Mexico’s Early Cookbooks

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maite Gomez-Rejón
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Printing Press ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Conquest Of Mexico ◽  
Food Writing

During the Spanish conquest of Mexico (1519–1521), gastronomic literature was already prevalent in Europe, yet not so in Mexico. The use of the printing press in Mexico was limited to print and disseminate ecclesiastical and legal documents; it was not used for subjects as seemingly superfluous as recipes and food. This is not to say that food was not a source of fascination, or a means of social control. Kitchen manuscripts written before Mexico became independent of Spain (between 1810 and 1821) show that there was an abundance of food writing before Independence, especially by nuns in colonial convent kitchens. However, the earliest printed cookbooks did not make their debut in Mexico until 1831, a decade after Independence. Mexican cuisine can be examined beginning from the diaries of conquistadors and missionaries to colonial kitchen manuscripts to the cookbooks published after Independence through the Porfiriato (1876–1910) and Revolution (1910–1920). Reading between the lines of the recipes in these sources, one sees the shifting attitudes toward food, as it ceases to be a status marker and a divider of classes and becomes a tool for unifying the country.

The Plum'd Serpent: Antonio Borgese and Roger Sessions's ‘Montezuma”

Tempo ◽  
1985 ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Andrea Olmstead
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Early History ◽  
Smith College ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Home Town ◽  
American Subject ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Conquest Of Mexico

The Spanish Conquest of Mexico provides stirring drama for an epic opera on an American subject It has been set by some 30 composers; the earliest is Graun's Montezuma (1755), and the best-known Spontini's Fernand Cortez, ou la Conquête de Mexique (1809). Antonio Borgese, a Sicilian who ‘fell in love with the English language’, retold the epic story to music by Roger Sessions.How did such an unlikely alliance—a Sicilian poet, an American composer, and Mexican history—come about? Sessions first met Antonio Borgese in 1934 in his home town of Hadley, Massachusetts, when Borgese was teaching at Smith College. In 1935 Borgese made a trip to Mexico, where he was overwhelmed by the early history of that country; on his return, he proposed collaborating on an opera on the subject, although he had never written a libretto. Sessions knew nothing of Mexico's history, but did possess a first edition of Prescott's Conquest of Mexico given to his grandfather, possibly by Prescott himself. Sessions read the Prescott and Bernal Diaz's account, and he too became enthralled. Borgese wisely advised against Sessions's proposed title, Tenochtitlan, arguing, ‘The opera is written for titans; we don't need a title for titans, too’. Instead, he suggested the title Montezuma.

Narration and the experience of history

Semiotica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (219) ◽  
pp. 511-528
Author(s):  
Roberto Flores
Keyword(s):  
Time History ◽  
Vicarious Experience ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Textual Basis ◽  
Positive Knowledge ◽  
Conquest Of Mexico

AbstractFor a long time, history has been conceived as a textual fact, whether as positive knowledge of the past, reported in chronicles and original sources, or through acknowledgment of its textual basis, assumed as historiography, as narrative history. In either case, the text appears as the source and goal of knowledge, and has assumed the nature of an immutable monument, an invariable object of reference and information. These texts are limited to constituting a regulatory storehouse of knowledge, a mere object of appropriation. In contrast, we can consider history not just as knowledge enclosed in textual containers, but as experience inscribed in peoples´ memory. This is what Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman suggests with his proposal to consider history as readers formulating their own versions of the past. Through these proposals, semiotics is in a position to describe the role of texts in the production of a vicarious experience of history through the act of reading. This paper provides examples taken from accounts of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico and proposes a semiotic interpretation of the experience of history.

Mexico, Spain, and Their Deep Histories of Place

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
David M. Carballo
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Conquest Of Mexico

This book presents a novel perspective on the momentous encounter of five hundred years ago between Europeans and Native peoples of the Americas by framing what has traditionally been called the Spanish conquest of Mexico in deep time, on both sides of the Atlantic, and with an emphasis on material culture. The introductory chapter establishes the broad contours of this approach by defining the concept of “deep history” and the layers of human occupation that archaeologists and specialists of cognate fields study as sites, artifacts, and art. It provides an entry into this approach by discussing the towns of Medellín, Spain, and Cholula, Mexico—two places with millennia of human occupation that encapsulate much of the major chronological phases of early Iberia and Mesoamerica, as well as their entanglement when Medellín’s most famous son, the conquistador Hernando Cortés, invaded Cholula and massacred thousands of its unarmed inhabitants.

