3. Wheat versus maize Civilizing Dietary Strategies and Early Mexican Republicanism

Abstract

This article explored the role of food in the rise of political modernity in the Atlantic world, toward the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th. The three food programs analyzed here—the production of a “patriotic” bread, the program of “public and common” meals, and the regime of “hard digestion” founded upon ideal indigenous food habits—shaped one of the first republican discourses in Mexico. ese discussions about republic, citizenship and food standards, although they reflected varied, eclectic and often contradictory positions, shared one point in common: they resignified some of the basic notions of the colonial political language, including community, territory, patria and “common good”.