Paper short abstract:

Since its UNESCO recognition, traditional Mexican cuisine has been a tourism resource, yet it has changed social dynamics, meanings, and practices. Ethnographic analysis highlights cultural commodification, questioning if safeguarding efforts compromise local culinary autonomy for tourism.

Paper long abstract:

Since its inclusion in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity , traditional Mexican cuisine has become a resource for attracting tourists to Mexico. However, this recognition has also modified the social dynamics, relationships, practices, and meanings among the agents involved in traditional cuisine, as well as the narratives that stem from it. The designation has also resulted in fairs, exhibitions, meetings, and culinary festivals, with the stated aim of ensuring safeguarding frameworks, but whose secondary objective has been to promote traditional cuisine as a tourist attraction, often with State support.

This presentation offers an analysis based on an ethnographic approach, ensuing from my participation at the National Meetings of Traditional Mexican Cuisine, and the World Forums on Mexican Gastronomy between 2017 and 2023, as both as an attendee and a delegate of the Mexican Conservatory of Gastronomic Culture. From the perspective of critical heritage studies, this paper discusses cultural homogenization, power relations, and the spectacularization of culinary practices as forms of cultural control observed in these events. I argue that, while UNESCO’s designation aims to ensure the welfare of and respect towards the agents and environments where traditional cuisine is performed, the frameworks established for safeguarding put into question the culinary autonomy of the local communities . Those very frameworks channel traditional Mexican cuisine under a commercial logic of expression and performance geared towards tourism, which means that cuisine is being used for its commercial value , at the expense of its cultural and social significance.