‘A novel, spicy delicacy’: Tamales, advertising, and late 19th-century imaginative geographies of Mexico

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 15, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 449-470

  Monrreal, Sahar ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

Author keywords

advertising; food; imaginative geography; imperialism; Spanish American War

Indexed keywords

EID: 69849117605     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474474008094316     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. ‘The variety championship’, Armco magazine (November 1913), p. 12.
2. The city of Momence, Illinois is located, roughly, 66 miles southeast of Joliet, Illinois and 140 miles northwest of Indianapolis, Indiana. The population in 1910 was 2201 and by 1920 it had increased to 2218. US Census Bureau, Fourteenth census of the United States taken in the year 1920, vol. 1 (Washington, US Government Printing Office, 1921), p. 201.
3. P. Crang, ‘Displacement, consumption, and identity’, Environment and planning A 28 (1996), p. 56.
4. K. Hoganson, Consumers’ imperium: the global production of American domesticity, 1865-1920 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, 2007), p. 14.
5. Hispanic division, Library of Congress, ‘Chronology’, from the website ‘The world of 1898: the Spanish-American War’. Available online at: http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/chronology.html [accessed 15/10/07].
6. G. González, Culture of empire: American writers, Mexico, and Mexican immigrants, 1880-1930 (Austin, University of Texas, 2004); S. Streeby, American sensations: class, empire, and the production of popular culture (Berkeley, University of California, 2002).
7. The Armour Chicken Tamale ads first came to my attention as part of a larger project analyzing how early advertising images represented women and food. In a survey of all advertising from the Ladies’ home journal for volume 16 (about 2500 ads), the Armour Chicken Tamale ads were the only advertising images that showed non-white women involved in food production and the only product that clearly billed itself as a foreign or ethnic food. Because the Armour tamale ads appear to represent important ‘firsts’ in Ladies’ home journal in terms of depicting the first images of not only Mexicans and mestizos but also ethnic food, I decided to perform close readings of the tamale ads and relate the images to larger discourses of race and imperialism at the close of the 19th century. ‘Extract of Beef ‘ ad, Ladies’ home journal, November 1898, p. 48. ‘Vigoral Concentrated Beef ‘ ad, Ladies’ home journal, January 1899, p. 32. ‘Pork and Beans’ ad, Ladies’ home journal, April 1899, p. 37. ‘Pork and Beans’ ad, Ladies’ home journal, May 1899, p. 34. ‘Pork and Beans’ ad, Ladies’ home journal, June 1899, p. 44. ‘Pork and Beans’ ad, Ladies’ home journal, July 1899, p. 41. ‘Star Brand Mince Meat’ ad, Ladies’ home journal, October 1899, p. 46.
8. G. Atherton, The Californians (Ridgewood, NJ, Gregg Press, 1968 [1898]), p. 334; L. Harby, ‘Texan types and contrasts’, Harper's, July 1890, pp. 229-46; R. Hartt, ‘The Montanians’, The Atlantic monthly, June 1898, pp. 737-48.
9. J. London, The iron heel (Chicago, Lawrence Hill Books, 1981 [1907]), p. 128; Hartt, ‘The Montanians’, p. 743.
10. Atherton, The Californians, p. 334; F. Norris, McTeague: a story of San Francisco (New York, WW Norton and Co., 1997 [1899]), pp. 7, 64.
11. Harby, ‘Texan types’, p. 229.
12. Norris, McTeague, pp. 54-5, 66-8, 111-12.
13. J. London, The valley of the moon (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999 [1913]), pp. 84, 152-3.
14. K. Chopin, The awakening (New York, W. W. Norton and Co., 1994 [1899]), p. 41.
15. Norris, McTeague, pp. 111-12.
16. Hartt, ‘The Montanians’, p. 743.
17. J. May, ‘“A little taste of something more exotic”: the imaginative geographies of everyday life’, Geography 81(1996), p. 59.
18. I. Cook and P. Crang, ‘The world on a plate: culinary culture, displacement and geographical knowledges’, Journal of material culture 1 (1996), p. 138.
19. Hartt, ‘The Montanians’, p. 741.
20. R. Pillsbury, No foreign food: the American diet in time and place (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1998), pp. 227-8; Donald Ross, personal communication.
21. F. Smith, A white umbrella in Mexico (New York, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1889), p. 40. Smith describes a mestizo couple: ‘The poverty of the pair was unmistakable. A straw sombrero, cotton shirt, trousers, and sandals completed his outfit, a chemise, blue skirt, scarlet sash, and rebozo twisted about her throat her own. This humble raiment was clean and fresh, and the red rose tucked coquettishly among the braids of her purple-black hair was just what was wanted to make it picturesque’.
22. R. Williams, The country and the city (New York, Oxford University Press, 1973); R. Rosaldo, ‘Imperialist nostalgia’, Representations 26 (1989), pp. 107-22.
23. Williams, The country and the city, p. 297.
24. Rosaldo, ‘Imperialist nostalgia’, pp. 107-8.
25. Charles Dudley Warner, writing for Harper's in 1887, describes peasants’ huts as being thatched with walls made ‘very likely of cane’. C. Warner, ‘Mexican notes’, Harper's, May 1887, p. 956. Another American living in Mexico at this time, Fanny Chambers Gooch, describes abode and larger Spanishstyle architecture. F. Gooch, Face to face with the Mexicans (Carbondale, IL, Southern Illinois University Press, 1966 [1887]), pp. 5-11.
