This chronicle tells the little and big story behind our food, dishes or chefs. Powerful weapon soft power, A societal and cultural marker, food is the founding element of our civilizations. Conflicts, diplomacy, traditions, cuisine has always had a political dimension. Because, as Bossuet already said in the 17th century, “it is at the table that we govern”.
Night has already fallen on Avenida 6 de Diciembre in Quito, Ecuador, when several armored cars rush past the gate of the Mexican embassy. Elite police officers, wearing black hoods on their heads, are carrying out a raid on April 6, 2024 to arrest Jorge Glas, former Ecuadorian vice-president accused of corruption, who has just obtained the green light from Mexico for his asylum request . Despite the Vienna Convention, which in theory makes embassies and consulates inviolable, the police are picking him up manu militari. This operation, unprecedented in recent history, triggered an international outcry.
A few weeks before the general elections this Sunday, June 2, the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador – known as “Amlo” -, takes the decision to break diplomatic relations with Quito. All left-wing governments, but also the ultra-liberal Argentine President, Javier Milei, condemn this intrusion.
Under fire from criticism, Daniel Noboa, the Ecuadorian head of state, has a strange idea to mollify his angry Latino neighbor: “I will invite López Obrador to eat ceviche, and we can probably also eat tacos and talk, when it is ready…” Frivolity while the South American continent is experiencing the worst recent diplomatic crisis? Or a simple little dig at the one who is known to be the No. 1 supporter of its gastronomy, the only one (along with the French) to be fully listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The taco, a miracle cure?
The highlights of the agenda for “Amlo”, who leaves the presidential palace next September with a favorable opinion rate of nearly 66%, are always punctuated by culinary feasts. Gargantuan dinners in opulent establishments in the capital with businessmen and politicians where a succession of tamales, succulent papillotes made from corn flour, enchiladas or even chili with pressed pork rinds… When the American president , Joe Biden, and Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, arrive in Mexico City on January 9, 2023, as part of a summit, the menu is up to the expectations of the hosts: puffed tortilla with avocado and fresh cheese, soup of the milpa (zucchini flower), fish accompanied by a pumpkin flower sauce and rice flavored with the fabulous chipilín, this Mexican herbaceous plant.
But if there is one dish that the Mexican head of state reveres above all else, it is the taco. During his approximately 1,380 “mañaneras”, these daily morning press briefings which last two to three hours, a journalist asks him the reforms he would like his successor (Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez are the two big favorites in the presidential election) to undertake. “Improve nutrition,” he responds point-for-tat, while nearly 75% of Mexicans today have problems with obesity or overweight.
The miracle cure? The taco obviously! “The most complete food that can exist […] with nothing more than a little grease. The tortilla is high in carbohydrates, the meat is high in protein, and the sauce is high in vitamins. The three components are an integral part of it,” assures the Head of State, extolling the merits of this dish born in pre-Columbian Mexico, several millennia ago. “There is the idea of exalting culinary nationalism, that indigenous gastronomy is the best in the world. As opposed to agri-food, particularly American, which is very present in Mexico and which is associated with obesity, even if the real causes are multifactorial. There is an anti-imperialist vision of gastronomy,” explains sociologist and food researcher Liliana Martínez Lomelí.
Taco Bell and its 35 million weekly meals
The cob of corn, popularized by the Mayans and the Aztecs, was sold in different forms on the market of “Mexica”, the capital, at the beginning of the 16th century, reports Aïtor Alfonso in his work There Hunger for History*. The technique of “nixtamalization”, which consists of soaking the grains in an alkaline solution in order to remove the wall surrounding them, and thus being able to grind it to make a tortilla, was therefore known when the conquistador Hernán Cortés arrived at the gates of Mexico- Tenochtitlán, in 1519. Impossible to know with absolute certainty the ingredients of the original taco. Certainly some of the most readily available beans, squash and peppers. It was only in the 19th century that the taquerias appear in Mexico City to satiate the workers, before rallying much later the “white-collar workers” of the capital.
