¹ Tamal: Cake made of corn dough stuffed with meats, vegetables, or chili sauce and wrapped in a corn husk or a banana leaf, and steamed. Atole: Corn gruel.

² On selling tamales in the Colonial period see Pilcher, Jeffrey M., ¡Qué vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), pp. 55–56.Google Scholar

³ Although their official name,was ‘National Dining Halls,’ they were usually referred to as ‘Family Dining Halls’ (Comedores Familiares). I refer to them as public dining halls or halls.

⁴ This essay draws on the work of Jeffrey Pilcher, Julio Moreno, Arnold Bauer, Steven Bunker, and Paulo Drinot on food and consumption practices in Latin America, and from the research by Patience Schell, Nichole Sanders, Katherine Bliss, Claudia Agostani, Mary Kay Vaughan, Jocelyn Olcott, Ann Blum, Susie Porter, and Stephanie Mitchell on social welfare and women in twentieth-century Mexico.

⁵ The Mexican revolution (1910–1921) exploded after Francisco I. Madero won the first democratic elections of the twentieth century. The revolution brought Díaz’s dictatorship to an end, opening the path for middle-class reformers and victorious generals. On modernization, material conditions, and culture in the late Porfiriato and the early decades of the twentieth century see Piccato, Pablo, City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900–1931 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 17–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bunker, Steven B, “Consumers of Good Taste: Marketing Modernity in Northern Mexico, 1890–1910,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 13:2 (Summer 1997), p. 228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).Google Scholar

⁷ Schelling, Vivian, ed., Through the Kaleidoscope: The Experience of Modernity in Latin America (London: Verso, 2000), p. 12.Google Scholar

⁸ “The way people build identities, perceive ideologies, and engage in discursive struggles has critical implications for how they live their lives.” Hirsch, Jennifer S., A Courtship after Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), p. 281.Google Scholar

⁹ For an interesting discussion on food in the nineteenth century see Pilcher, Jeffrey M., “Tamales or Timbales: Cuisine and the Formation of Mexican National Identity, 1821–1911,” The Americas 53:2 (October 1996), pp. 193–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ Porfirian educator Jorge Vera Estañol described “gente o personas decentes” as an expanding middle class composed often by mestizos, who were “intelligent, instructed and … ambitious, who sought to ‘mix with the rich and comfortable classes, to dress like them,’ and who felt a repulsion against all manual or mechanical work.” Quoted in Lear, John, Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), p. 56.Google Scholar

¹¹ Guerrero, Julio, La génesis del crimen en México, 2nd ed. (Mexico City: CONACULTA, 1996), p. 125.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid.

¹³ The state founded the EAOM in 1872 as a charitable institution to train poor women. Schell, Patience A., Church and State Education in Revolutionary Mexico City (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003), pp. 9, 42, 52–55;Google Scholar Arredondo, María Adelina, ed., Obedecer, servir y resistir: la educación de las mujeres en la historia de México (Mexico City: Universidad Pedagógica Nacional-Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2003).Google Scholar On private and Catholic Church education see Septién, Valentina Torres, La educación privada en México, 1903–1976 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México-Universidad Iberoamericana, 1997).Google Scholar The Catholic Church also trained women in other Latin American countries such as Brazil, see Besse, Susan, Restructuring Patriarchy: The Modernization of Gender Inequality in Brazil, 1914–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).Google Scholar

¹⁴ José Vasconcelos was the Minister of Education from 1921 to 1924. For a discussion on domestic science and cooking lessons in the 1920s see Schell, Patience, Church and State Education, p. 125.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Using the discourse of vitamins was new as they were only identified in the 1910s and 1920s. See Roth, Dennis, “America’s Fascination with Nutrition,” Food Review 23:1 (January-April 2000 35;Google Scholar Gratzer, Walter, Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia, Reseña de los principales acontecimientos relacionados con la Salud de los últimos 50 años (http://ssj.jalisco.gob.mx/antehis.html, 9 July 2007). Nichole Sanders analyzes the expansion of the welfare sector after the revolution and the importance of motherhood in the modernizing rhetoric see Sanders, Nichole Marie, Gender, Welfare and the “Mexican Miracle:” The Politics of Modernization in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1937–1958, PhD. diss., Department of History (Irvine: University of California, 2003).Google Scholar

¹⁷ La obra de “Comedores Nacionales”: reglamento exterior del comedor “Unión Nacional no. 1,” 1941, Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia (hereafter AHSSA), Beneficencia Pública (hereafter BP), Establecimientos Asistenciales (hereafter EA), Comedores Públicos (hereafter CP), Box 6, File. 4.

