ANTHROPOLOGY 150

CASE STUDY:  TORTILLAS AS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

 

May 16, 2017: Article in Willamette Weekly (Portland, Oregon)

·           Headline:  Kooks Serves Pop-Up Breakfast Burritos With Handmade Tortillas

• Photo:

During an impromptu Christmastime road trip last year to Puerto Nuevo, Mexico, Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly lost their minds over tortillas.

“In Puerto Nuevo, you can eat $5 lobster on the beach, which they give you with this bucket of tortillas,” Connelly says. “They are handmade flour tortillas that are stretchy and a little buttery, and best of all, unlimited.”

Connelly and Wilgus were so enamored with the tortillas, they tried to uncover the recipe.

“I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever, and they showed me a little of what they did,” Connelly says. “They told us the basic ingredients, and we saw them moving and stretching the dough similar to how pizza makers do before rolling it out with rolling pins. They wouldn’t tell us too much about technique, but we were peeking into the windows of every kitchen, totally fascinated by how easy they made it look. We learned quickly it isn’t quite that easy.”

Connelly and Wilgus have turned their passion into new weekend spot Kooks Burritos, which has a concept that fits twee Portland: a breakfast burrito pop-up inside the hip Tight Tacos food cart in a Southeast Portland parking lot.

“On the drive back up to Oregon, we were still completely drooling over how good [the tortillas] were, and we decided we had to have something similar in Portland,” Connelly says. “The day after we returned, I hit the Mexican market and bought ingredients and started testing it out. Every day I started making tortillas before and after work, trying to figure out the process, timing, refrigeration and how all of that works.”

Well, she figured it out.

Connelly rolls out the tortillas in front of you and cooks them on the cart’s flat-top griddle, bubbles forming through the uneven circle as the gentle smell of frying dough wafts from the cart. That tortilla is stretchy, pie-crust flaky, char-kissed and stuffed with fixins authentic only to SoCal burrito joints: french fries, scrambled eggs, guacamole, cheese and your choice of bacon or carne asada.

The result is as decadent as it sounds, the flake of the tortilla and soft crunch from the fries contrasting with the gooey goodness of the eggs, cheese and guac in a hangover-killing burrito. Served with Wilgus’ neon-green serrano salsa and neon-orange chile de árbol salsa, both spicy and bright, breakfast doubles as a ‘grammable burrainbow.

“The second we had the tortilla, we were like, ‘We’re doing this,'” Connelly says.

Get up a little early this weekend, and you can do it, too.

May 19, 2017: Article published in MIC (online) by Jamilah King (previous editor at Colorlines)

·           Headline:  These white cooks bragged about bringing back recipes from Mexico to start a business

There’s a long simmering conversation in the food world about cultural appropriation — about who’s allowed to cook what, and why — but it’s usually a tad more subtle than what Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly confessed to Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon.

Wilgus and Connelly were profiled by Willamette Week about the delicious handmade tortillas they sell out of a food truck called Kooks Burritos on Cesar Chavez Boulevard in Portland. The duo said they learned their craft from women in Puerto Nuevo, Mexico.

The problem, of course, is that it’s unclear whether the Mexican women who handed over their recipes ever got anything in return. And now those same recipes are being sold as a delicacy in Portland.

Not surprisingly, the discussion has gotten pretty heated in the comments section of the Willamette Week. “Nice appropriation,” one person wrote. “You go to a place once and your first thought is to steal from and mock the people from there. This is gross, and the fact that you got media attention is even more cringey. But like, oh my God Becky, you like… TOTALLY spoke the most broken Spanish ever!”

Another added, “Everyone goes to Mexico to find ‘get rich quick’ ideas.”

But the women also have their supporters, who note that they shouldn’t be chastised for starting a business in a way that’s common in the foodie world. “Are you all suggesting that Andy Ricker close Pok Pok? Should John Gorham close Toro Bravo? … If learning how to make a food from another culture and selling it is now considered cultural appropriation, then why not take this issue up with the successful PDX businesses that have been doing this at a much larger scale for years, and stop harassing these two women struggling to start a small business.”

