Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the expansion and fragmentation of the Yucatan foodscape, including the introduction of technologies, leading to changes in the relationship to regional cuisine and transformed the emotional and cultural attachment to food, unsettling its relationship to regional identity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores and discusses different ways in which the introduction of new and foreign cooking technologies has transformed local people's attachment to Yucatecan food, and consequently its relationship to a strong sense of regional cultural identity. Yucatecan food developed into a gastronomic code during the last seventy years. During this process, the ties between Yucatecan gastronomy and regional identity were instrumental in opposing the locally perceived homogenizing Mexican national cuisine and identity advanced from the Mexican central highlands. Every day, Yucatecans ate regional food, experienced as different from Mexican cuisine and more akin to Caribbean, European and Middle Eastern cooking practices. Yucatecan people developed strong attachments to recipes, ingredients, and the taste of local food, and this affection was understood as an emotional and political connection to the land, its people and its ethos. This paper discusses how, since the 1970s, the Yucatan foodscape began to expand and then fragment, as growing numbers of immigrants from other Mexican regions and abroad arrived and settled into the state, unsettling long-established regional attachments. Simultaneously, the global market for edible and culinary commodities expanded and transformed regional cooking in Yucatan, partly on account of the introduction of new culinary technologies and ingredients. Consequently, this paper argues that these technologies have allowed local people to experience and experiment with imported culinary codes and created the possibility for superficial and temporary attachments to different food aesthetics and values, relativizing the meaning of Yucatecan food.