In May of 2010, I traveled to Mexico for the first time with two professors, three students, and a government employed tour guide. For 14 exhausting days we traveled across the Yucatan peninsula, stopping at a number of colonial heritage sites, Mayan ruins, and major cities along the way. Towards the latter half of our trip, we trekked over to Campeche to enjoy the city’s seafood and bustling open-air market. More than any other part of the trip, the market in Campeche made my anthropological spidey senses come alive. In fact, it was in the damp and odorous Campeche meat market that perhaps the most concrete decision of my academic career was made.
Overlooking Campeche City from an old pirate fort
The meat markets, or carnicerias, in Mexico are a step or two away from how we understand the packaging and selling of meat in the states. In all the meat markets I’ve been to, from Merida to Oaxaca, numerous vendors set up shop in jam-packed, hardly ventilated rooms (although the pork vendors in Oaxaca were spread out along the exterior of the market which is both a unique set up and a great way to reduce the smell). Each one butchers their own meat and hangs it on meat hooks until it can be sold.
The cuts of meat themselves are quite a sight. Gruesome blood sausages, livers, and intestines adorn the meat hooks while huge sheets of back fat and skin are stretched across metal bars running over the butcher stalls. Tubs of liquefied reused pig fat sit next to the ever-popular treat, chicharrones, or fried pig skins which sit on paper sheets while the excess grease drains away. My personal favorite meat market delights are the whole pig heads that can be found at nearly every stall (although I found that if the pig head isn’t peering out at you in plain view, ask the butcher and he’ll usually have one sitting near his feet so as to keep this commodity a secret known to only his best customers).
The meat is not refrigerated and most butchers cannot be bothered to brush away the relentless swarms of flies that congregate past 9 or 10 a.m. With the Mexican heat beating down on the roof of the market and steaming up the streets, the odor from all that flesh begins to disseminate. Before you get to the meat section of any market, the coppery smell of blood and flesh, a smell that you can identify most easily, will welcome you.
Since my first trip to the meat market in Campeche I’ve found that the topics of meat consumption and regulation have consumed me (pun intended). In March I took an ecological anthropology class here in Oxkutzcab and chose to do my fieldwork in the meat market. There I became good friends with a father-son butcher team, Don Luis and Senor Luis. I spent quite a bit of time talking to them about their product, where it comes from, and who buys it. I also began to research the history of meat regulation in Mexico and the United States. I started to realize that I had identified the meat market as a fascinating representative of a much larger, much more complex topic of study: food.
Senor Luis (left) and his father Don Luis (right) at their stand in the Oxkutzcab meat market
Whether it’s the anthropology of food, ancient food ways, regional cuisines, nutrition and public health, food policy, socioeconomic determinants of consumption, or any other food related topic, I’m ready and willing to dive in and explore it. This interest has always floated just under the surface of my academic brain, bubbling up when appropriate, but never fully unveiling itself for fear of not being taken seriously. It took me traveling 1800 miles to the meat market in Campeche to realize that food is more than the topic of study at CIA and certainly more than just good eats. Food is rooted in the human condition at the intersection of art, science, linguistics, history, culture and society. It is a universal feature of human life. And now, for the next year, I’m in the perfect position to take a critical look at life and food in Oxkutzcab.
Buen provecho!
