"Texas Mexican" Food is Memory, Identity, and Community: The Wisdom of San Antonio's Adán Medrano

Friends:

Mr. Adán Medrano

I recently heard a presentation by the beloved Adán Medrano from San Antonio, a chef extraordinaire, who talks about the Indigenous roots of our food here in Texas in a presentation titled, "Food is Memory, Identity, and Community." He begins by sharing that our ancestors have been in Texas for over 15,000 years. 

It is not "Tex-Mex," he insists, rather it is "Texas Mexican" cuisine. Adán has been steadfast in pushing us to recognize this truth. On April 22, 2019, his essay appeared on the front page of The New York Times: “Don’t Call It Tex-Mex.” In it, he makes clear that to call our food “Tex-Mex” is to erase the thousands of years of history and the communities that kept these traditions alive. By calling it Texas Mexican, we honor the memory and the dignity of those who came before us.

It is humbling to think about how every tortilla, every pot of beans, every roasted chile carries forward knowledge passed down through the hands and hearts of our Texas Mexican people. I remember during the pandemic an immigrant parent telling me in Spanish:

"No hay problema. Mientras haya arroz y frijoles, nadie en mi familia pasará hambre." ("No probem. As long as there's rice and beans, no one in my family will go hungry.")

 

"Survival skills," I thought, but also a kind of inherited wisdom—knowing that even in scarcity, there’s enough if we re-think abundance as something rooted in community rather than accumulation. It also reminded me of home when among my most favorite meals were rice, beans, a corn tortilla, and some salsa.

What stays with me most is how Mr. Medrano frames food as resistance. Every time we prepare traditional dishes, we are doing more than nourishing bodies—we are keeping alive memory, identity, and community. In a time when our histories are too often erased or misrepresented, cooking and eating together become acts of survival and affirmation.

To eat Texas Mexican food is to say: we are still here. "Aquí estamos y no nos vamos." ("Here we are and we're not going anywhere.") In fact, there is actually nowhere "to go back to" as we Texas Mexicans are always on our land.

If you’d like to dive deeper, I recommend Adán’s beautiful documentary, Truly Texas Mexican. Check out his book, too: Truly Texas Mexican: A Native Culinary Heritage in Recipes (2014).

It is a heartfelt exploration of how our food reflects our history, our Indigenous roots, and our ongoing story. It reminds us that food is never just food—it is culture, memory, and love made tangible.

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Reference

Medrano, A. (2014). Truly Texas Mexican. Texas Tech University Press. https://www.ttupress.org/9780896728509/truly-texas-mexican/