By: Arlette Martinez
Alfonso Gómez-Rossi has been teaching at the Instituto Universitario Boulanger since 2006. At the Food Matters & Materialities Conference, he presented a fascinating research paper entitled “The Rejection of Mexican Quelites: A Study of Cultural Culinary Hegemony in Mexico”. We talked more about his work over Zoom.
Purslane growing in Ottawa. Credits: Arlette Martinez.
AM: You mentioned in your presentation that the word quelite comes from Nahuatl, meaning “tender herb that is edible”, and that these herbs grow mainly in Mexico and the Southern US. You also talked about the complex identity politics around quelites. Could you briefly summarize for our readers, what you mean by that, and what these politics are?
AGR: Well, it’s not my idea originally. Some historians have observed that certain foods are considered acceptable for defining being Mexican, while others, like corn, amaranth, and quelites, are rejected, mainly because they’re associated with native Mexicans. So, the foods that are generally accepted tend to be the ones that are creole or mestizo, made with ingredients that are a mix from Europe and Mexico. Mole, for example, is originally a native Mexican dish, but some variations use ingredients from Europe, making this dish mestizo. Corn has been rehabilitated in the last half a century, but quelites have not. So, the question would be, why haven’t quelites been accepted like other ingredients? Why are quelites associated with native Mexicans and with poverty?
The whole gist of the research was this: I found that quelites were very important for the pre-Hispanic diets. When we talk about quelites, we’re talking about over 100 varieties, and some were associated with the gods. The Aztecs practiced a ritual involving amaranth around December 26. They would create an image of the God Huitzilopochtli*, and they would bond it with blood, and then they would consume it. When the Catholic missionaries came to Mexico in the 16th century, they believed that Huitzilopochtli was not a God but a demon mocking the Catholic mass because, in the Catholic mass, the bread and the wine become the blood and the body of Christ. And here were these Aztecs eating the body of their God. So, there was an outright war to destroy amaranth. By the 19th century, the religious connotations of the quelite were not as crucial as its negative association towards the lower classes. Quelites were associated with poverty and became problematic foods because they were associated with ignorance. There’s also a lot of racism surrounding quelites.
AM: That’s fascinating and a great segue to my next question. You mentioned that after independence in 1821, the Mexican state began associating certain ingredients with what it meant to be “a true Mexican,” and ingredients like quelites were considered barbaric. Could you tell us how much of that remains true today?
AGR: I think there is a movement in academia and culinary schools to see what we can do with quelites or incorporate quelites into popular culture. And chefs are now trying to rediscover endemic Mexican ingredients. Still, if you’re talking about the upper-middle class and the middle class more generally, I think they aspire to copy models of conduct from the United States or Western Europe. They believe that by eating certain foods, they are subscribing to these codes of conduct. So although a few quelites are still being eaten and accepted in certain areas, it is not widespread.
AM: If famous Mexican chefs started using quelites in their recipes and restaurants, do you think this would help average Mexicans or upper-middle-class Mexicans see quelites in a new light? What else could help change quelites image?
AGR: That’s an interesting question because we have to ask ourselves, who creates culture? Is it certain elites that create culture, and then the masses just copy it? Or is the upper class influenced by the lower class? I think that the chefs that are working with quelites are not working in a void. Quelites have been present all along. They’re trying to be innovative and copying the use of quelites from what we would consider the lower classes right now, incorporating them into the upper-class cuisine.
I don’t know if that would influence certain people. I think it would influence people who like to eat at certain restaurants in Mexico City or Monterrey – to look at quelites differently and maybe stop associating them with negative social class aspects. I think it would change some people’s minds, but I don’t know how long that would take. I’m not sure where it’ll go, but I do know that the prejudice against quelites was pervasive for a long time.
AM: Do you think eating more Indigenous foods, like quelites, can help Mexicans to reconnect and reconcile with their Indigenous past?
AGR: I would like to believe that it would. But the Mexican identity is built around the idea that Mexicans are mestizos; this excludes native Mexicans and Whites. This narrative was built by Jose Vasconcelos back in the 1920s, who wrote in his book La Raza Cosmica (The Cosmic Race) that the “true Mexican” was the mestizo, a mixture of the native Mexican before the conquest, and the Spaniard. So, we romanticize the native Mexican past, but we don’t appreciate our Indigenous population right now. And I don’t think that liking quelites would make us appreciate them. It would take us into this mythic past, but it wouldn’t help us recognize the value of native Mexicans at this moment.
AM: That brings me to my last question. Purslane or verdolaga, in Spanish, is a type of quelite, which also grows in Canada. Could you tell us how you eat it? Maybe our readers will give it a try.
AGR: Yes, here in Puebla, where I live, we eat it in soup. So, you boil it in a tomato-based soup. But I don’t know if many people hate verdolagas here in Mexico because they grow on the sidewalks. That’s an important point, too, because Spaniards didn’t want to eat wild vegetables and quelites simply grow along with the maize fields. So, the Spaniards rejected the idea of eating things that were not “properly cultivated” like wheat or lettuce.
The conversation with Alfonso made me reflect on Canada’s complex relationship with Indigenous peoples and their food. There’s also a growing interest and support for Indigenous food sovereignty and revitalization movement similar to what Alfonso describes in Mexico. Edible plants alone cannot repair the wounds of colonialism, but hopefully, they can be a delicious step forward.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.