This gastronomic emblem is also a part of the history of immigration to the United States, which took off after the Mexican Revolution in 1910, particularly in California. Mexican restaurants are flourishing in downtown Los Angeles. Traditional ingredients are gradually being replaced by beef, cheddar and iceberg lettuce. “It reminds me of pizza for its practicality and its inexhaustible source of interpretations. The taco is a container, a base which highlights all the products of our land. Mexico will gradually see the emergence of as many regions as different recipes of tacos”, further analyzes researcher Liliana Martínez Lomelí.
Multinationals will quickly ride the phenomenon. In 1962, the Taco Bell brand, which today is part of the Yum! Brands, owner of KFC and Pizza Hut, is born and will serve up to 35 million meals per week. Before her, the Old El Paso brand, based in Texas in 1917, contributed to the emergence of “Tex-Mex” cuisine, not without some strange adaptations, says Elisabeth Debourse in American Appetite**, like the “pocket fajitas” or the “taco bowl”. Still, this dish takes on a gigantic place in the global food ecosystem in the 20th century.
Recovered by Trumpist networks
Building on its success, the taco, idolized by part of American youth, is also the more recent object of political exploitation by Trumpist networks. “My culture is a very dominant culture. It imposes itself, and that creates problems. If we don’t do something, there will be taco trucks on every street corner,” Marco Gutierrez, co-founder of the Latinos movement, declared in 2016 for Trump, on MSNBC. Comments which recall those, openly racist, of the Republican leader, who affirmed in 2015 that, “when the Mexicans send their people, they do not send the best”… In 2018, during a debate with the Univision journalist Enrique Acevedo, the former American presenter of the conservative Fox News channel Tucker Carlson loses his temper and unpacks a new fake news against a backdrop of cultural appropriation: “It’s American food.”
In recent years, the two current candidates for the White House have tried to cajole the Latino electorate with the taco. When Donald Trump posted a photo on May 5, 2016 of himself seated at a restaurant claiming that “the best taco bowl is at the grill at Trump Tower. I love Hispanics!”, social networks went wild over this grotesque attempt to recovery. In 2022, three weeks before the mid-term elections, Joe Biden does not hesitate to pay four times the amount necessary for his taco in a fast food restaurant in Los Angeles as a sign of solidarity with the Americans hard hit by the ‘inflation.
Should we also see a bit of politics, if not pure communication, when the Michelin guide awards, in its latest edition, a star to the El Califa de León de Mexico establishment. A modest taqueria, certainly excellent, but as there are thousands of them in the Mexican capital… His specialty? The “gaonera”, a beef taco created in honor of the Mexican bullfighter Rodolfo Gaona, star of the fiesta brava of the first decades of the 20th century, whose nickname in the arena, “El Califa de León”, also gave his name at the restaurant. The famous guide is not blind to this trend in Mexican cuisine (one of the best in the world!) and is constantly looking to dust off his very old red binding. At the same time, Mexican chefs, like Enrique Oliveira and his double-starred Pujol, are shining. Elena Reygadas, chef and owner of the Rosetta restaurant in Mexico City, was named best chef in the world last year in the “50 Best” list.
Also crowned is Enrique Casarrubias, at the head of Oxte, the only Mexican restaurant to have won a Michelin star in France. On the menu: monkfish green pipian, a sauce made from pumpkin seeds and chili peppers jalapeños, or its marinated royal sea bream, variation of turnips, sauce tatemado, without forgetting of course its homemade “mole”, this incredible sauce made from cocoa, sesame and peanuts. He has already spread this specialty thousands of times when he was still selling tacos in Tenango del Valle, 70 kilometers south of Mexico City, to help his mother on weekends, after the death of her father.
Where to eat a good taco:
Taco Mesa, 40, rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, Paris (Xᵉ).
El Cartel del Taco, 227, rue Lafayette, Paris (Xᵉ).
* The Hunger for History. A history of the world through gastronomy, by Aïtor Alfonso (Jul, Dargaud, 2023).
** American Appetite. Journey into the belly of the USA, by Elisabeth Debourse (Nouriturfu, 2022).
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