¹⁸ See Pilcher, Jeffrey M., ¡Qué vivan los tamales!; The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City, 1890–1917 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006);Google Scholar Pilcher, , “Josefina Velázquez de León: Apostle of the Enchilada,” in Pilcher, J. M., ed., The Human Tradition in Mexico (Wilmington DE: SR. Books, 2003).Google Scholar

¹⁹ The term “lower class” tends to refer to the rural or urban poor who are considered either as peasants or lumpenproletariat. As it has a negative connotation I avoid it as a descriptive category, and only use it in order to reflect the rhetoric of the period. Although the term ‘working-class’ has been identified with blue-collar workers it could also include the peasantry. In 1940s and 1950s Mexico, families who lived in semi- rural areas tended to be both workers and peasants. Therefore, it is difficult to classify them using class categories generated in industrialised countries. For some interesting discussions on class see Knight, Alan, “The Working Class and the Mexican Revolution 1900–1920,” Journal of Latin American Studies 16 (May 1984);Google Scholar John Lear, Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens; Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, Social Classes in Agrarian Societies (New York: Anchor Press, 1975).Google Scholar

²⁰ Latin American eugenics developed initially in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico. See Stepan, Nancy Leys, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 25 Google Scholar; Chacón Barliza, Orlando Arnulfo and Gilselle, Dary, Contextualización histórica de la formación del Nutricionista-Dietista en Colombia (http://www.nutricionistas.org/academia4. html, 2006);Google Scholar Stern, Alexandra Minna, “Responsible Mothers and Normal Children: Eugenics, Nationalism, and Welfare in Postrevolutkmary Mexico 1920–1940,” Journal of Historical Sociology 12: 4 (December 1999)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Bliss, Katherine Elaine, Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Health and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

²¹ Bulnes, Francisco, El porvenir de las naciones hispano-americanas ante las conquistas recientes de Europa y los Estados Unidos (Mexico City: Imprenta de Mariano Nava, 1899), pp. 6–19.Google Scholar For a contextualization of Bulnes’s work see Pilcher, ¡Qué vivan los tamales!, chapter IV.

²² Schell, Patience A., Church and State Education, pp. 53–56.Google Scholar

²³ Pilcher, , ¡Qué vivan los tamales!, p. 62.Google Scholar

²⁴ The professionalization of housewives was part of a trend traced back to the nineteenth century. See Schell, Patience A., “Training Loving Hands: Women’s Vocational Education in 1920s Mexico City,” Anuario de espacios urbanos. Historia, cultura, diseño (1998), pp. 249’71;Google Scholar Agostani, Claudia, “Discurso médico, cultura higiénica y la mujer en la ciudad de México al cambio de siglo (XIX-XX),” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 18:1 (Winter 2002).Google Scholar

²⁵ The School of Nursery and Obstetrics was founded in 1907. La Universidad y la Ciudad (Mexico City: Coordinación de Humanidades-Programa Universitario de Estudios sobre la Ciudad, 1995). In the 1920s, the Escuela Nacional de Enseñanza Doméstica (National School of Domestic Instruction) opened to train women as modern housewives or home economics teachers. Schell, Patience A., Church and State Education in Revolutionary Mexico City, pp. 54–56.Google Scholar On the history of social work see Martínez, Eli Evangelista, Historia del trabajo social en México (Mexico City: UNAM-Plaza y Valdes, 2001)Google Scholar; Torres, Gracida Casa, Díaz de León, Teresa Zamora, and Martínez, Eli Evangelista, “Social Work Profession (Mexico),” in Herrick, John M. and Stuart, Paul H., eds., Encyclopedia of Social Welfare History in North America (London: Sage, 2005), pp. 384–385.Google Scholar On Catholic Church schools training social workers in Brazil see Besse, , Restructuring Patriarchy, pp. 84–85.Google Scholar

