Palace Cantón at the Paseo Montejo
1.2 Monument to Jacinto Canek, Canek Avenue, Mérida
2.1 Supermarket in Mérida
2.2 Street vendor of cochinita pibil and baked piglet, Mérida
3.1 Family Christmas Eve supper table set in buffet style
5.1 Restaurant patio in downtown Mérida
5.2 The author facing panuchos and salbutes in a downtown restaurant
TABLES
2.1 The urban foodscape—eating out for breakfast
2.2 The urban foodscape—eating out for almuerzo
2.3 The urban foodscape—eating out for supper
4.1 Proportion of Yucatecan recipes in relation to the total of recipes included in the cookbook Cocina Yucateca
4.2 Recipes from the gastronomic field included in recent Yucatecan cookbooks
5.1 Entradas (first dishes) in restaurants of Yucatecan food
5.2 Main courses in restaurants of Yucatecan food
Acknowledgments
It is impossible to carry out an anthropological project without the participation of innumerable colleagues, friends, institutions, and the many individuals who, during and after participating in my research, became friends. Following established conventions, I sign this book with my proper name, but I could not have written it without the multitude involved in its completion. Moreover, although anthropological fieldwork is most often a lonely task, I had the incomparable advantage of always counting on my wife and fellow anthropologist, Gabriela Vargas Cetina, to discuss my findings and to challenge my interpretations.
Writing the research project on which this book is based was made possible thanks to the institutional support of Francisco Fernández Repetto, former director of the Faculty of Anthropological Sciences at the Autonomous University of Yucatán (UADY), and Raúl Godoy Montañez, former rector of this university. Since 2007, when I returned from a one-year residency at Cornell University, Genny Negroe Sierra, current director of the Faculty of Anthropological Sciences, has been very supportive, and I cannot thank her enough for relieving me from many administrative obligations. During the years 2000-2006, I conducted research in Mérida and benefited from intellectual and gastronomic exchanges with Diana Arizaga, Andrea Cucina, Francisco Fernández Repetto, Lilia Fernández Souza, Arehmi Mendiburu Carrillo, Genny Negroe Sierra, Vera Tiesler, and Pilar Zabala. At an early stage in the project, Guadalupe Cámara Gutiérrez, Roger Aguilar, Oscar Arango, and Celia Rosado Avilés kindly helped me to locate references, cookbooks, and cooks willing to talk to me. Also, at the Social Sciences Library of the UADY, Edgar Santiago Pacheco and Flor López Bates often helped me to locate rare cookbooks and other reference works. The UADY's Review Board judged my application positively for a sabbatical leave. Without this opportunity, which I took during the academic year 2006-2007, it would have been difficult to accomplish the writing of this book.
I was fortunate to have the extraordinary opportunity to spend my sabbatical leave at Cornell University's Society for the Humanities. A fellowship from the Society gave me the opportunity to think, write, rethink, and rewrite in a context of respectful interdisciplinary discussion. This inspiring environment was made possible thanks to the generosity and friendship of the director of the Society, Brett DeBary, and, during her leave, the acting director, Timothy Conway Murray. The fellows of the Society throughout this period always engaged in a respectful exchange of ideas. I am grateful for the questions and challenges posed, in particular, by Sarah Evans, Jenny Mann, Natalie Melas, Stanka Radovik, Micol Seigel, Suman Seth, and Noa Vaisman. Fuyuki Kurasawa joined the Society's weekly conversations and lunch, and I appreciated the opportunity to converse about my argument with him. Also, while at Cornell, I enjoyed academic and gastronomic exchanges with Frederic Gleach, Vilma Santiago-Irizarry, Jane Fajans, Terry Turner, Natalie Melas, and Rames Elias, all of whom made conviviality a high point of my stay in Ithaca. The library services at Cornell were always efficient and prompt in locating cookbooks and other reference works. For their kind support, I extend thanks to the Society's staff: Mary Ahl, Linda Allen, and Lisa Patty.
Some of the ideas developed here were presented in a somewhat inchoate fashion at different forums. Tracey Heatherington and Bernard C. Perley invited me to discuss the themes in chapter 4 at the University of Milwaukee's weekly anthropology colloquium. I also presented portions of chapter 3 at the University of Toronto's Canadian Anthropology Conference and, by kind invitation of Ramona Perez, at the weekly seminar in the Department of Latin American Studies at the State University of San Diego. I wish to highlight my appreciation for their comments to Vered Amit, Sally Anderson, Deborah Reed-Danahay, Noel Dyck, and Valentina Napolitano at the University of Toronto and to Ramona Perez in San Diego. Also, Carmen Bueno Castellanos invited me to present portions of chapter 5 in the seminar on globalization that she coordinates at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
Thinking about gastronomy would be impossible without a general framework of reference. I have been very fortunate to have the friendship of great gourmands in different parts of the world: Marie-France Labrecque and Francine Saillant in Quebec City; Catherine Lussier and Igor Boudnikov in Montreal; Allan and Josephine Smart, the late Herman Konrad, Candy Arceo, Cathy Work, and Brian Ronaghan in Calgary; Tracey Heatherington and Bernie C. Perley in Canada and Milwaukee; Ramona Perez in San Diego and at American Anthropological Association conferences; and Maya Radicconcini in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Rome. I have also enjoyed friendships with other connoisseurs of good food: Teresa Carbó, the late Victor Franco Pellotier, and Teresa Rojas Rabiela in Mexico City; Pablo Farias Campero, Patricia Velásco, Walda Barrios, and Antonio Mosquera in San Cristóbal de las Casas, the late David Halperin in Comitán de las Flores, Chiapas; Teodora Zamudio in Buenos Aires; Gabriella da Re, Alessandra Guigoni, Gianetta Murru-Corriga, and Franco Corriga in Cagliari; the Giaccu family in Nuoro and Villagrande Strisaili; the Loi families in Talana, Cagliari, and Rome; Anna Paini in Felino, Parma, and Verona; and Adriana Destro and Mauro Pesce in Bologna. In Rome, Lazio, and Tuscany, we have been taken to the most incredible trattorie and restaurants by Franco Sircana, Laura Radicconcini, Gianna Radiconcini, Ginno Satta, and Laura Iamurri. In Mérida, Genny Negroe Sierra, Andrea Cucina, Vera Tiesler, Francisco Fernández Repetto, Diana Arizaga, and Pilar Zabala have been constant gastronomic interlocutors. My family and that of my wife have always been most generous with their conversations over and about food. Special thanks go to Manuela Diaz Carbajal viuda de Ayora, who taught me the basics of Yucatecan cooking, to the late Aurora Diaz Carbajal, to Gloria Vargas Vargas, to Rosa del Alba Cetina Quiñones, and to the late Eduardo Vargas Vargas. For all of them, in different ways, food has always been (or always was) an important part of life. Gisselle Vargas Cetina and Roxana Chavarria Caro made it their duty to concoct as many reasons as possible to separate us from our computers, cooking gargantuan meals for us to savor. Gabriela Vargas Cetina, with whom I have shared 30 years of my life, has become a great gourmand and food interlocutor over the years. The improvements in my cooking are in large part due to her increasingly demanding palate.
I would also like to thank the generosity and courtesy of the restaurateurs, chefs, waiters, restaurant cooks, and home cooks in
