Food & Culture | Food ends, the turkey

Chalchiuhtotolin (trickster god). Codex Telleriano-Remensis.

Christmas dinner

CUISINE AS CULTURE OR ACT OF VIOLENCE?

Devon G. Peña | Shoreline, WA | December 25, 2013

Imagine food ends.

I don’t mean the end of food in general, but your food; ends. 

The food of your people ends because the crops are gone, replaced by plantations and then suburbs; the soil is washed and worn; the land has been robbed of all that makes it whole; the seeds were burned to waste and lost under the dusty rubble of the state of siege; and the earth split open and filled with shattered bone and the spilled blood of natives.

 



Imagine then the end of a culture and its places, the home lands now mute of origin myths. Imagine this happened not per chance from a recurring natural disaster that leads to famine. No. Imagine this was visited upon us by virtue of conquest, invasion, war, and concerted genocide.

 



Imagine then having to find a long, slow way back to yourself through your food. Relocating yourself in the food of your ancestors.



 I was thinking about these ideas as I pondered the meaning of our traditional family Christmas dinner; a ritual we repeated with purposeful joy today. I realized, the Colhua Mexica (Aztec) civilization came to a bitter end but significant vestiges of the culture continue to survive today and not just among Nahuas and their relatives. The turkey dinner is for me a subtle continuation of the Mexica way of life.

 

 Mexica Drawing of a turkey mole being prepared. Credit: Language of Food

After dinner this evening I excused myself and started reading about the origins of some of the foods we had just prepared and shared as a family – the centerpiece of which was an organic Oregon free-range turkey perfectly paired with a dressing made from wild Colorado elk that had been sautéed last night with a blend of Riesling, sage, rosemary, thyme, roasted piñon nuts, cranberries, onions, bell peppers, celery, and smoked apple chicken sausages. Those ingredients are an intriguing blend of indigenous and Indo-European sources and say a lot about the way traditional and global cuisines mesh together on so many family tables. Our meal is a living testament to the so-called Columbian Exchange.

 



According to Jeremy Pilcher, a well-respected authority of Mexican food and food ways, “the greatest European influence on Mexican cuisine came from the introduction of livestock.”  Before contact and exchange with the invaders, the Mesoamerican peoples were basically vegetarians “incorporating only two domesticated animals, turkeys and dogs” into their cuisine, says Pilcher in an entry prepared for the Gale Encyclopedia of Food.

 



Actually, there were quite a few more domesticated and semi-domesticated animals that were part of indigenous diets. The number of salt and fresh water fish consumed exceeded hundreds of species, a few of which were apparently stocked in domestic ponds as part of the typical urban homestead in the twin island cities of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco. Frogs and other amphibians and some reptiles including snakes were also kept for food as were several species of rabbit and even birds, deer, and antelope. The Colhua Mexica loved grubs and other insects to say nothing of their taste for tapir and javelinas, some of which were also kept as semi-domesticated herds in watershed preserves. These patterns suggest that the boundaries between domesticated and wild (hunted, gathered) species was not as pronounced as it is with Western cultures.

From sacred bird to Butterball slave

So, what does any of this have to do with our Christmas dinner? For starters, let’s talk turkey. The Nahuatl name for turkey is wueh-xōlō-tl, which was translated as guajalote in Spanish. Among Mesoamericans, the Maya have the longest and most complicated relationship with wild and domesticated turkeys. In a study of animal bones found during a dig at the El Mirador complex in Guatemala, Erin Thornton (2012) suggests the remains were “probably some sort of elite sacrifice, meal or feast.” To the Maya, turkey was not just a readily available and domesticated source of meat, organs, and feathers; it was very likely considered a sacred animal.

Turkeys in a CAFO. Credit: Natural News Global

Have we lost a sense of the turkey as a sacred animal? It seems plausible to suggest that the place of the turkey as centerpiece of the dinner table during two Christian holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) implies the special and unique status of the bird, even in the dominant Anglo Protestant cultures that have embraced the bird for special dinners. 