²⁶ On welfare policies targeting women in other Latin American countries see Lavrín, Asunción, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890–1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), chap. 3;Google Scholar Rodríguez, Julia, Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), chap. 5Google Scholar; Guy, Donna J., White Slavery and Mothers Alive and Dead: The Troubled Meeting of Sex, Gender, Public Health, and Progress in Latin America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).Google Scholar

²⁷ Motherhood became part of liberating and oppressive discourses see Lavrín, ibid; Patience A. Schell, Church and State Education; Besse, Restructuring Patriarchy.

²⁸ Ann Blum shows how orphanages in the early 1900s housed the children of live-in domestic servants and trained them to perform the same job as their mothers in middle- and upper-class households. Blum, Ann S., “Cleaning the Revolutionary Household: Domestic Servants and Public Welfare in Mexico City 1900–1935,” Journal of Women’s History 15:4 (Winter 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ Besse, , Restructuring Patriarchy, pp. 199–200.Google Scholar

³⁰ Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects.

³¹ Bazant, Jan and Costeloe, Michael P., Alienation of Church wealth in Mexico: Social and Economic Aspects of the Liberal Revolution, 1856–1875 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

³² On the history of welfare in the Porfiriato see Ann Blum, S., “Conspicuous Benevolence: Liberalism, Public Welfare, and Private Charity in Porfirian Mexico City, 1877–1910,” The Americas 58:1 (July 2001).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

³³ On Catholic Church welfare see Patience Schell, A., “An Honorable Avocation for Ladies: The Work of the Mexico City Unión de Damas Católicas Mexicanas, 1912–1926,” Journal of Women’s History 10:4 (Winter 1999), p. 96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Church and State Education; Negrete Salas, Marta Elena, Relaciones entre la iglesia y el estado en México, 1930–1940 (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Históricos-El Colegio de México, 1988).Google Scholar On state welfare see Stern, Alexandra Minna, “Responsible Mothers and Normal Children,” pp. 369–71;Google Scholar Buck, Sarah A. “Women and Social Welfare in Mexico,” in Herrick, John M. and Stuart, Paul H., eds., Encyclopedia of Social Welfare Google Scholar; Fuentes, Mario Luis, La asistencia social en México: historia y perspectivas, 1st ed. (Mexico City: Ediciones del Milenio, 1998).Google Scholar

³⁴ Meyer, Jean A., El sinarquismo, el cardenismo y la Iglesia (1937–1947) (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2003);Google Scholar and La Cristiada (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1973); Knight, Alan, “Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?,” Journal of Latin American Studies 26:1 (February 1994);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Patricia Galeana de Valadés, ed., Relaciones estado-iglesia: encuentros y desencuentros (Mexico City: Archivo General de la Nación-Secretaría de Gobernación, 1999).

³⁵ Sanders, Nichole, “Improving Mothers: Poverty, the Family and ‘Modern’ Social Assistance in Mexico, 1937–1950,” in Mitchell, Stephanie. E. and Schell, Patience A., The women’s revolution in Mexico, 1910–1953 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), p. 282.Google Scholar

³⁶ Mary Kay Vaughan has deeply analysed the role of education in state formation and the development of nationalism. See her Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930–1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997); The State, Education, and Social Classes in Mexico, 1880–1928 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982); “Women, Class, and Education in Mexico, 1880–1928,” Latin American Perspectives 4:1–2 (Winter-Spring 1977).

³⁷ INEGI, 100 años de censos de población-Estados Unidos Mexicanos (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía e Informática, 1996). Migration intensified between 1940 and 1950 in Mexico. Contrary to other Latin American countries in which rural inhabitants moved to small cities and towns rather than to capital cities, migrants to Mexico City came mainly from the countryside. Merrick, Thomas W., “The population of Latin America 1930–1990,” in Bethell, Leslie ed., Latin America since 1930: Economy, Society and Politics, The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 6 (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 36.Google Scholar

³⁸ de Estadística, Dirección General, Séptimo Censo General de Población (Mexico City: Secretaría de Economía-Dirección General de Estadística, 1950).Google Scholar

³⁹ La obra de “Comedores Nacionales,” AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 4, p. 5. All translations from primary sources are mine.

