Chile

Appears in

Food from My Heart: Cuisines of Mexico Remembered and Reimagined

Published 1992

About

“Sin el chile los mexicanos no creen que están comiendo” (“Without chile, Mexicans don’t believe they’re eating”), observed Fray Bartolomé de las Casas in the sixteenth century, an eternal truth. Regardless of class, economic position,, or anything else, all Mexicans eat chile at all times. It is culinary basic, junk food, medicine, drug, business, and recreation. If corn is the backbone of our cooking since prehistory, chile is its soul.

Do not try to tell me that the same is true of Hungary, North Africa, or other places where they eat hot peppers. We are different because chile is the great gift of indigenous Latin American culture to the world that exterminated indigenous Latin American culture! It is a common denominator that defines what is Mexican.