Food, Foodways, and Culture in Early Mexican Chicago

Food, Foodways, and Culture in Early Mexican Chicago

Migrant Mexican food and foodways in Chicago brought together Mexican American, regional Mexican, and local traditions in an environment distinct to Chicago. It is through these local intersections connecting traditions, cultures, and the lived environment that members of the Mexican community preserved what they identified as their heritage. In promoting Mexican foodways, migrant marketplaces and culture, Mexicanos in Chicago made them materially and symbolically representative of the community’s racial, social, and ethnic identity. Local migrant marketplaces created and recreated sights, sounds, and smells, as both cultural anchors for the community and tourist attractions for the visitor. They used food and foodways as symbols of Mexican immigrant culture and participated in making these spaces a different, but “authentic” Mexican experiences for tourists as well as for themselves. This paper examines the centrality of culturally distinct Mexican food, restaurants, grocery stores, and other food establishments as spaces that were evolving sites of community building, cultural production, and culinary and cultural tourism during the first thirty years of Mexican settlement in the City of Chicago.