In less than six months, Wilgus and Connelly have managed to build a business. And, depending on how you look at it, their methods are either genius or the latest example of white folks profiting off the labor of people of color.

May 22, 2017: Article published in EATER (Portland)

• Headline: Portland Burrito Spot Shutters Amid Claims of Cultural Appropriation

Just shortly after WWeek announced Kooks Burritos — a small burrito pop-up— the operation has shuttered and deleted much of its online presence. The closure coincides with public outrage at what some are calling the restaurant’s “appropriation” of another culture’s “intellectual property.”

Speaking with WWeek, Kooks Burritos owners Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly said they developed their menus in part by picking “the brains of every tortilla lady there [Puerto Nuevo, Mexico] in the worst broken Spanish ever,” and this description of its research practices as well as other comments within the article spurred editorials and debates across the internet.

The Mic news website bought national attention to Kooks Burritos with its coverage, titled, “These white cooks bragged about stealing recipes from Mexico to start a Portland business.” It reads, “The problem, of course, is that it’s unclear whether the Mexican women who handed over their recipes ever got anything in return.”

Today, the Merc released its coverage, beginning with the claim, “Portland has an appropriation problem.” The article continues:

Week after week people of color in Portland bear witness to the hijacking of their cultures. Several of the most successful businesses in this town have been birthed as a result of curious white people going to a foreign country. Now don’t get me wrong: cultural customs are meant to be shared. However, that’s not what happens in this city.

And a spreadsheet featuring “white-owned appropriative restaurants” in Portland has also emerged. It includes several of the most popular restaurants in the city, with recommendations for nearby alternatives owned by people of color.

In recent years, the topic of cultural appropriation in food has been widely discussed in America, and the latest development shows some Portland restaurateurs and local residents continue to be at odds. The Kooks Burritos coverage by WWeek now has nearly 500 comments, and there are few signs a consensus will be reached.

• Sample comments posted to this story:
• I was in Puerto Vallarta and some of the indigenous population are running an Italian restaurant. The locals were not protesting them for lifting a cuisine from another culture. And I guess we should chase all the immigrants out of restaurants with a NW cuisine how dare they profit from our local taste in food.

 

• What you and other triggered commenters here seem to be ignoring is the furor was chiefly over their methods of obtaining the recipes. What Eater didn’t mention (but is in the original article) is that they were as much about spying through windows as “broken English” conversations. If it had ‘just’ been the cultural appropriation thing, hardly an eyebrow would’ve been raised.

 

• PC nonsense run amok. This kind of stuff is a badge of honor among the Portland set, which essentially functions like a cult. Another reason why this city really blows. Hey they got another business shut down, well done. Well done Portland!

May 26, 2017: Article in Washington Post

·           Headline:  Should white chefs sell burritos?

Portland, Ore., has become the epicenter in a growing movement to call out white people who profit off the culinary ideas and dishes swiped from other cultures.

 

Someone in the City of Roses has even created a Google doc, listing the white-owned restaurants that have appropriated cuisines outside their own culture. For each entry, the document suggests alternative restaurants owned by people of color. One “Appropriative Business” is Voodoo Doughnut, the small doughnut chain accused of profiting off a religion thought to combine African, Catholic and Native American traditions.

 

The problem, of course, is not that a white diner falls in love with an immigrant cuisine. It’s that a white person profits from the cuisine or, more troublesome for many, becomes the leading authority on it, rather than a chef born into the culture.

 

Accusations of cultural appropriation are often grounded in an underlying assumption: that privileged white folks contribute nothing to the culture from which they steal. The two white women in Portland were accused, for instance, of not compensating the Mexican women who shared some of their tortilla secrets. On that micro scale, I suspect there are indeed countless interactions between curious white chef and immigrant home cook that go unrewarded to the latter, all in the name of research.

