Mexican food history

History of beans and slandering of Mexicans using ethnic slurs like 'beaners'

Mexican food history entails a strong connection to beans...

The term beaner, coming from the original expression ‘bean eater’, is a reference to Mexicans beloved frijolis. However, it was often used as a derogatory label by white racists to suggest Mexicans’ supposed laziness and ignorance.

It turns out that the Mexicans, the original ones, have a very high opinion of the legumes. So much so that the Mayans called them their “little blackbirds”.

The beans found in Central and South America are called ‘phaseolus vulgaris’, or the common bean, a species with its myriad types (including pinto beans, red kidney bean, black bean, green flageolet, green beans or string beans, haricots, and many more).

In Mexican food history, Beans were the principal crops among the early New World civilization (which included the Aztecs, in present day Mexico). It was served in perfect combination with the corn which made the two of them together as an excellent protein package. The beans were cooked since they contained toxic lectin, which means they cause red blood cell membranes to rupture. These lectins are only destroyed with cooking.

Mexican food history shows that because the early Mexican tribes lacked domesticated animals, they depended heavily on vegetarian diets. Although they did have turkey and ducks, guinea pigs, and other wild animals, large population demanded alternate source of proteins as well.

In combination with squash, beans and corn were cultivated together in the same plot, the squash providing ground cover to keep the soil moise, the corn to provide stalks for the beans to climb, and the beans providing the nitrogen for others. They worked perfectly in tandem with each other!

In an account of Mayan cuisine of southern Mexican food history, Sophie Coe, quoting the traveller, Bartolomeo de Las Casas, descrives a bread made of maize mixed with ground bean, which looked something like lupines. In another account black beans are mentioned, in the Mayan language called buul, which are also P.vulgaris. Coe further descrives bean dishes with toasted and ground squash seeds and green onions others with chilli and seasonings.

There were also drinks such as atolli, a kind of corn-based drink taken both for pleasure and medicinally, one version includes chilli (chillatolli), as a protection against cold. The other is called ayacomollatolli, which uses beans.

In the Mexican food history, Ayacotl is the Aztec name for bean. According to a traveller there, “This one is made by adding chillatolli, epazotli, and pieces of dough when it is all hale cooked, and finally when it is nearly done, whole cooked beans. It constitutes a splendid and most pleasant food, and by virtue of epazotli, it purges the blood and raw humors.”

Aztec cuisine was largely based on corn and beans, as is the Mexican cuisine today. However, beans also played a role in Aztec religion. The sacrifice of a statue formed of corn to Huitzlipochtli is fairly well known, but Brother Bernardina da Sahagn in his vivid accounts mentions many others involving beans.

One festival involved a statue of fire god, before whom were laid sacrificial loaves made of corn dough encasing whole beans, something like a tamale. These were later eating by the devotees, washed down with pulque, a mildly intoxicating drink. Suhagun also gives a complete account of the Aztec markets and the many bean dishes served by street vendors.

To present a picture of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, and its markets, one Spanish, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, reported how astonished they were “at the number of people and the quanity of merchandise that had it contained, and at the good order and control that was maintained … Each kind of merchandise was kept by itself and had its fixed place marked out.”

Some stallholders sold “beans and sage and other vegetables and herbs”, some “rabbits, hare, deer, young duck, little dogs [bred for the table] and other such creatures’, some fruit, some salt, some honey and some “cooked food, dough and tripe”.

Seeing the history of beans withing the Mexican food history, it is not difficult to see how important beans were to the native communities in Mexican areas. Europeans had always been a bit wary of beans and at one-time had strong anti-bean sentiment. This is described in quite detail in section on bean history.

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