Food, Gender and Cultural Hegemony - Kennesaw State University

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Cualli 137 showed awareness of the danger of alcoholic intoxication (Sahagun; Soustelle 156- 157). "That drink which is called octli," said the emperor to his people, "is the root and the origin of all evil and of all perdition; for octli and drunkenness are the cause of all the discords and of all the dissensions, of all revolt and of all troubles in cities and in realms." There were terrible punishments for public drunkenness, even by death. But pulque was not entirely prohibited: old men and women were allowed to drink, particularly on certain holidays (Soustelle 156-157). And pulque seems to have been used as a ceremonial means of sealing contracts such as the sale of land (Lockhart 168-169). Chocolate was also a beverage of great symbolic and religious significance. Special pots, cups and spoons were made especially for chocolate and there was a particular etiquette in its consumption. It was flavored in various ways, most notably with chiles. It seems to have been developed as a food by the Olmecs, and was passed to the Nahua by the Mayas (Coe and Coe 35-66). It was imported to Central Mexico from the Yucatan and Guatemala. Chocolate was symbolically associated with blood, and was restricted to those of high prestige and warriors. Those not involved in battle were not permitted chocolate. 1 Duran reports that ground cacao was made into wafers and issued to every soldier on a campaign, along with toasted maize, maize ground into flour, toasted tortillas, ground beans, and bunches of dried chillis (Duran 358). Initially the Europeans were not at all attracted to this black drink. Although the early Mexicans left no cookbooks, the Spanish priest Bernardino de Sahagun compiled a vast list of foods along with their appropriate condiments. The Nahua prepared turkey with several different sauces, including yellow, green, and red chiles. Yellow chiles and tomatoes were used to flavor white fish and fowl. Another red chile formed the proper sauce for shrimp, and green chiles provided the natural spice for frogs (Sahagun 8:37-40). Theoretical Framework: Cuisine as Language Food and related practices include the accepted meals eaten during the day, the ingredients of each meal, how they are combined, the order in which they are [Type text]
Cualli 138 eaten, the context in which they are eaten, the utensils and furniture utilized, etiquette, and the question of who eats together. In addition, the meals of the popular classes invariably contrast with those of the elite. More elaborate rituals and manners are generally associated with the elite. Ceremonial occasions invariably called for more complex and symbolic meals with many more ingredients. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries eating practices and menus in Europe became much more sophisticated, so that important cultural change occurred in Spanish food ways even as Spaniards attempted to bring their food culture to the New World (Roche 237). In The Nahuas After the Conquest James Lockhart defined three broad stages in Mexican cultural evolution after the conquest, based on his analysis of a body of original Nahua documents over the period 1530 to 1770 (Lockhart 428). These were most specific with respect to language acculturation among the Nahua. Stage I included the conquest until 1550 in which there was little or no change in language. From 1550 to 1640 (Stage II) a variety of Spanish nouns were incorporated into the Nahua language. Stage III (1640-1770) included a full range of linguistic adaptation, though some words and certain grammatical uses were never adopted by the Nahua. For this paper I propose to view food ways as a kind of language, and assume that assimilation of food ways underwent a process similar to that of language. In other words particular foods or main ingredients can be seen as nouns, cooking methods or combinations of ingredients as verbs, seasonings (including oil) as prepositions, and a meal might be a sentence or a poem. Spanish society might be viewed as separate from Indigenous society in terms of food ways for the first period. However, as time progressed there was a gradual mixing of the populations, both in residence and through miscegenation. A blending of food ways also took place. One of the notable aspects of this “mixing” process was that for both peoples--the Spanish and the Nahua--there were foods that were viewed as indispensable to their culture. The most important of these for the Spanish was [Type text]
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Page 17 and 18: Cualli 142 insinuated into Spanish
Page 19 and 20: Cualli 144 felicitous union. Works
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Food, Gender and Cultural Hegemony - Kennesaw State University

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