Foodscapes, Foodfields, and Identities in the YucatÁn. Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz

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СКАЧАТЬ women of soap operas (Fein 2001; Greene 2001; Hernández and McAnany 2001; Hershfield 2006; Levi 2001; Noble 2005; Rubenstein 2001). Funded by the state, pictorial arts such as murals displayed images of the nation that conflated utopian visions of modernity and progress with the singularity and unity of the nation (Gallo 2005; López 2006; Rochfort 2006). Furthermore, the central government reinforced the pedagogic aspect of nationalism, erecting in all cities of the republic monuments to honor national heroes taken from the pantheon of central and northern Mexican luminaries (such as Venustiano Carranza, Emiliano Zapata, and Benito Juárez).¹⁴

      The calendar of national festivities celebrates dates such as the independence of New Spain from Spain, but not the independence of Yucatán from Spain (nor any of its three independences from Mexico). It celebrates the Mexican Revolution of 1910 on 20 November, but does not celebrate the arrival of Mexican forces in Yucatán in 1915 to bring what G. Joseph (1982) has called the “revolution from without.” During these celebrations, Yucatecans engage in parades, sing the national anthem, attend artistic events, listen to patriotic discourses, eat nationalist dishes (chiles en nogada, pozole), and drink nationalist tequila—practices that are repeated all over the country, on the same day and at the same time, powering the pedagogic message of nationalist discourses. Those who do not actively participate in the parades can stay home, glued to their television sets, while watching central Mexican national broadcasts of the military parade in Mexico City. These annual events reinforce the consciousness of belonging to a single nation and, as with other forms of nationalist performance, override local and regional histories and sentiments (Costeloe 1997; Duncan 1998; Lorey 1997; Tenorio Trillo 1996).

       The Invention of Yucatecan Peoplehood

      Despite efforts on the part of the central Mexican government and elites to create a homogeneous national culture, Yucatecans locate their roots in an alternative past, different from the unilinear model advanced by Mexican nationalism. Since Yucatán was conquered in a period different from that of the central highlands—the oldest cities, Campeche, Mérida, and Valladolid having been founded in 1540, 1542, and 1543, respectively, almost 50 years after the beginning of the conquest in central Mexico—and since the Spaniards and Creoles found continuous resistance to their encroachment on the peninsular territory until the beginning of the twentieth century (Sullivan 1989), Yucatecans have produced a historical narrative of Yucatán that is distinct from the history of Mexico. Diego de Landa, the Spanish bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán, is considered to be the foremost colonial authority on pre-Hispanic indigenous culture and society in the Yucatán peninsula, rather than the central highlands figure of Bernardino de Sahagún, a Franciscan friar. Hence, the story of pre-conquest Yucatán has been largely shaped by de Landa's self-justifying memoirs (with regard to the suppression of the Maya civilization), which were written in Spain decades after he left Yucatán (see Clendinnen 1987). Later historians of regional matters incorporated de Landa's views into the history of colonial and post-independence times. These colonial and nineteenth-century texts, which can be read as accounts of the trials and tribulations that Spaniards faced during the institution of Yucatecan society, refer to the Maya as one of the obstacles that Spaniards faced in their civilizing endeavors.¹⁵

      Yucatecans possessed a historical awareness that they had emerged as a people shaped in a specific and well-defined territory, in the face of natural and human obstacles (including the intervention of authorities from New Spain). Until the second half of the twentieth century, history was mainly the preserve of educated, elite Yucatecans and not of professional historians (G. Joseph 1986). Regional intellectuals were members of elite families whose children studied abroad, mostly in Europe. In Mérida, religious groups founded educational institutions where Yucatecans learned the latest philosophical and political views originating in Europe (Moseley 1980; Urzaiz 1947). It was Yucatecans' awareness that the peninsula of Yucatán possessed a different history that helped ground a sentiment of peoplehood, which, in turn, inspired Yucatecan attempts to regain independence from Mexico during the 1800s (Alisky 1980). Living away and apart from Mexico, Yucatecans developed their own cultural institutions, including regional literature, music, theatre, and food (Terry 1980; Vargas Cetina 2010b).