Screenings

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-78
Author(s):  
Paul Julian Smith
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Indigenous Woman ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
Limited Series ◽  
Domestic Lives ◽  
Female Director ◽  
Aztec Empire ◽  
Conquest Of Mexico

FQ Columnist Paul Julian Smith discusses the Mexican limited series, Malinche, which tracks the Spanish conquest of Mexico and destruction of the Mexica (Aztec) Empire from the perspective of the conquistador Hernán Cortés's interpreter, the indigenous woman Malinche. He explains how the series differs from other televisual accounts of the conquest of Mexico in both its emphasis on the domestic lives of women and its use of multiple indigenous languages. He concludes by comparing the series to a recent film about the colonial experience by another Latin American female director—Zama by Lucrecia Martel.

Jadeite from Manzanal, Guatemala

1955 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. Foshag ◽  
Robert Leslie
Keyword(s):  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Conquest Of Mexico

The use of jade by the ancient indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica was widespread and endured for a long time. The earliest jade objects from this region have been found in pre-Classic sites at Tlatilco, Zacatenco (Vaillant 1930), Ticoman (Vaillant 1930), Gualupita (Vaillant 1934), and El Arbollilo (Vaillant 1935) in Mexico; and Finca Arizona (Shook 1945) and Kaminaljuyii (Shook and Kidder 1952) in Guatemala. Radiocarbon dating of the Tlatilco site gave an age about 1500 B.C. (Libby 1952). The use of jade continued in Mexico until the early days of the Spanish colonial period when its use as a piedra de ijada or amulet for alleviating pain in the loins and for curing diseases of the kidney had a wide vogue. Fifty years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, jade had become rare, largely because the supply obtainable from the nobles and chiefs was by then depleted (Monardes 1569), and very soon after the use and all knowledge of jade disappeared from Mesoamerica where but a short time before it was looked upon as the most precious of substances.

Government Use of Print

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saskia Limbach
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Printing Press ◽  
Market Conditions ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Comprehensive Account ◽  
Sophisticated Analysis

Presenting the most comprehensive account of official print in the Holy Roman Empire during the sixteenth century, this study investigates the use of the printing press as an increasingly important instrument in the expansion of authority. By comparing and contrasting publications printed in the Duchy of Württemberg and in the Free Imperial City of Cologne, the author traces the tentative beginnings of collaboration between rulers and printers. Making use of hitherto unexplored legal and business records, the study offers a sophisticated analysis of the early modern print trade which allows us to ascertain the business and market conditions that shaped the production of administrative and legal documents, such as police ordinances and announcements.

John Wyclif and the Rights of the Infidels: The Requerimiento Re-Examined

1980 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Muldoon
Keyword(s):  
Brute Force ◽  
Proper Position ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Long Line ◽  
Pope Innocent Iv ◽  
John Wyclif ◽  
Legal Opinion

The Requerimiento was one of the most striking legal documents of the entire age of European overseas expansion. A long line of publicists and scholars from Bartholomew de Las Casas to Lewis Hanke have discussed, praised and condemned it. The Requerimiento appears to illustrate more clearly than any other single document the combination of high-sounding motives, legal chicanery and brute force that made the Spanish conquest of the Americas possible. In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis upon examining the conquest in terms of the brute force involved and a decreasing emphasis upon the motives and the legalisms which the Spanish employed. As one scholar has said, the Requerimiento was but a “useless legalism,” and, presumably, no longer worthy of serious attention. In addition, scholars have generally agreed that the Requerimiento is thoroughly understood. Following Las Casas, they have asserted that it contained the legal opinion of the thirteenth century canon lawyer known as Hostiensis that infidels had no right to property or political jurisdiction. In medieval terms, that infidels, such as the inhabitants of the Americas, did not possess dominium. In recent years, scholars have asserted that those who defended the Indians against the conquerors, such as Las Casas himself and Francisco Vitoria, drew upon the opinion of Hostiensis' teacher, the canonist-Pope Innocent IV. In this way, the Requerimiento and the related debate about the rights of the Indians has been placed within its proper position within the late medieval canonistic tradition.

An Unknown Early Modern New World Epic: Girolamo Vecchietti’sDelle prodezze di Ferrante Cortese(1587–88)

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 1351-1390
Author(s):  
Virginia Cox
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New World ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude ◽  
Conquest Of Mexico

AbstractThis article discusses an unpublished vernacular Italian New World epic of the 1580s, which narrates the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The work was authored by the traveler, diplomat, and Orientalist Girolamo Vecchietti, and it is dedicated to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, grand duke of Tuscany. Vecchietti’s poem is striking as a rare epic in terza rima, and as the sole surviving early modern Italian epic to center on the deeds of Cortés, rather than Columbus or Vespucci. It is also intriguing for its ambivalent attitude toward the Spanish colonizing enterprise, portrayed initially as a heroic evangelizing mission, but later shown in a more compromised light.

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