Food, Gender and Cultural Hegemony - Kennesaw State University

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Cualli 127 Abstract: The importance of food as an aspect of the cultural hegemony achieved after the Spanish conquest has been little emphasized in the literature. Anthropologists are increasingly seeing food as having an independent impact on the social and cultural identity of people. This question takes on special importance when related to two independent well-defined society in the context of conquest. In this paper the foodways of the Spanish and of the Nahua are examined for their characteristics and symbolic importance. It is posited that the gradual cultural hybridity that takes place can be likened to the process of language acculturation. The process of change incorporates the main symbolic foods of each culture and creates new foods which are ultimately seen as “national” because they retain important dimensions of the foodways of the dominant Spanish group. At the same time this is feasible and acceptable to indigenous and mestizo groups because of the strong similarities in types of food, social hierarchies, and the symbolic importance of food for the culture. [Type text]
Cualli 128 The Spanish conquest of New World territories (as described in historiographical literature) resulted in the political and economic control of territories and the transfer of treasure and profits of New World plantation agriculture to Spain. Less commented on are the conscious efforts of crown and church in the sixteenth century toward Spanish cultural hegemony, and the almost invisible incorporation of indigenous and hybrid cultural influences into the accepted definition of "Spanish society" in the New World colonies. This "cultural conquest" was nevertheless of extreme importance for the permanence and stability of those other conquests (Kellogg 27-46; Gramsci 12; Williams 108-110). It was an effort that involved particular policies of race, gender, language, evangelization, education and the construction of a hybrid colonial culture which still featured Spanish domination. An important aspect of that cultural conquest and hegemony was the area of food and food politics. These policies took shape in the context of the socialization, education and coming of age of the first two generations of mestizos in Spanish America, and involved ideologies of race and gender. The centrality of food to culture in Latin America is undisputed. Rigoberta Menchu in her testimonial book stated: [The child] is told that he will eat maize and that, naturally, he is already made of maize because his mother ate it while he was forming in her stomach. He must respect the maize; even the grain of maize which has been thrown away, he must pick up….To reach [God] the child must love beans, maize, the earth," (Burgos-Debray 13). However, while food is often seen as an aspect of identity, the important role of food in cultural hegemony has not been emphasized or analyzed in the literature. In addition the role of food in migration and conquest is important in looking at the process by which a new hybrid culture is developed. I will use the relationship of food and culture to approach the issue of miscegenation and the influence of indigenous culture on the dominant "Spanish" creole culture in colonial Latin America (Kuznesof, 1995). 1 How did the evolving creole cuisine retain its "Spanish-ness"? To what extent was it indigenized and how was gender an important part of that process? I will also consider the [Type text]
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Page 5 and 6: Cualli 130 examination of food ways
Page 7 and 8: Cualli 132 thousands of sacks of wh
Page 9 and 10: Cualli 134 191). There is a story t
Page 11 and 12: Cualli 136 beverage (Soustelle, 196
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Page 17 and 18: Cualli 142 insinuated into Spanish
Page 19 and 20: Cualli 144 felicitous union. Works
Page 21 and 22: Cualli 146 Kellogg, Susan. “Hegem
Page 23 and 24: Cualli 148 Williams, Raymond. Marxi

Food, Gender and Cultural Hegemony - Kennesaw State University

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