But would a people that regard something sacred mistreat these fellow living beings by containing them like slaves inside mass production factory farms called CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations)? 

It is an odd contradiction but it seems this symbol of the Americanization of the European Christian traditions is not treated with the respect deemed necessary for those who believe in the sacredness of all beings. 



We know the Maya treated the turkey as lovingly and carefully as the Japanese treat their Kobe beef cows today, but not so today’s bird bound for the typical American dinner table.

What happened? How can a sacred animal maintain its place at the table and yet be treated with such exploitative disregard?



Capitalism. That’s what happened. Capitalism is not interested in protecting or respecting the sacred, unless it can be harnessed to serve the aims of profit. The turkey became industrialized because the U.S. consumer markets craved ever-larger quantities of the bird and the agribusiness corporations responded by producing them in the largest quantities and with the most efficient use of space, feed, medicine, and resources. 

 



As I did research to better understand the evolution of the industrialized production of turkeys, I came across a website from an animal rights organization known as Mercy for Animals. This organization conducted an undercover investigation that revealed how the industrial version of the turkey leads a dismal life (see video clip below):

Unfortunately, the lives of turkeys in Butterball's factory farms are short, brutal, and filled with fear, violence, and constant suffering. While wild turkeys are sleek, agile, and able to fly, Butterball's turkeys have been selectively bred to grow so large, so quickly, that many of them suffer from painful bone defects, hip joint lesions, crippling foot and leg deformities, and fatal heart attacks.

So as I am sitting here comfortably at my desk, basking in the comfort of the goodness and conviviality of our dinner, I find myself thinking about these contradictions. I am not against the moderate consumption of meat and so that means I have to work to find sources that treat their animals in a humane manner. This becomes easier every year with an increasing number of small regional producers dedicated to organic and free-range methods. I am also interested in sources that treat workers with the same respect and provide living wages. That has proven more difficult, which says a lot about the limits of consumer-driven efforts to transform the capitalist organization of agricultural production.



Most households are not able to purchase organic and free-range – it is a pricier option. While I can assuage my own feelings of guilt because I am able to work with an ethical source, and the prayers we share at the table include expressions of gratitude to the spirit of the turkey, which in a way, prepares the bird to become part of us; this does little to improve the lot of these animalitos.

 



When I was a young boy – maybe ten or twelve – I recall the family went on an outing for an all day visit to a farm outside Camargo (on the Mexican side of the border across from Rio Grande City). It was the first time I had eaten turkey mole (a chile-chocolate-peanut sauce). The food was amazing but what really stayed with me is the memory of the farmer’s wife, a woman who was half Cohuilteca, and how she chased after a bird that was soon to be our meal.

 



She ran after the bird and quickly grabbed it by the torso to hold the wings down in order to avoid the talons. She held it close to her body, kissing and murmuring some secret calming prayer to the bird. The bird relaxed. She held it for quite some time before she took it behind the house. Without another sound, she returned some 15 minutes later with the turkey, now dead and stripped of its feathers and ready to cook. I will never forget the look and sound of that scene, as I have never seen another person treat a domesticated animal bound for slaughter with such tender mercies.  



I am left to ponder a new set of questions: When is it violence and when is it a sacrifice? Does the method used to raise the flesh matter? Does heartfelt prayer make a difference? [I have my doubts about this because, as they say, the funeral is for the living not the dead.] Is it enough to insist that turkeys and other domesticated animals be raised in an environment that mimics their natural habitat and eases their behavioral stresses as much as possible? Does that make the turkey meal ethical? 



I am not sure I can answer these questions today, but I do know I can never eat a holiday meal without thinking about the historical, cultural, ethical forces that frame each and every bite of the tender, moist, and sacrificial flesh.

References

Thornton, Erin Kennedy and Kitty F. Emery, David W. Steadman, Camilla Speller, Ray Matheny, Dongya Yang. “Earliest Mexican Turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) in the Maya Region: Implications for Pre-Hispanic Animal Trade and the Timing of Turkey Domestication.” PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (8): e42630 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0042630.




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.