Taco Culture Evolution

The evolution of the taco started with its spread into the United States because of Mexican immigration that led to a mixture of Mexican and American cultures and a diffusion of ideas creating a Mexican American identity. Over time, the taco has been divided between the Mexican American hard shell tacos, representative of the taco’s globalization, and the maize tortillas that date to the Aztec civilization and are symbolic of authentic Mexican cuisine. Hence, with a new identity came a new culture with new food recipes like the hard shell taco that revolutionized the food industry and created Taco Bell. This led to the battle between globalization and national sovereignty as an indication of how the authenticity of Mexican food is put at risk,

Mexican Americans have combined both cultures and reinvented the taco so that it can assimilate into American society, yet still be connected to their Mexican ancestry. Immigration was pivotal for the Mexican American cuisine because people brought ideas, cooking styles and recipes from Mexico to the United States, but throughout this cultural interaction the original recipes are altered to fit their new society. In 1924, taco wagons started to sell tacos because a wave of migrants from Central Mexico came due to the Mexican Revolution. The selling of tacos in the streets of the U.S. was driven by Mexican immigrants that want to feel at home by eating traditional home dishes and creating a “little Mexico” within the U.S. borders. Pilcher even states, “The Mexican American taco combined North American ingredients with Mexican sensibilities. They were created by migrant and ethnic cooks and reflected an emerging Mexican American identity.” This further supports how the Mexican American identity was created from a mix of two distinct cultures and how food is a vehicle through which immigrants can claim their cultural citizenship. This led to the evolution of the soft tortilla into the hard shell taco so that it can conform and appeal to the American consumer. This innovation of the hard shell taco

In 1962, Glen Bell created Taco Bell, with 6,500 restaurants in the U.S. and with annual revenue in the billions. Glen Bell “became rich not through technological improvements but rather by franchising ethnic exoticism for consumers outside the Mexican community.” Therefore, he globalized the taco by catering it to Anglo-Americans that were curious about Mexican food, but did not want to enter Mexican communities. For this reason, he advertised “Mexican food” to non-Mexicans that were unaware of the cuisine and created a false image of Mexican food by presenting hard shell tacos as “Mexican food” to assimilate it into the Anglo-American diet. As a matter of fact, as these images of authentic Mexican food are invented so are the stereotypes that surround Mexicans. According to Pilcher, the image of the taco as “cheap, hot and dangerous reinforces racist images of Mexico” and “corporate advertisements are using demeaning images like Mexicans as outlaws or animals.” These stereotypes are denigrating the status of Mexican food and its people, and shows how a single food like tacos can incite these stereotypes and create a label for Mexicans. On the other hand, scholars show how Mexicans view the fast-food taco as a distortion of their cuisine presenting