Advertised over the last two decades as a “food mecca” and “the heart of Mexican gastronomy” Oaxaca has become increasingly dependent on food/fiesta/folklore tourism. The gourmetization and cultural appropriation of local foodstuffs and heritage for the sake of (inter)national tourism – al gusto del turista – has created a thriving food scene (hipster coffee shops, high-end restaurants, mezcalerias and boutique shops). But resistance to this marketing strategy has grown through marches and political graffiti. This talk examines this growing discontent through the lens of a local gastropolitics embedded in global racialized inequalities and Oaxaca’s long traditions of strong social and political movements.

Presenter: Renata E. Hryciuk Ph.D. is a social anthropologist and Latin Americanist at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. She has carried out fieldwork in Poland, Lithuania and Mexico (since 1999). Her research interests fall within feminist and decolonial anthropology, political anthropology (gender and development, social movements), and critical food studies (culinary tourism, food heritage, gastropolitics). For more than a decade, she has been exploring culinary tourism and heritagization of local food cultures in Oaxaca. She is co-editor of several books in Polish, as well as dozens of articles and book chapters in Polish, English and Spanish.