      During the long span of Porfirio Díaz's 30-year dictatorship, the Yucatecan government created its own regional pedagogic strategies. For example, it was involved in the organization of regional fairs, which brought together Yucatecan producers from different towns and villages, and facilitated the recognition of shared interests among members of the elites of Mérida and of other cities and towns of Yucatán (Gobierno del Estado de Yucatán 1880). Under central Mexican instruction, and with the acquiescence of the Yucatecan government, geographers helped to establish the contours of Yucatán's natural environment as they conducted professional surveys of the territory and its natural resources (García Cubas 1887; de Zayas Enríquez 1908). To enhance their economic control of the region, the wealthy families of Mérida and the northern area of Yucatán built one of the most dense railroad networks of its time (Wells 1985, 1992). Besides aiding in the transport of henequen, these lines facilitated the mobility of Yucatecans, who, traveling from one city or town to another, helped to make their culture co-extensive with that of the Yucatecan territory.

      The twentieth century witnessed ongoing efforts to construct all-embracing narratives in order to establish and reinforce Yucatecan identity. Under the auspices of the state government, regional intellectuals put their talents together into the composition of a Yucatecan encyclopedia (Enciclopedia Yucatanense). The resulting 12 volumes (9 being published between 1944 and 1947, and 3 between 1979 and 1981) reflect the efforts of Yucatecan people to forge a distinct society and culture (Echánove Trujillo 1944-1947; García Canul et al. 1979-1981).¹⁶ The content of the volumes includes descriptions of Yucatán's geography and its wealth of natural resources (fauna and flora); the history of the peninsular indigenous people; the history of colonization, conquest, and independence from Spain and Mexico, including regional archaeology; the history of the development of an array of cultural institutions and arts (music, dance, opera, literature, handicrafts, food), which the authors proclaim to be Yucatecan in spirit; and the biographies of prominent Yucatecans. These volumes provide an account of Yucatecan people and history as developing in relative isolation from the rest of Mexico,¹⁷ while being connected to the US, the Caribbean, and Europe through trade. It was mostly to these other regions of the world that the members of the Yucatecan elite traveled in search of business opportunities, education, and culture. If, like Wells and Joseph (1992), we find coincidences between central Mexican and Yucatecan cultural inventions, these can probably be explained with reference to the Francophilia that characterized North American, Latin American, and Asian elites throughout the turn of the century (see Higonnet 2002; Levenstein 2000; Needell 1987).

      Yucatecans, therefore, developed their own tools to nourish the sense of peoplehood that gives shape to Yucatecan identity. In addition to the ‘dis-semi-nation' of narrative accounts of the history of the region, Yucatecans recreated—and continue to recreate—their own local cultural forms on a quotidian basis. In Mérida, for example, City Hall organizes weekly festivities in which local artists perform Yucatecan cultural productions: every Monday, Yucatecans and tourists can witness jarana dances in the main plaza of the city; every Tuesday, at Olimpo, a municipal theatre, musicians perform trova songs; and every Thursday, at Santa Lucia Park in downtown Mérida, there are dances, poetry readings, and musical performances. Monuments and statues of Yucatecan members of the regional pantheon invoke the past: a statue dedicated to the Maya rebel Jacinto Canek is located at the exit from Mérida to the port of Celestún (see fig. 1.2); a statue memorializing Justo Sierra O'Reilly is situated in the Paseo Montejo, which, at its northern end, features a Monument to the Fatherland (crafted by a Colombian sculptor) that blends Maya and Aztec elements.¹⁸ In a new, sprawling neighborhood named Francisco de Montejo (the name of the Spanish conqueror of Yucatán)—an area that Yucatecans perceive as being occupied primarily by central Mexicans (see Quintal Ávila 2006)—the statue of a woman, referred to locally as La Mestiza, crowns a large fountain. At elementary schools, children sing the Yucatecan anthem along with the Mexican one. The only СКАЧАТЬ