 

But on a macro scale, the involvement of white chefs and restaurateurs with foreign cuisines can benefit all. Take Josh Phillips, a white partner in Espita Mezcaleria, a Shaw establishment dedicated to the food and drink of Oaxaca. The “vast majority” of Espita’s roughly 65-member staff is Mexican, Phillips says. They’re paid decently, and all full-timers are offered health benefits. The restaurant employs not just one full-time tortilla maker, but four of them.

 

Those tortilla makers use only heirloom corn from Mexico. Phillips says 99 percent of it comes directly from Oaxaca. Before he even opened Espita, Phillips made a promise to mezcaleros in Oaxaca never to sell mezcal from corporate distillers. “I want to make sure there is an economic impact on mezcaleros,” he adds.

 

To my ears, this sounds more like cultural ambassadorship than cultural appropriation.

 

 

May 24, 2017: Article by Mexican-American food writer Gustavo Arellano in Willamette Weekly

·           Headline:  Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food—Mexicans Do It to Ourselves All the Time

My thoughts on cultural appropriation of food changed forever in the research for my 2012 book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. One of my personal highlights was discovering the restaurant that Glenn Bell of Taco Bell infamy had cited in his autobiography as being the source of “inspiration” for him deciding to get into the taco business. How did he get inspired? He’d eat tacos at the restaurant every night, then go across the street to his hot dog stand to try and re-create them.

Bell freely admitted to the story, but never revealed the name of the restaurant. I did: Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, which is the oldest continuously operating Mexican restaurant in the Inland Empire. I was excited to interview the owner, Irene Montaño, who confirmed Bell’s story. I was upset for the Montaños, and when I asked Montaño how she felt that Bell had ripped off her family’s recipes to create a multibillion-dollar empire, I expected bitterness, anger, maybe even plans for a lawsuit in an attempt to get at least some of the billions of dollars that Taco Bell has earned over the past 50-plus years.

Instead, Montaño responded with grace: “Good for him!” She pointed out that Mitla had never suffered a drop in business because of Taco Bell, that her restaurant had been in business longer than his and “our tacos were better.”

It’s an anecdote I always keep in mind whenever stories of cultural appropriation of food by white people get the Left riled up and rock the food world.

The latest skirmish is going on in Portland.

 

Laughable…… is the idea that white people aren’t supposed to—pick your word—rip off or appropriate or get “inspired” by Mexican food, that comida mexicana is a sacrosanct tradition only Mexicans and the white girls we marry can participate in. That cultural appropriation is a one-way street where the evil gabacha steals from the poor, pathetic Mexicans yet again.

What these culture warriors who proclaim to defend Mexicans don’t realize is that we’re talking about the food industry, one of the most rapacious businesses ever created. It’s the human condition at its most Darwinian, where everyone rips everyone off. The only limit to an entrepreneur’s chicanery isn’t resources, race or class status, but how fast can you rip someone off, how smart you can be to spot trends years before anyone else, and how much money you can make before you have to rip off another idea again.  And no one rips off food like Mexicans.

The Mexican restaurant world is a delicious defense of cultural appropriation—…… The Spaniards didn’t know how to make corn tortillas in the North, so they decided to make them from flour. Mexicans didn’t care much for Spanish dessert breads, so we ripped off most pan dulces from the French (not to mention waltzes and mariachi). We didn’t care much for wine, so we embraced the beers that German, Czech and Polish immigrants brought to Mexico. And what is al pastor if not Mexicans taking shawarma from the Lebanese, adding pork and making it something … quintessentially Mexican?

 

And that’s what cultural appropriation in the food world boils down to: It’s smart business, and that’s why Mexicans do it, too. That’s why a lot of high-end Mexican restaurants not owned by Sinaloans serve aguachile now, because Carlos Salgado of Taco Maria made it popular. That’s why working-class Mexicans open marisco palaces even if they’re not from the coast—because Sinaloans made Mexican seafood a lucrative scene. That’s why nearly every lonchera in Santa Ana serves picaditas, a Veracruzan specialty, even though most owners are from Cuernavaca. That’s why a taqueria will sell hamburgers and french fries—because they know the pocho kids of its core clients want to eat that instead of tacos. And that’s why bacon-wrapped hot dogs are so popular in Southern California—because SoCal Mexican street-cart vendors ripped off Mexicans in Tijuana, who ripped off Mexicans in Tucson, who ripped off Mexicans in Sonora.

