Foodscapes of bread in sixteenth-century New Spain using a historical gazetteer

In this paper we analyse the introduction of wheat bread as a economical and political enterprise in the conquest and colonisation of Mesoamerica, a cultural area composed of differentiated peoples who inhabited modern day tropical Mexico and Central America up to Honduras, named as New Spain by conquistador Hernán Cortés. We study the introduction of wheat breads in a context where we have been able to record 11 different Mesoamerican breads. Colonists were interested in the introduction of the cultivation of wheat for religious and entrepreneurial purposes, which translated in the expansion of colonial enterprises. Historical and geographical literature has studied the introduction of wheat according to climate and elevation. Using the DECM gazetteer and contemporary sixteenth-century sources, we argue that the introduction of wheat cultivation relied on the labour and knowledge of the indigenous peoples, as well as on the colonial policy to found reticular cities to organise the clockwork of colonialism. This paper contributes to consider the historically conflicted and political role of breads in the context of colonisation of the Americas.