Culinary Colonialism. The case of the Comcáac (Seris) of Sonora

This contribution focuses on the contrasting perceptions of alimentation among the Comcáac foragers (better known as “Seris”) and the Spanish-Mexican settlers in Sonora, Mexico, using a longue durée perspective, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Europeans tried for centuries to change the eating habits of the foragers, while the latter struggled to maintain their accustomed diet. Both sides rejected the food of the other and, when comparing cuisine, praised their own. Modern nutritionists confirm the foragers’ preference for “wild food” as the healthier diet, providing an existential explanation for the hunter-gatherers’ reluctance to become sedentary agriculturalists in the mission settlements. Furthermore, the social importance foragers placed on sharing food clashed with the European notion of ownership of produced food. This article concludes that a “culinary colonialism” lies at the root of most conflicts between these unequal societies. Life in the mission was only secondarily a question of Christian indoctrination, because the missionaries’ insistence on a “forced Neolithic revolution” posed a material threat to the hunter-gatherers’ way of life through negative nutritional change.