Soryajit Saini

Zuleima Ugalde

English 114B

March 12, 2018

Tex Mex and Borderlands

Tex-Mex food, while beloved by some, is derided by culinary snobs in both

Mexico and the United States. This amalgam incorporates aspects of both cuisines but

has spun into its own entity. Yet it is this very derision that signifies that Tex-Mex can be

considered a borderland, as it is a space that combines several overlapping cultures and

yet is accepted fully by none of them.

The borderlands is a case of “neither/nor” as it is the area that straddles two

countries or cultures yet is not uniformly a member of either; the American Southwest

and its combining of Mexican and America cultures being the closest. According to

Ashcroft states, “The settled area adjacent to this [the frontier] was also known

sometimes as the borderlands” (Ashcroft 25). As Ashcroft summarizes, these areas can

“be spaces of energy, when they question fixities and release the potential for change and

revision” (Ashcroft 25). This energy can be seen as areas that develop their own

particular cultures, languages, and cuisines that are combination of the two places that

meet. However, these conjunctions become spaces of their own, distinct from either

parent culture. Tex-Mex is a perfect example of this.

Tex mex is defined as "designating the Texan version of something Mexican" in

the Oxford English Dictionary, first used in 1875 to define the language railway workers

spoke to communicate with each other. The engineers were English and the laborers were
Mexican. The area is the American Southwest, where it was once occupied by Mexico

but later absorbed by the United States (Walsh). A representative Tex-Mex dish such as

fajitas shows this synthesis. Its name comes from Spanish, as “faja” means “belt” and the

cut of beef used was from the diaphragm, or belt of the cow (Walsh). While Tex Mex

food first appeared in Texas in 1972 , it became popularized a year later in 1973 at

“Mama Ninfa’s on Navigation” (Walsh).

The ubiquity of cheese is another characteristic of Tex-Mex cuisine. Cheese is

everywhere where it would not appear in the original Mexican versions of dishes: orange

cheese on tacos, melted on burritos and is even served with nachos. “Mexicans from

central and southern regions do not appreciate yellow cheese and cabbage salad or Tex-

Mex” ( Martynuska). This may be because they are worried that their culture is being

misrepresented to the rest of the world. Some Tex mex cuisines even have two menus.

“Jeanette Avila, who owns ‘El Rancho’ restaurant in Detroit, keeps two menus: Tex-Mex

and traditional.” This may be because most Americans prefer the Tex mex version of

Mexican food and the restaurant owner does not want Mexican people to feel that their

culture is forgotten about.

While there are chains, celebrated restaurants, and even millions of Americans

who consume Tex-Mex cuisine, “Although the Mexican government tries to promote

traditional Mexican cuisine, American customers prefer to have a choice of the

‘authentic’ option or the hybrid Tex-Mex” (Martynuska), neither American fine cuisine or

Mexican food elites claim it as their own and are furious when they visit “Mexican

cuisines” in America, “They are disappointed by the lack of variety of hot peppers, when

more than 50 kinds are cultivated in Mexico. They find this type of cuisine very simple,
repetitive in its ingredients and far removed from the real Mexican gastronomy”

(Martynuska). This is similar to Gloria Anzaldua’s sense of identification as dweller of

the borderlands. She felt her exclusion from other Mexicans by language, “‘Pocho,

cultural traitor, you're speaking the oppressor's language by speaking English, you're

ruining the Spanish language,’ I have been accused by various Latinos and Latinas”

(Anzaldua 146). She has a habit of mixing English while speaking Spanish and vice-

versa, which is not accepted by whomever she may be talking to. Thus, creating a

conflict.

Tex mex cuisines are a perfect representation of borderlands as it is neither

American nor Mexican. It has a little bit of both. Similar to Gloria Anzaldua, who grew

up in Texas speaking both Spanish and English but also a number of combinations of the

two, describes her own identity as a Chicana in terms of language when she says, “We

are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or

Angloness”(Anzaldua 153). Instead of calling them “Mexican cuisines”, every “Mexican

cuisine” should be called a Tex Mex cuisine to be respectful to the Mexican culture as the

food in “Mexican cuisines” in America is not traditional Mexican food.

Citations-

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffith, and Helen Tiffin. "Borderlands." Post-Colonial Studies:

The Key Concepts. 2nd Ed., Routledge, 2007.

Cucinella, Catherine, Anzaldua, Gloria. “How to tame a wild tongue.” Border Crossings:

a Bedford spotlight reader, 1st edition Macmillian Education imprint, 2016.

Martynuska, Małgorzata. "Cultural Hybridity in the USA exemplified by Tex-Mex

cuisine" International Review of Social Research, 7.2 (2017): 90-98. Retrieved 12 Mar.

2018, from doi:10.1515/irsr-2017-0011

Walsh, Robb. “Mama's Got a Brand-New Bag.” Houston Press, 28 Sept. 2000,