all over the state, but not in the rest of Mexico, is the birth of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the socialist governor of Yucatán who was murdered in 1924 by soldiers following the orders of local elites, in collusion with the central Mexican authorities. These pedagogical instruments point to both the performative aspects that challenge the homogeneity and dominance of Mexican nationalism and the icons that deepen the sense of fraternity among Yucatecans. In so doing, they promote a strong sense of cultural uniqueness and difference from Mexican society and culture.
Yucatán and the Caribbean
Although today it is almost impossible to overlook the ties between Yucatán and other Caribbean societies (Shrimpton Masson 2006), this had not been the case for a long time. In general, the literature on the Caribbean tends to favor the study of societies in which the numbers of the Afro-Caribbean population dominate over those of the indigenous groups, who were massacred by the Spanish conquerors or by Creole Spaniards and later by Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, and French colonial settlers (Mintz 1996; Puri 2004; Serbin 1994; Simpson 1962; Trouillot 1992). For example, Gaztambide-Géigel (1996) argues for a restrictive definition of the Caribbean to include only those societies with a strong African component, that is, former slave societies. He claims that to extend the term to other societies in Central and South America is an imperialist maneuver designed by US intellectuals. In turn, Torres-Saillant (2006) pays little attention to continental nations that claim to be part of the Caribbean, and he is somewhat intrigued by the fact that the government of the state of Quintana Roo, on the Caribbean side of the peninsula, organizes an annual competition on Caribbean literature (ibid.: 19-20).19 A notable exception is the study of Arciniegas ([1946] 2003) who took a longue durée approach to the study of the history of the Caribbean, prefiguring Braudel's study on the Mediterranean.20 Arciniegas paid close attention to the centuries of Spanish domination and colonization of the islands and the societies in Central and South America that bordered the Caribbean Sea. His account also examines the imperialist actions of the British, French, and Dutch (and later of the US), who wrestled with the Spaniards for control of the trade routes (see also Gilbert 1977; Hinckley 1963; Marichal and Souto Mantecón 1994; Sluiter 1948).
Figure 1.2. Monument to Jacinto Canek, Canek Avenue, Mérida
Photograph courtesy of G. Vargas Cetina, 2007.
The displacement of people of Spanish origin from most of the Antilles allowed for their replacement by other European peoples, and African slaves (and later indentured Asian labor) took the place left vacant by the indigenous people, who could not withstand the military and bacteriological warfare launched by the Europeans. Although for a long time the domination of the Caribbean was a contested matter, the region was finally divided among different European powers and the United States. Smuggling became a common activity, competing with the formal trade in sugar, fruits, coffee, cacao, vanilla, and spices (Palmer 1932; Shaw 1943). While, in general terms, the literature tends to overlook the relationship of Yucatán with the Caribbean islands and surrounding lands, Yucatecans continued to trade with different islands (mainly Cuba) and with the US states of Louisiana, New York, and Texas. Yucatecans sold Mayas as slaves to Cuba, and in return Cuba sent migrants to take advantage of the henequen boom. British Honduras (today's Belize) kept an open channel in order to smuggle weapons to the Maya rebels, but also to transport diverse commodities of British and Dutch origin to the states of Yucatán and Campeche (Sullivan 1989). Vargas Cetina (pers. comm.) has found that Yucatecan musicians traveled to Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, New Orleans, New York, and France, and that musicians from those regions often visited Yucatán. Since these paths are necessarily bi-directional, it can be safely assumed that when Yucatecans returned home, they came with new commodities, a reformed taste, and transformed forms of subjectivity.
Edible commodities were part and parcel of the Caribbean trade for all involved—for the Americans, British, Dutch, French, Germans, and Spaniards, for the inhabitants of the Caribbean islands, and for the Mexicans in the central highlands, the port of Veracruz, and the peninsula of Yucatán (Chardon 1949; Hinckley 1963; Palmer 1932; Shaw 1943; Simpson 1962; Sluiter 1948). Nonetheless, looking at a recent publication on the food culture of the Caribbean (Hudson 2005), we find that the author has chosen a restrictive focus on the food of the Spanish-speaking regions, singling out the islands of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Examining the food of the Caribbean, any reader who is knowledgeable of Yucatecan cooking can easily find foodstuff and recipes that, give or take an ingredient, are also found within the Yucatán culinary field. Among them are the preference for fowl and pork; the limited use of milk and its derivates; the use of citrus fruits to marinate meat; the prevalence of achiote (annatto) seeds and paste in spice blends; numerous recipes for ajiaco and other similar stews; variations on Edam stuffed cheese; the use of Middle Eastern and Asian spices (black pepper, cumin, coriander seeds, cinnamon, cloves); and the use of banana leaves to wrap foods during cooking. There are, of course, important differences. Since the number of Afro-Caribbean inhabitants was minimal in the Yucatán peninsula (Fernández Repetto and Negroe Sierra 1995; Restall 2009), African spices, roots, plants, and procedures that are common in other Caribbean nations are not found (or their use is negligible) in Yucatán.
In my travels to Puerto Rico and Miami, I have found dishes (e.g., baked piglet) that resemble those found in Yucatán. In both places, as in Yucatán, pork is marinated in the juice of Seville oranges with salt, allspice, and garlic. In each place, with some spices more or less noticeable, the dish tastes about the same. Although I have found reference to stuffed cheese in a Puerto Rican cookbook, I have not found it in restaurants I visited in San Juan. However, my friend and fellow anthropologist, Vilma Santiago-Irizarry, has told me that when she grew up on the island, she was familiar with a version of the dish stuffed with pigeon meat, while in Yucatán the preferred ingredient is minced or ground pork. Stuffed cheese has become one of the iconic dishes of Yucatán, although Venezuelans also claim the dish as representative of their national cuisine.21 In Yucatán, despite this dish being recalled by people now in their eighties, who told me that they ate it on special occasions during their childhood, some cookbook authors claim that it was a Yucatecan creation to honor the Dutch royalty during their visit to the state in the 1950s (Carrillo Lara 1994). Also, a recipe for a rice timbale stuffed with ground pork and spices, called sopa rochuna, is attributed to the Rocha family, who relocated to Yucatán from the Dominican Republic during the first decades of the twentieth century (Arjona de Castro and Castro Arjona n.d., ca. 2000). However, thus far I have not met anyone who remembers ever eating this dish.
Yucatecan cuisine developed in a context that favors its differentiation from Mexican cuisine. Instead of adopting the blueprint of the latter, Yucatecans sought to articulate their passion for the local along with their cosmopolitan aspirations, a relation that evolved with the Caribbean trade routes. Hence, domestic and professional Yucatecan cooks produced and instituted a culinary tradition that is currently perceived as iconic of Yucatecan society and culture. As with its society and culture, Yucatecan cuisine is a hybrid that combines local tastes and appetencies with those of France, Spain, Italy, and the Caribbean region. Although central Mexican chefs and cooks, as well as cookbook writers, seek to appropriate regional gastronomies and recodify them as variations on the national theme, Yucatecan producers and consumers root their tastes in the conviction that their food is the product of the essence of their region and, therefore, that it is in their ‘nature'.
In the following section I discuss the relationship between food and national identity, analyzing the historical processes of the formation of the modern nation-state, taking into account the practice of cultural homogenization and the mechanisms of surveillance and governance of the national territory. I also examine the contrary movement, arising from the general cultural and political context, that enables local-regional groups of people to affirm identities that differ from the national project. I look at the intricacies of the historically difficult relations between Yucatán and Mexico, and, finally, discuss the application of what Irvine and Gal (2000) refer to as ‘fractal recursivity', that is, the ways
