Hispanic History Month and Foodways Series: Feeding the Mexican Revolution

Mushroom tacos, recipe below

The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) was an armed populist movement against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz 1876 to 1911. During his presidency Mexicans peasants and proletariats endured poor living and working conditions. Many know about the men who fought in the revolution but what role did women play? The soldaderas or women soldiers fought in the revolution and some served as camp cooks and soldiers despite enduring hardships such as sexual harassment and or violence. Their military and culinary contributions to Pancho Villa’s Northern Army and Emiliano Zapato’s Southern Army or Zapatistas proved important. There are a number of books and articles published on them as soldiers but we know far less about their role in feeding the revolution. The soldaderas were typically mestizas (mixed ethnicity) or Indian women who helped meet a basic necessity of any military campaign—food, and food shortages did plague the revolutionary forces. Soldaderas foraged for edible plants, berries, mushrooms, herbs, and insects and bartered with locals for pigs, fowl, and dairy products. In addition, they hauled the pots and pans from one battle front to the next and gathered the wood needed to cook a meal. Soldaderas set up camp and cooked legumes, meat, other items that filled the tortillas made from corn; corn they ground, shaped, and cooked. These women feed the revolution under the constant sexual harassment and violence from male soldiers who often viewed women in public at that time without guardians or chaperons as loose and or prostitutes. Here is a recipe for mushroom taco filling below that goes well with this story.

Mushroom taco filling (Tacos de Hongos) recipe: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/dining/232mrex.html