⁴⁰ Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects.

⁴¹ Peña, Pedro González and Luis de, J. Lozano Mendoza, “La asistencia social general en México: antecedentes histórico-sociales,” Salubridad y Asistencia: órgano de la secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia 8:4 (July-August 1948), p. 205.Google Scholar

⁴² The creation of public dining halls was not unique to Mexico, other Latin American countries such as Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Peru had already established these institutions by the 1940s. La obra de “Comedores Nacionales,” AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 4, p. 6. For a discussion on Peru’s case see Drinot, Paulo, “Food, Race and Working-Class Identity: Restaurantes Populares and Populism in 1930s Peru,” The Americas 62:2 (2005), pp. 245–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴³ One of these twin buildings still houses a market, and its walls are decorated with murals painted in the early 1930s by Ramón Alva Guadarrama, Pablo O’Higgins, Ángel Bracho among others. The murals portray market and trade scenes from workers’ daily life.

⁴⁴ Epigraph La obra de “Comedores Nacionales,” AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 4, pp. 1–5.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ A year later there were around 1,220 people eating at hall no. 1. Hall no. 2 could serve 1,850 diners. Daily report written by hall manager Faustino Vidal, 3 December 1941 and 24 November 1942, AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 3.

⁴⁷ “Trabajo social en el Comedor Familiar #2,” Salubridad y Asistencia V:13 (January-February 1946), p. 4.

⁴⁸ Medina, Luis, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana 1940–1952: Del Cardenismo al Avilacamachismo (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1978).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ “Reglamento de los comedores familiares de la Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia,” Salubridad y Asistencia V:13 (January-February 1946), p. 43.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Ibid., p. 44.

⁵² “Letter addressed to the General Director of Administration at the Ministry of Health and Public Assistance written by Manuel Cárcamo Lardizabal, Chief of Office of the Public Dining Hall no. 2,” 27 April 1954, AHSSA, Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia (hereafter SSA), Subsecretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia (hereafter SubsSyA), Box 47, File. 3.

⁵³ Minimum wages per day in 1941 fluctuated between $1.30 and $2.20, and in 1942 between $1.35 a $2.82. Galván, Rafael Ramos, “El problema de la nutrición en México,” Salubridad y Asistencia 1:5 (September-October 1944), p. 35.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ “Letter addressed to the General Director of Administration written by Manuel Cárcamo Lardiza-bal,” 27 April 1954, AHSSA, SSA, SubsSyA, Box 47, File 3.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ Monthly report of the social work section of hall No. 1, December 1953, AHSSA, SSA, SubsSyA, Box 47, File 3.

⁵⁷ Prieto, Ignacio Morones, Memoria de la Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia Pública Sexenio 1952–1958 (Mexico City: Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia, 1958), p. 282.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Monthly report of the social work section of hall No. 1, December 1953, AHSSA, SSA, SubsSyA, Box 47, File 3.

⁵⁹ See Britton, John A., “Teacher Unionization and the Corporate State in Mexico, 1931–1945,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 59:4 (November 1979);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bizberg, Ilán, “Auge y decadencia del corporativismo,” in Meyer, Lorenzo and Bizberg, Ilán, eds., Una historia contemporánea de México: transformaciones y permanencias (Mexico City: Oceáno, 2003).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ La obra de “Comedores Nacionales,” AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 4, p. 5.

⁶¹ Ibid., pp. 6–7.

⁶² Ibid., p. 6.

⁶³ Cheap diners in Mexico where blue- and white-collar workers eat.

⁶⁴ Daily menus, 1941–1942, AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File 3. Dishes were not described in daily reports, so it is difficult to know how did Scotch meat (carne escocesa), sopa solferina, pescado xamfaina or other plates were prepared. Looking at 1940s and 1950s cookbooks might help.

⁶⁵ Daily menu and report, 25 September 1942, ibid.

⁶⁶ Daily menus, 1941–1942, ibid.

⁶⁷ Mexican popular dish consisting of ground beef with chopped vegetables.

⁶⁸ A kind of chili sauce served with meat.

