On November 16, Mexican Gastronomy Day is commemorated, an initiative that recalls the day UNESCO declared traditional Mexican cuisine as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2010.
Part of the commitment to UNESCO taken on by the organizations that promoted Mexican gastronomy as intangible heritage is to organize policies that allow for the preservation, dissemination, and conservation of this heritage. Unlike material heritage, such as a building or an archaeological site, intangible heritage presents certain challenges for its conservation and dissemination.
Mexican gastronomy involves not only the preservation of techniques, ingredients, or dishes, but also all the social and cultural facts surrounding it, which include everything from know-how to beliefs, perceptions, or active roles people play in its dissemination. Certainly, much of the knowledge of Mexican gastronomy is concentrated in the cooks who have preserved recipes across generations, but it is also found among diners and people who live gastronomy daily, not only by preparing recipes but also by consuming them and appropriating the cultural elements that make up food practices.
Without diners, this heritage would have no reason to exist. Those who cook are a fundamental part of this axis of dissemination and conservation, which does not occur in a strictly vertical manner. Heritage is lived daily and people appropriate it, often without giving weight to the fundamental role we all have in its preservation. Heritage is not merely the property of a few scholars who pride themselves on researching or preserving techniques they learned from a cook in a remote mountain or village, nor are they the sole holders of supreme knowledge. The intangible heritage of gastronomy is not, therefore, a matter of intellectual elites. It is the result of a living culture that has changed over the years but has preserved certain central elements to constitute itself as a gastronomy that demonstrates not only the variety of resources, techniques, and ways of doing things, but also as a sample of an entire ideology and cultural practices around food.
It is true that preservation always involves research and systematic dissemination to be able to safeguard heritage. And it is true that such research requires systematic methodologies. However, the researcher is not the sole holder of knowledge or the only designated conservator of this heritage. Heritage is built and preserved collectively, and the role of the researcher is to delve into these dynamics. Mexican gastronomy is not only found in a restaurant that serves as a place of worship. It is present in every person who daily forms part of this system of food production and consumption.
For the preservation of intangible heritage, the involvement of different sectors of society is necessary, recognizing their active role in conservation, without turning it into a philosopher’s stone reserved for a few holders. Institutionalization and representation of actors are necessary insofar as dissemination considers all involved actors without exploiting resources for individual purposes. Gastronomy, seen as a set of cultural practices, acquires meaning when the general population appropriates it and practices it daily.
— This article was originally published in Spanish by Liliana Martínez Lomelí. Translation generated with AI from the original text.
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