This message is a bit longer and more disjointd than I would have liked... cobbeled together in the few spare minutes here and there this morning... not much time to go back and edit my rambling mess...
Ron Johnson wrote:
The food is not Tex-Mex because the Mexican simply because the border shifted south by a few hundred miles. The food is Tex-Mex because the people that moved into that area once it was taken from Mexico were Americans. They brought their own type of cuisine with them. When their cuisine was blended with the cuisine of Mexico and the local ingredients, the result was a hybrid cuisine called Tex-Mex. So it is not the fact the border is merely in a different place, but the fact that a different ethnicity of people moved into the area when that border shifted that is responsible for the new cuisine.
I wasn't really suggesting that it
was simply because of the border, hence beginning the litany questioning whether it would exist as we know it today. I tend to think that many of those influences that created Tex-Mex were already seeping into the region and it didn't happen in such a discrete manner as 'Mexico lost texas, then americans moved in, and then we had Tex-mex.' As I understand it, the origins of Tex-Mex are actually in the pre-Mexico days when Texas was part of New Spain. Had we not taken Texas, I think a number of the later influences would still have taken hold in the region as well. While the food wouldn't be exactly as we know it, I think many elements of the region would still be substantially different from what we think of today traditionally as mexican cuisine... yet it would have happened within the Mexican borders, and the thought of what might have been becomes intriguing.
Bear in mind I'm not in any way arguing that Tex-Mex
should be considered part of Mexican cuisine. But regional cuisine, much like languages, change over time both by natural internal evolution and through the introduction of outside influences as well...and perception of what does and doesn't qualify under a label is merely an interesting topic to me. I've had a number of englishmen tell me we don't speak English; we speak American, or American English. And yet I don't know anyone in America, save for a few pedantic linguists, who typically refer to the language as either. We simply say we speak English.
This situation also reminds me heavily of another interest area of mine wherein the labels have become problematic and even more at odds than in the Tex-Mex/Mexican discussion. Japanese comics, when they were first introduced to this country were referred to using the japanese word for comics, manga, because of the substantial differences in the way Japan treated comics as a medium - there was substantial difference in the comics of Japan and the comics of the west so as a convenience the Japanese word for comics was adopted into our lexicon as "Japanese comics." But in the last few years there have been an increasing number of western comics creators adapting some of the surface features of Japanese comics - they draw characters with big eye, spiky hair, the publish in black and white - and insist that they are creating manga, by emulating the style of japanese comics. Yet Japanese comics are wildly diverse and do not conform to those stereotyped surface features; the only commonality that manga have ever truly shared across the area are that they are comics from Japan.
These western creations are what I would refer to as "manga influenced", but not manga. Still though, there are many who ardently insist that their works are manga and take offense to the insistence that it is not. Mainly, I think because for some there is an implication of inferiority in the argument against and this happens in the food argument as well. For some reason people won't accept that the influence of one thing, does not make their creation that thing itself. For others like myself and many here there is no implication of superiority intended, however, it is perceived by many to be there.
As I said, not making an argument for Tex-Mex as a part of mexican cuisine at all, much as I would not make the argument that western comics influenced by manga are manga. I'm merely interested in observing and exploring the effect of cultural exchange and classifications, particularly as it relates to nationality and borders.
) who considered Louisville's real-Mexican taquerias "inauthentic" because they weren't Tex-Mex. Hmm.