⁶⁹ A selection of menus served in 1953, AHSSA, SSA, SubsSyA, Box 47, File 3.

⁷⁰ Vaughan, Mary Kay, “Transnational Processes and the Rise and Fall of the Mexican Cultural State: Notes from the Past,” in Joseph, Gilbert, Rubenstein, Anne, and Zolov, Eric, eds., Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in México Since 1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 478.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Race (although not discussed here) plays a key role in analysing food consumption in Mexico. The diet of the peasantry in central and southern Mexico was identified with indigenous people’s eating habits, a background that most migrants wanted to hide as it was perceived as backward and inferior by aspiring middle-class capitalinos.

⁷² Pilcher, Jeffrey M., ¡Qué vivan los tamales!, pp. 58–62.Google Scholar

⁷³ Metate: Saddle quern used to grind maize. Comal: earthenware or metal griddle to cook tortillas.

⁷⁴ For a detailed discussion regarding maize technology see Pilcher, Jeffrey M., “Industrial Tortillas and Folkloric Pepsi: The Nutritional Consequences of Hybrid Cuisines in Mexico,” in Belasco, Warren and Scranton, Philip, eds., Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies (New York-London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 222–229;Google Scholar Pilcher, Jeffrey M., ¡Qué vivan los tamales!, pp. 100–106;Google Scholar Aguilar, Jaime Aboites, Breve historia de un invento olvidado: las máquinas tortilladoras en México (Mexico City: División de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades-Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Unidad Xochimilco, 1989);Google Scholar Bauer, Arnold J., Goods, Power, History: Latin America’s Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 188–191.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Daily report written by the dining hall manager Faustino Vidal, 4 December 1941, AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 3. Hall no. 2 had a tortilla-making machine since its inauguration. Salubridad y Asistencia V:13 (January-February 1946), p. 38.

⁷⁶ Daily menus and reports, AHSSA, SSA, SubsSyA, Box 47, File 3

⁷⁷ La obra de “ Comedores Nacionales,” AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 4, p. 7.

⁷⁸ “Reglamento de los comedores familiares de la Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia,” Salubridad y Asistencia V:13 (January-February 1946), p. 44.

⁷⁹ A deprived neighborhood near hall no. 1.

⁸⁰ Barbara Quijas, interview by the author, Mexico City, 1 July 2005.

⁸¹ Even though I did not find a specific reference to the theft of crockery and cutlery at hall no. 1 or no. 2 this was reported as a common practice in student dining halls. See AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File 2.

⁸² La obra de “Comedores Nacionales,” AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 4, p. 7.

⁸³ Ibid., p. 12.

⁸⁴ Primer Congreso Nacional de Salubridad y Asistencia 1946, AHSSA, AHSSA, SSA, SubsSyA, Box 7, File 5, p. 8. The sale of subsidised food began under the Cárdenas’s administration. On 12 August 1938, Cárdenas decreed the foundation of the Comité Regulador del Mercado de Subsistencias (Regulating Committee of Basic Foodstuff) to control the price of basic foodstuffs. In 1941, the Committee was transformed into Nacional Distribuidora y Reguladora S.A. (National Distribution and Regulation Society NADRYSA), which was also in charge of distributing subsidised food. On 13 July 1949, Compañía Exportadora e Importadora Mexicana S.A. (National Imports and Exports Company, CEIMSA) substituted NADRYSA. By 1950 there were 2,500 CEIMSA shops located mainly in Mexico City. See Gómez, Hugo Azpeitia, Compañía Exportadora e Importadora Mexicana S.A. (1949–1958) Conflicto y abasto alimentario (Mexico City: CIESAS, 1994)Google Scholar; Bajio, Antonio del, Crisis alimentarias y subsistencias populares en México, vol. 2 (Mexico City: Leche Industrializada CONASUPO SA de CV, 1990)Google Scholar; Fujigaki, Gloria Hernández, CNC-CONASUPO: 50 años de lucha por la alimentación (Mexico City: Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias Populares, 1988).Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Although it was not part of daily menus, soft drinks and candies were sold at low prices in vending machines inside the halls. La obra de “Comedores Nacionales,” AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 4, p. 8.

