He really took them to task for bad research and colonizer mentality. I didn’t see the shows , do you think it was warranted?
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Ha… I didn’t see the stories (It was mentioned on another post) but I knew he would make a comment on how gushy the show could be about the “Spanish contribution” to the cuisine. I wasn’t surprised when I heard on the shows because Eva is Texican and she married one of the wealthiest men in Mexico… There generally is no “colonizer” mentality against the Madre Patria on Mexico and especially not amongst the upper classes. But now amongst the younger generations, there isn’t a any rush to gush about our ‘european past’ either (as it was a myth in Mexico, California and in Texas. Mexicans have been Mexicans since near the end of the conquest)
So yes, it was warranted.
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I have not seen the show either. Hard to argue against his point that indigenous people and indigenous foodways are consistently ignored and discounted. So I found that compelling and true.
While that’s his most important point, a few of the smaller things in his thread felt over broad. Not an ethnobotanist, and I don’t doubt the ingenuity of the people/cultures who domesticated corn from teosinte, but my superficial understanding is that wheat domestication and agriculture more generally equally involved human intervention. I do get his point is a corrective to eurocentrism (though wheat was domesticated in Southern Turkey or the mid east.)
I also don’t know the history well enough to evaluate his claim that indigenous Mexican cuisine is unbroken and that we (meaning Mexicans themselves) “still eat like they did.” Whereas indigenous Spanish cooking doesn’t exist. I’d imagine there was much cross cultural exchange within the hemisphere, between Maya and Aztec and Southwestern and South American cultures. And that most cuisines are consistently under influence from other cultures and food ways.
Ultimately though it seems incontrovertible that the Spanish are given way too much credit for Mexican food.
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Eliminate the Spanish contributions to Mexican cuisine and you’d have to cook without pork, chicken, beef, dairy, rice, wheat, onions, or citrus.
Like I mentioned in the other post… I knew these issues would pop up even before seeing the series and never seeing Bill’s comments. My entire family would have rolled their eyes at her comment when making Cochinita Pibil she cheerily mentioned “The Spanish brought the pork…” meaning this dish would not exisit without that. WIthout following up that before the Spanish we used deer and turkey… which WE STILL DO.
Life before conquest was purposely snuffed, but what we all do know is that there was plenty of trade throughout Latin America so the idea of integrating ingredients from other places was already there. Further, the conquest itself wasn’t just by the Spanish alone, they gathered an army of aggrieved tribes from all over the continent. That itself set into motion what Mexico would become afterwards…
Is there a little bit of over correction… perhaps, but again, our history is unknown through no fault of our own. But has their been an even longer history of giving people of ‘Spanish heritage’ way more credit than they should… absolutely. I always point to the original founders of Los Angeles… how many do you think were Spanish?
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It seems to me as ridiculous to minimize the contributions of the Spanish as it would be to deny that the resulting fusion dishes are mostly closer to the indigenous cuisines than to Spain’s.
Sure, people make pavo pibil, but who makes it without citrus and onion? And who cares? Nobody would mistake pibil for Spanish food.
As always, it’s about presentation with the tone of how grateful we should be… You don’t see an Italian cooking show where they take out tomatoes and go… “Tomatoes… originally from the Andes” or a Spanish cooking show when they make a Torta Espanola “Potatoes… which came from Peru”… it’s totally unnecessarily. As you said, ultimately WHO CARES that this one ingredient came from X since it has evolved greatly over time… But yet over and over when it comes to Mexican cuisine there seems to be this need for it has to be peppered in there even from our own representatives…
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It seems like they really hit a nerve with Bill. Some of these posts on his IG seem very defensive. Michael Jordan never had to tell everybody he was good at basketball. Not saying Bill is the MJ of Mexican food discovery and writing but you know what I mean.
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The conversation on this thread is more cohesive and better articulated than anything Bill ever writes. And while it’s okay to write angry—I’m thinking of Chester Himes as a perfect example of a great, angry LA writer—Bill just comes off as petulant and rather agenda forward.
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It’s exactly like Italians taking tomatoes for granted. Mexicans made mole before the they had cloves, cinnamon, and peanuts, and Italians made pizza before they had tomatoes. The Columbian exchange dramatically affected both sides, but contemporary cooks just take the fusion for granted.
I don’t think I’ve ever read anything about contemporary Mexican food that suggested a debt to Spain. Once in a while there’s an historical note, e.g. discussing (often exaggerating) the role nuns played in the history of mole, just as in stuff about Italian food there’s occasionally a note that tomatoes weren’t used until the late 1600s.
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Yeah, for some reason I always thought it was conventional wisdom that Bill Esparza’s vibe is… off-putting.
I don’t watch food shows very often (and read about food even less, outside of FTC), but, when he’s popped up on them, I have fast forward or just stop watching b/c there’s some really grating and coarse about how he presents himself.
::shrug::
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I respect the hell out of him because he had been able to put shine on some great food and people and promote them but he doesn’t come across as super likeable. I’d love to have a meal with Gustavo Arellano because it sounds fun Bill Esparza not so much
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Gustavo is a smart guy but has his own rough edges and would probably hold similar thoughts about the series, if he has even bothered to watch it. Knowing what I knew, I wasn’t planning to but when P showed an interest, I was happy to and even he kinda scoffed when she mentioned that there wasn’t a ton of seafood in Yucatecan cooking… 
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This. There was a certain young up and coming teenage food writer, who met both JGold and Bill. One chose to uplift and encourage while the other discouraged and intimidated.
I’m not going to mention a name but those on this board can easily deduce who I’m referring to and who did the uplifting.
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Man that sucks, to a teenager!!!
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Don’t worry! He’s doing fine in the food and writing business now 
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I chose to go out of town at the wrong time. I seemed to have missed some fun times.
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Don’t worry @attran99 he is still on a heater. Posting lots of stories about the best guisados places he’s been to in Mexico and California.
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Yeah something has really gotten his goat, its kinda hilarious because on one hand he is providing some great knowledge but on the other he seems to somewhat melting down.
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