Food, Gender and Cultural Hegemony - Kennesaw State University

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
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