⁸⁶ Ibid., p. 7.

⁸⁷ Photograph of the kitchen and the counter of hall no. 1 in Baz, Informe de labores presentado al H. Ejecutivo de la Unión 1941–1942. Hall no. 2 photograph see Salubridad y Asistencia V: 13 (January-February 1946), p. 53

⁸⁸ Daily report written by the dining hall manager Faustino Vidal, 9 February 1942, AHSSA, BR EA, CR Box 6, File 3.

⁸⁹ Chili pepper sauce or stew often made with a variety of ground nuts, spices and chocolate.

⁹⁰ Pilcher, , “Industrial Tortillas and Folkloric Pepsi,” p. 226.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Inness, Sherrie A., ed., Cooking Lessons: the Politics of Gender and Food (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), p. 44.Google Scholar

⁹² La obra de “Comedores Nacionales,” AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 4, p. 7.

⁹³ Ibid., p. 6.

⁹⁴ On working women’s experiences see Porter, Susie S., Working Women in Mexico City: Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879–1931 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003).Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Since the 1930s the state encouraged the development of domestic industries, which were homebased small businesses set by women to contribute to family budget without neglecting their role as mothers and housewives. Domestic industries, however, preserved gender and social inequalities. See the various books and pamphlets distributed among working-class and peasant women such as Hernández, Ana María, Industrias del hogar para la mujer obrera y campesina de México, Biblioteca Hogar (Mexico City: A. del Bosque Impresor, 1937).Google Scholar Vocational schools also trained women to engage in paid work at home. Schell, , Church and State Education, pp. 47–52.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Salubridad y Asistencia V:13 (January-February 1946), p. 8.

⁹⁷ In 1940, women represented 28 percent of the economically active population of Mexico City, from which 44 percent worked as domestic servants. 50 percent were housewives, however, women who did paid work at home often defined themselves as amas de casa. Dirección General de Estadística, , Sexto Censo general de población 1940: Resumen General (Mexico City: Secretaría de la Economía Nacional-Dirección General de Estadística, 1943).Google Scholar

⁹⁸ La obra de “Comedores Nacionales ,” AHSSA, BP, EA, CP, Box 6, File. 4, p. 10.

⁹⁹ Ibid., p. 8.

¹⁰⁰ The MPHA stated that cooking lessons could be extended to a six-month period if women showed an interest in the subject and registered to the courses. Later on, evening lessons would also be available for those who worked in the morning. “Cursos de Cocina Familiar en el Departamento de Nutriología,” Salubridad y Asistencia VIII:2 (March-April 1948), pp. 117–122.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., pp. 118–121.

¹⁰² In 1955 the average minimum wage was $7.08 pesos in urban areas, while the cheapest refrigerator, a Gilvert, cost $2,485 and a IEM could be bought paying $50 per week. An Across gas stove cost $ 1,275 pesos and a Birtman blender $475. All these prices were excessively high for working-class budgets. For average minimum wages see Presidencia de la Repiiblica, 50 años de Revolución Mexicana en cifras (Mexico City: Presidencia de la República-Nacional Financiera SA, 1963) p. 112. For domestic technology advertisements and prices see Excelsior: el periódico de la vida nacional, 2 May 1955.

¹⁰³ Salubridad y Asistencia V: 13 (January-February 1946), p 7.

¹⁰⁴ By 1946 women did not have full citizenship as they could not vote for presidential elections. In 1947, President Miguel Alemán granted women the right to vote at municipal election. But women’s suffrage at a national level was not decreed until 1953 by President Adolfo Ruíz Cortines. See Pablos, Julia Tuñón, Women in Mexico: A Past Unveiled (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), pp. 105–106.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Salubridad y Asistencia V:13 (January-February 1946), p. 8.

¹⁰⁶ Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities.

¹⁰⁷ Aguilar-Rodríguez, Sandra, “Between Modernity and Tradition: Women’s Daily Life as portrayed in La Familia (1946–1952)” MPhil diss., Latin American Centre (Oxford: University of Oxford, 2004).Google Scholar On the role of women’s magazines in reinforcing the sexual division of labor in Brazil see Besse, , Restructuring Patriarchy, pp. 187–188.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Acevedo, Marta, El diez de mayo, vol. 7 (Mexico City: SEP/Cultura, 1970).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Excelsior, 10 May 1955.