 

To suggest ….that Mexicans and other minority entrepreneurs can’t possibly engage in cultural appropriation because they’re people of color, and that we’re always the victims, is ignorant and patronizing and robs us of agency.

JUNE 18, 2017: Commentary on NPR News by K.Tempest Bradford

·           Headline:  Cultural Appropriation is, in fact, indefensible

Cultural appropriation is indefensible. Those who defend it either don’t understand what it is, misrepresent it to muddy the conversation, or ignore its complexity — discarding any nuances and making it easy to dismiss both appropriation and those who object to it.

Cultural appropriation can feel hard to get a handle on, because boiling it down to a two-sentence dictionary definition does no one any favors. Writer Maisha Z. Johnson offers an excellent starting point by describing it not only as the act of an individual, but an individual working within a “power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group.”

That’s why appropriation and exchange are two different things, Johnson says — there’s no power imbalance involved in an exchange. And when artists appropriate, they can profit from what they take, while the oppressed group gets nothing.

The example involving rock and roll isn’t as simple as Elvis “stealing” from black artists. Before he even came along, systematic oppression and segregation in America meant black musicians didn’t have access to the same opportunities for mainstream exposure, income, or success as white ones. Elvis and other rock and roll musicians were undoubtedly influenced by black innovators, but over time the genre came to be regarded as a cultural product created, perfected by, and only accessible to whites.

Who has the right to decide what is appropriation and what isn’t? What does true cultural exchange look like? There’s no one easy answer to either question.

 

But there are some helpful guidelines: The Australian Council for the Arts developed a set of protocols for working with Indigenous artists that lays out how to approach Aboriginal culture as a respectful guest, who to contact for guidance and permission, and how to proceed with your art if that permission is not granted. Some of these protocols are specific to Australia, but the key to all of them is finding ways for creativity to flourish while also reducing harm.

I believe that, instead of giving people excuses for why appropriation can’t be avoided (it can), or allowing them to think it’s no big deal (it is), it’s more important to help them become better artists whose creations contribute to cultural understanding and growth that benefits us all.

 

 

Rubric for Essay 5:  Burritos as Cultural Appropriation?

 

Study the “case” as documented in the summary provided by Dr. Alvarez (read the document titled: ESSAY 5 CASE STUDY TEXT).  Proceed to write an essay that UNPACKS the controversy.

 

Use the following HEADINGS in your essay (you MUST address the questions provided in substance –but they are guidelines —you must write your response in full paragraphs, NO BULLETS or question-by-question answers).  No need to write Introduction: your essay should go directly to the analysis.  (4 pages, SINGLE space)

 

Score: 10 points for each of the 4 sections below = 40 points. Additional 10 points subject to the discretion of the TA and/or Professor:  thoroughness of the response, critical analysis, quality of the writing.

 

 

 

(10 points)

 

• Who are the subjects in this controversy?
• What are the broad identity markers for each side? The theme of Membership.
• Are there obvious or subtle hierarchies of social status between the subjects?
• Who is claiming injury? (Who is doing what to whom?)

 

 

 

(10 points)

 

• What is the “property” at stake in this discussion? The theme of Ownership.
• What is the binary expressed here? (name the 2 sides, core point at stake)
• What role do emotions play?
• Are there nuances to what each party did that merit special consideration? (not just what happened but HOW it happened)

 

 

 

(10 points)

 

• Is this a “trivial” or a “weighty” matter? From whose perspective?
• Does the discussion ever veer towards the absurd? How so?
• What unique characteristics of this place or topic or time contribute heat to this controversy?

 

 

 

(10 points)

 

• What factors contribute to the ESCALATION of this controversy?
• Is this an “all” or “nothing” scenario?
• Aside from absolute Right or Wrong: is an ETHICAL solution possible?
• What measures of MITIGATION would have made a difference?

 

 

 

 

 

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