Pinole is a heritage foodstuff whose analysis provides the lens to understand the plight of Mexican farmers and the role translocal actors play in the articulation of global food heritage. To preserve and sell pinole, the pinole project was created from two groups of Mexicans born in Ozolco - a small rural village - and who now reside on either side of the Mexican and US border. By analysing members’ discourses, this article demonstrates how pinole is essentialised or commodified, and how it provides the platform for actors to formulate a variety of identities according to their socio-economic and geographical contexts. Bridging the literatures on food-studies and place-making, the multifunctionality of pinole transpires as inherently linked to the emergence of differing notions of place embedded in Ozolco. Exploring members’ varying priorities, from perpetuating rural lifestyles to preserving their hometown and its native blue corn, the project epitomises the struggle of farmers with Mexico’s migration drain and their efforts to economically engage with global markets of corn by circulating an added-value corn product within translocal networks as well as re-appropriate corn’s socio-cultural meaning.