9781439148624

The nationally syndicated columnist and bestselling author of ¡Ask a Mexican!presents a fascinating and tasty trip through the history and culture of Mexican food in this country, uncovering great stories and charting the cuisine's tremendous popularity in el Norte. When salsa overtook ketchup as this country's favorite condiment in the 1990s, America's century-long love affair with Mexican food reached yet another milestone. In seemingly every decade since the 1880s, America has tried new food trends from south of the borderchili, tamales, tacos, enchiladas, tequila, bacon-wrapped hot dogs, and so many moreloved them, and demanded the next great thing. As a result, Mexican food dominates American palates to the tune of billions of dollars in sales per year, from canned refried beans to frozen margaritas and ballpark nachos. It's a little-known history, one that's crept up on this country like your Mexican neighborsand left us better for it. A combination of history, cultural criticism, and personal anecdotes, Taco USAaddresses the all-important questions: What exactly constitutes "Mexican" food in the United States? How did it get here? What's "authentic" and what's "Taco Bell," and does it matter? What's so cosmic about a burrito? And why do Americans love Mexican food so darn much? Tacos, alas, sold separately.

Gustavo Arellano’s ¡Ask a Mexican! column has a circulation of more than two million in thirty-eight markets (and counting). He has received the President’s Award from the Los Angeles Press Club, an Impact Award from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and a 2008 Latino Spirit Award from the California State legislature. Arellano has appeared on the Today show, Nightline, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and The Colbert Report.

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Introduction

What’s So Cosmic About a Burrito?

Two hundred and thirteen miles up in space, the Earth below cerulean blue, the universe around them infinite and awesome, JosÉ HernÁndez and Danny Olivas wanted Mexican food.

The two had come prepared. They were astronauts on STS-128, a NASA mission that flew theDiscoveryspace shuttle to rendezvous with the International Space Station on August 30, 2009.Discovery’s seven-member crew spent ten days at the research station, primarily to resupply the people already up there and to rotate members. Olivas—raised in El Paso, Texas—went on a space walk to repair an ammonia tank, among other tasks; HernÁndez—who picked crops in California’s Central Valley alongside family members as a child—sent his thoughts to our planeten espaÑol. “Espero la cosecha de mi sueÑo sirva como inspiracion a todos!”he enthused via Twitter. “I hope the harvest of my dream serves as inspiration to all!”

On September 8, theDiscoverycrew undocked from the Space Station. It was morning. It was time for breakfast burritos. The rest of the crew had earlier asked HernÁndez and Olivas if they might cook the meal, because Olivas was the NASA member who knew how to make them best. Of course. A video camera transmitted footage of the duo floating toward the galley of the middeck to open a shelf containing the ingredients needed to construct the cylindrical god in zero gravity: flour tortillas sealed in a vacuum pack, clumps of ready-to-eat scrambled eggs, and fat sausage patties.

Olivas pulled out a tortilla, letting it float in front of him while tearing open a thumb-sized salsa packet. He smeared a smiley face on the tortilla and tried to roll it up; since it wasn’t cooked, the flour flatbread bent into a U-shape but wobbled back into its outstretched natural state. HernÁndez, meanwhile, opened a pouch that contained the patty. Olivas placed the tortilla near the meat, expecting the sausage to plop down on it, as it would on terra firma. Instead, the brownish, glistening mass popped out of the bag, away from the tortilla below it, and would’ve presumably continued on an endless trajectory if the fast-thinking Olivas didn’t snatch the sausage with the tortilla. The salsa acted as a binding agent and secured the incipient Icarus.

The eggs proved more manageable. HernÁndez cut them out of a packet; Olivas used a spoon to guide each minimound onto the tortilla, then promptly chopped them up into smaller pieces, the better to smush and smear—if the tortilla might only bend. The moment of truth arrived: Olivas folded the vessel in half, wrapping one flap over the other, and rolled it tight. Success; a breakfast burrito was born, and more were on the way.

This wasn’t the first time burritos orbited Earth—Olivas had made a batch on his previous visit to the Space Station two years earlier. In fact, NASA had used tortillas for astronaut sustenance as early as 1985, when Mexican scientist Rodolfo Neri Vela requested a pack as part of his food provisions, to make tacos. The media treated Neri’s food choices at the time with bemusement, but astronauts quickly took to flour tortillas—and not just because of the flavor, redolent of flour and slightly sweet, better than most of the sterilized slop astronauts ate. Tortillas didn’t spoil easily. Astronauts could wrap one around anything and make a quick meal. They also weren’t dangerous, like bread, whose crumbs crippled air vents and sensitive equipment.

NASA took tortillas so seriously that they tinkered with the recipe—which hadn’t substantially changed in millennia save for the introduction of flour—to keep stacks fresh for up to six months. Scientists created a nitrogen-filled packet that removed almost all the oxygen present in the pouch, to prevent mold from growing. One major problem arose: astronauts discovered that six-month-old space tortillas became bitter—andno onedeserves a bitter tortilla. Finally, NASA found a manufacturer who made an extended-shelf-life tortilla that lasted up to a year and retained its allure, a maker that also sold their product to fast-food titan Taco Bell. Hundreds of thousands of dollars well spent.

“I cannot think of anything that cannot be put on a tortilla, or has not been put on a tortilla,” wrote Sandra Magnus, a veteran astronaut, in a blog post while up in the International Space Station in 2008. “When a Shuttle shows up you are in tortilla heaven because they show up with tons of them and graciously donate all of the extras to the ISS crews. You really want to be swimming in tortillas your whole increment.”1

And for short missions of five to seven days? Astronauts often bring their flour tortillas fresh from a HoustontortillerÍa—a tortilla factory. No customizing, no chemicals—just unadulterated rapture. The perfect food.

“Danny is an expert in zero-g burrito making,” HernÁndez radioed to Mission Control after their burrito party. It was a mission of celebration: never had two Mexican-Americans flown up in space on the same mission, and never did burritos shine so brightly. Sure, HernÁndez and Olivas offered a service to their crewmates that hundreds of thousands of their fellow Mexican provided daily back on Earth—prepping Mexican food for Americans more than happy to gobble it up. Their feast made the news; a video soon went viral across the Internet, the astronauts’ beaming, proud smiles as they hoisted their fast food for humanity to see. So high in the heavens, up above the world, the burrito not only had become universal—it was now, finally, truly, cosmic.