Culture >> Mexicans
| Food: There and Here |
| Holidays: There and Here |
| Entertainment: There and Here |
It can be difficult to define exactly what culture entails, and this is particularly true in regards to Mexicans. We will examine food, holidays, and entertainment to parallel the wide scope of culture as a constantly changing phenomenon. We can see the way culture travels from one place to another by looking at how food has changed, holidays are celebrated, and the way entertainment has taken up different forms. Furthermore, it is important to note that Mexican culture, just as any other, is not static—it is influenced both by outside forces and from within.
Mexican culture is a blend of different elements from the nation’s pre-hispanic past and the Spanish colonial period:
- music, cinema, literature
- art
- sports
- cuisine
One way of demonstrating the versatility of culture, with a special focus on Mexico, is to look at language. Language gives a sense of identity and helps keep the social fabric of the community intact. The versatile nature of language to transfer from place to place, and change with time makes it easy for it to adapt to new environments.
Mexico has a great linguistic diversity, even though Spanish is the official language. The map below displays areas in Mexico with fifteen languages with more than 100 thousand speakers.
The 1917 Constitution defines Mexico as a multicultural nation that recognizes the right of the indigenous peoples to "preserve and enrich their languages" and promotes "bilingual and intercultural education".
For example:
Since colonial times, many words from Nahautl have been borrowed into Spanish and have since diffused into hundreds of other languages and vice versa. The Mexican word for a type of hat, called a sombrero, becomes sonplelotle in Nahuatl. In addition, some Nauatl words have entered English.
Sombrero → Sonplelotle
In addition, some English words of Nahuatl origin include avocado, chili, chocolate, coyote, and tomato.
| Nahuatl | Mexican | English |
| āhuacatl | aguacate | avocado |
| xocolatl | chocolate | chocolate |
| tomatl | tomate | tomato |
We can see similar instances of language spreading across boundaries in other ethnic groups, including our own. For example, the words tea and ketchup originate from Chinese sounds and characters, while pretzel and hamburger from German, and biscuit and café from French.
Between 1970 to 2008, many aspects of Mexican culture changed rapidly, but we will focus specifically on the following three:
- Food
- Holidays
- Entertainment
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Mexican cuisine employs significant Spanish influences and is known for its wide choice of flavors, spices, and vibrant colors. When the conquistadores arrived in Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztec civilization, they realized that people mainly cooked corn-based dishes with chilies, herbs, beans and tomatoes. |
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The conquistadores combined their imported foods of rice, beef, pork, chicken, wine, garlic and onions with the native indigenous foods of pre-colonial Mexico: chocolate, maize, tomato, vanilla, avocado, guava, papaya, pineapple, chili pepper, beans, squash, sweet potato, peanut, fish and turkey. |
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Food in Mexico |
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| Rice was initially introduced by the Spanish to Mexicans in the 1520s, which created one of the earliest instances of fusion between cuisines. In rural areas of Mexico and some villages, there are more unusual dishes, cooked in the Aztec or Mayan style—or comida prehispánica. Some ingredients range from iguana to rattlesnake, deer, spider monkey, grasshoppers, ant eggs, and insects. | |
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Each region has a different style of cuisine. This is the result of:
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In Northern Mexico, beef, goat and ostrich, and other meat dishes are popular. |
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While food from Central Mexico is greatly influenced by other regions, it does have its own distinctive qualities. Some foods include barbacoa, pozole, menudo and carnitas. For example, the Oaxacan area is known for its tamales and mole sauce. |
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Southeastern Mexico is known for spicy vegetable and chicken dishes with a taste of Caribbean influence, given its geographical location. Seafood and fish dishes are commonly served in areas that border the Pacific Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. |
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What do we call Mexican food in America? |
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What we may call “authentic” Mexican food has been Americanized as Texan-Mexican, cuisine. In the southwest parts of the United States, such as California, it is called Cal-Mex. |
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Just as Mexican restaurants can be popularly found in different states including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Florida, a variety of them can also be found in New York City neighborhoods. Mexican restaurants are now more extensive in location and cater to foods unique to certain regional areas, such as North, Central, and Southeastern Mexico. Mexican cooking in American often includes nontraditional ingredients, such as grated American-style cheese, "nacho" cheese, or tomato sauce to replace Mexican chile-based sauces or mole. Many recipes can be found that include both authentic and Mexican-American styles of cooking. |
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This change in cooking style and flavor is a constantly occurring phenomenon that has surfaced in other societies. For instance the villagers in the bilingual Nahuatl-Spanish indigenous pueblo Hueyapan, believe Indian food includes tortillas, chiles, kidney beans, and calabasa squash, to name a few, but they are actually considered traditional non-Indian foods as well. The Indian mole, which was basically a chile stew in prehispanic times, was modified to taste like an East Indian curry. Just as food constantly evolves through time and space, culture constantly changes. |
| Holidays | ||||||||||||||||
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There are two different kinds of holidays celebrated in Mexico:
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Cinco de Mayo
This celebration is a regional holiday in Mexico, primarily celebrated in the state of Puebla that observes the victory of the Mexican Army against French forces on May 5, 1862. A common misunderstanding most people have is that Cinco de Mayo is Mexico's Independence Day, which is actually on September 16. Also widely celebrated in the United States, the celebration of this Mexican historical event has become a corporate holiday, largely the result of promotions by liquor, beer, clubs, and restaurants since the 1980s. Nonetheless, it is recognized as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride. This holiday honors the culture and experiences of Mexican Americans, similar to how St. Patrick's Day and Chinese New Year celebrate those of Irish and Chinese ancestry. |
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El Día de los Muertos Mexicans honor and pay their respects to dead relatives and friends with candles, food, flowers, altars, and pre-Hispanic and Christian rituals. This celebration can be traced back to the indigenous Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Mexican or Aztec, and Maya. After the Spanish conquest of Mexico, priests merged the tradition of the Day of the Dead with Halloween, a Christian holiday. In America, Day of the Dead celebrations similar to those held in Mexico. In communities, such as in Texas and Arizona, the celebrations tend to be mostly traditional. In New York City, the ancestral celebration is carried out within the Mexican community for three days. On the first day, people from multiethnic communities are invited to try traditional Mexican dishes, hot chocolate, and bread. |
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“The mystical mix of indigenous and Christian beliefs has turned into a modern-day national and international cultural event.”
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Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe This festivity celebrates the day that Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared on Tepeyac hill to the native Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. |
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| Entertainment | |
| In literature, the subject of the revolution was a common theme of novels, stories, and plays after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. | |
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Towards the end of the 20th century, Mexican literature became more diverse in theme, style, and genre. For instance, Octavio Paz was an essayist who wrote about Mexican politics and economics, Aztec art, anthropology, and sexuality.
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Mexico’s difficult transition to political independence can also be seen through art. Art helped Mexicans expose terrible social, political, and economic conditions in a visual form, such as films and paintings. |
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In the 1920s, Mexican muralists greatly influenced younger painters in the United States through their journeys and creations. For instance, José Clemente Orozco’s mural is at the New School in New York City. He was a social realist painter whose artwork had a common theme of human suffering. |
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Other forms of Mexican entertainment take place in the form of cultural Celebrations in New York City. Currently, the Festival of Mexican Culture Central Park, is held in the summer to display performances and attract not only Mexican communities, but also other ethnic groups. Entertainment events include:
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Similarly, the Festival of Mexican Artist Expression event in New York City aims to increase the visibility of Mexicans, and to showcase their creative talent. Entertainment as a celebration of artistic expression can also be seen in pop culture. |