¹¹⁰ Cinema also represented the other side of the coin, lost women who suffered as a result of the path they have followed. See Bracho, Diana, “En el cine mexicano: ¿Y en el papel de la mujer. Quién?,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 1:2 (Summer 1985);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Burton-Carvajal, Julianne, “Mexican Melodramas of Patriarchy: Specificity of a Transcultural Form,” in Stock, Ann Marie and Fornet, Ambrosio, eds., Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Perspectivas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997);Google Scholar Tuñón, Julia, Mujeres de luz y sombra en el cine mexicano: la construcción de una imagen (1939–1952) (Mexico City: Colegio de México-Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, 1998).Google Scholar

¹¹¹ Evelyn Stevens explains the cult of women’s spiritual superiority through the concept of “Marianismo,” which implies that women aspire to be like the Virgin Mary, personified in Mexico by Our Lady of Guadalupe. Thus, women show spiritual strength through abnegation. See Stevens, Evelyn P., “Marianismo: The Other Face of Machismo in Latin America,” in Pescatello, Ann, ed., Female and Male in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1973), pp. 94–95;Google Scholar Yeager, Gertrude Matyoka, Confronting Change, Challenging Tradition: Women in Latin American History (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1994).Google Scholar

¹¹² Besse, , Restructuring Patriarchy, p. 201.Google Scholar On state perceptions on motherhood see Sanders, Nichole, “Mother and Family Programs in Mexico,” in Herrick, John M. and Stuart, Paul H., eds., Encyclopedia of Social Welfare History, p. 240.Google Scholar On women’s political involvement reflecting the discourse of motherhood and its link to welfare see Buck, Sarah A., “Female Welfare Initiatives and State Formation from the Porfiriato to the Revolution,” in ibid, pp.445–447 Google Scholar; Olcott, Jocelyn, “‘Worthy Wives and Mothers’: State-sponsored Women’s Organizing in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” Journal of Women’s History 13:4 (Winter 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹³ On women and politics in Mexico see Macias, Anna, Against All Odds: The feminist Movement in Mexico to 1940 (Westport: Greenwood, 1982);Google Scholar Shirlene Soto, E., Emergence of the Modern Mexican Woman: Her Participation in Revolution and Struggle for Equality, 1910–1940 (Denver: Arden Press, 1990);Google Scholar Olcott, Jocelyn, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar In Latin America see Chaney, Elsa, Supermadre: Women in Politics in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979);Google Scholar Craske, Nikki, Women and politics in Latin America (Oxford: Polity, 1999).Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Vaughan, Mary Kay, “Modernizing Patriarchy: State Policies, Rural Households, and Women in Mexico 1930–1940,” in Molyneux, Maxine and Dore, Elizabeth, Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 196; Besse, Restructuring Patriarchy.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Letter written by Manuel Cárcamo Lardizabal, Chief of Office of the Public Dining Hall no. 2,” 27 April 1954, AHSSA, SSA, SubsSyA, Box 47, File 3.

¹¹⁶ Ibid.

¹¹⁷ Ibid.

¹¹⁸ The analysis of the school breakfast program and subsidised shops could help us to build up a clearer picture of changes in the rhetoric of food and on how people used welfare.

¹¹⁹ Although further research is needed, I found that in 1947 there were 476 Work and Assistance centers in Mexico City, each of them offered two meals per day to an average of 100 people. Meals cost between 10 and 20 cents. AHSSA, SSA, SubSyA, Box 8, File 15. In 1950 there were four dining halls catering for university students. Dirección de asistencia social, AHSSA, SSA, SubSyA, Box 23, File 6. There were soup kitchens in Centros Femeninos de Trabajo (Women’s Work Centers) and another dining hall in Vértiz. These halls served far less diners than family halls. In 1952, both hall no. 1 and 2 served 2,766 people per day, while Vértiz.hall catered for 250 people and a student dining hall nearby the Faculty of Veterinary Science served 70 students every day. Prieto, Morones, Memoria de la Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia Pública Sexenio 1952–1958, p. 281.Google Scholar