26. M. Pratt, Imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation (New York, Routledge, 1992), pp. 112-15.
27. A. Castañeda, ‘The political economy of nineteenth century stereotypes of Californianas’, in Del Castillo, ed., Between borders: essays on Mexicana/Chicana history (Encino CA, Floricanto Press, 1990), pp. 213-36; A. Castañeda, ‘Gender, race, and culture: Spanish-Mexican women in the historiography of frontier California’, Frontiers 11 (1990), pp. 8-20; D. González, Refusing the favor: the Spanish-Mexican women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999); A. Kaplan, The anarchy of empire in the making of US culture (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 1-12.
28. Sanborn, A winter in Central America and Mexico (Boston, IL Lee and Shepard, 1886), p. 310.
29. The woman is wearing a corset and shirt-waist typical of American fashions of the late 19th century. See L. Banner, American beauty (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 148-50. A description of male dress from the Mexican upper classes is seen in H. Sanborn, A winter in Central America and Mexico, p. 241. She writes: ‘The most noticeable of all the crowd was a handsome looking young Mexican, in a riding suit, presenting an appearance elegant enough to make our greatest ‘swells’ green with envy. With a rich dark complexion, a fine form, and manly bearing, his natural beauty was further enhanced by his dress, which was most elegant and showy, and consisted of a sombrero of drab felt, with an enormously wide brim and a rich trimming with of silver; a jacket and vest of spotless white, elaborately embroidered; and trousers of fine black cloth, with rows of silver buttons on the seam from top to bottom. An enormous pistol, and a display of jewelry, completed his elegant toilet, and enhanced the fine appearance of which he was fully conscious, as well as of the admiration which he excited’.
30. The woman is wearing a corset and shirt-waist typical of American fashions of the late 19th century. See L. Banner, American beauty (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 148-50.
31. Sanborn, A winter in Central America and Mexico, p. 241.
32. M. Townsend, Here and there in Mexico: the travel writings of Mary Ashley Townsend (Tuscaloosa, AL, University of Alabama Press, 2001), p. 138.
33. Gooch, Face to face with the Mexicans, pp. 160-1.
34. Pratt, Imperial eyes, p. 100.
35. Pratt, Imperial eyes, p. 97.
36. S. Porter, ‘And that it is custom makes it law: class conflict and gender ideology in the public sphere, Mexico City, 1880-1910’, Social science history 24 (2000), p. 143, footnote 10.
37. A. Deck, ‘“Now then - who said biscuits?”: the black woman cook as fetish in American advertising, 1905-1953’, in S. Inness, ed., Kitchen culture in America: popular representations of food, gender, and race (Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 69-93.
38. Scribner's Magazine Advertiser, December 1898, January-December 1899. Ladies’ home journal, December 1898-December 1899.
39. Deck, ‘Now then - who said biscuits?’, p. 90.
40. G. Keller, ‘The first decades: types of characters’, Bilingual review 18 (1993), pp. 37-69.
41. J. Limón, ‘Tex-sex-Mex: American identities, lone stars, and the politics of racialized sexuality’, American literary history 9 (1997), p. 598; Fights of nations, American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1907. Library of Congress, ‘The American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 collection’. Available online at: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vshtml/vsfmlst.html; A. De León, They called them greasers: Anglo attitudes toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821-1900 (Austin, University of Texas, 1983). Sanborn, A winter in Central America and Mexico, p. 228.
42. M. Foote, ‘A diligence journey in Mexico’, The century, November 1881, p. 7.
43. Keller, ‘The first decades: types of characters’, pp. 37-69; Stanfield, ‘The western 1909-14’, pp. 97-112.
44. R. Slotkin, Gunfighter nation: the myth of the frontier in twentieth-century America (New York, Atheneum, 1992), pp. 29-87.
45. R. Slotkin, ‘Buffalo Bill's “Wild West” and the mythologization of the American empire’, in A. Kaplan and D. Pease, eds, Cultures of United States imperialism (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1993), p. 166.
46. Scribner's, January 1899, cover. T. Roosevelt, ‘The Rough Riders: raising the regiment’, Scribner's, January 1899, pp. 2-20.
47. D. Garbaccia, We are what we eat: ethnic food and the making of Americans (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 93-122; K. Hoganson, ‘Food and entertainment from every corner of the globe: bourgeois US households as points of encounter, 1870-1920’, Amerikastudien 48 (2003), pp. 115-35; Cook and Crang, ‘The world on a plate’, pp. 131-53; May, ‘A little taste of something more exotic’, pp. 57-64.
48. May, ‘A little taste of something more exotic’, pp. 57-64.
49. K. Hoganson, ‘Food and entertainment’, p. 125
50. S. Stewart, On longing: narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1993), p. 148.
51. McClintock, Imperial leather, p. 209.
52. A. Kaplan, ‘Manifest domesticity’, American literature 70 (1998), pp. 581-2.
53. McClintock, Imperial leather, p. 214.
54. J. Schwartz, ‘“The geography lesson”: photographs and the construction of imaginative geographies’, Journal of historical geography 22 (1996), p. 35.