Food, Gender and Cultural Hegemony - Kennesaw State University

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
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