Today is a special day in America. That’s right, it’s Taco Tuesday.
Oh, and it also happens to be Election Day.
This confluence of days only makes sense in an election that has seen tacos play a central role in the mainstream political dialogue.
The taco mania began in May when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted a now-infamous picture of himself with a taco bowl (which is arguably not a taco at all), and the caption “I love Hispanics!”
Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! https://t.co/ufoTeQd8yApic.twitter.com/k01Mc6CuDI
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2016
Many on the internet pointed out that Trump’s post came across as racist, as he reduced an entire culture of people down to an Americanized version of their food.
Later, in September, Marco Gutierrez — founder of the group Latinos For Trump — warned on MSNBC: “My culture is a very dominant culture, and it’s imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”
The resultant hashtag, #TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner, nearly broke the internet, as commentators jumped on the idea of a taco-truck-filled America. The Washington Post even went so far as to estimate that a taco truck on every corner would create 63 million jobs in the US.
Read more: A Taco Truck on Every Corner? Yes, Please, Says the Internet
Though it was most likely not Gutierrez’s intention, his statement led the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to initiate a ‘Guac the vote’ campaign to register voters at taco trucks.
Then, last week, Barack Obama piggybacked on this idea — invoking the taco in a speech in Columbus, Ohio.
“If you can find the time to get a free taco, then you can find the time to go vote,” Obama said to a cheering crowd. “You can vote, and then go get your taco. It’s like a combo meal — you get something good for your soul and then you go get something good for your appetite.”
It’s pretty obvious that tacos have caught the imagination of the American electorate this year, but less discussed is where tacos come from and what they symbolize.
Tacos, while originating in Mexico, have become a global food — having transitioned from a working-class staple to a worldwide commodity. But they are also at the center of the debate surrounding what the future of the US will look like. As it turns out there is more to tacos than ‘meats’ the eye.
The origins of the popular snack are nebulous, but many trace the taco back to 18th-century Mexican silver mines. Back then, tacos were very literally the explosive devices used to extract ore from the mines, according to Jeffrey M. Pilcher, a professor of history at the University of Minnesota.
Pilcher, author of the book “Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food,” described the perception of Mexican food in the US in the 20th century as “exotic, slightly dangerous, but still appealing,” in an interview with Smithsonian magazine.
The taco, he says, originated as a lower-class street food in Mexico, but became mainstream as more Mexicans immigrated to the US in the early 20th century.
Read more: In Response to Trump Advocate, Taco Trucks #GuacTheVote
The emergence of the Taco Bell franchise forever changed the perception of tacos in the US, he argues.
“The word ‘taco’ in a restaurant name was actually a way of selling Mexican food to non-Mexicans,” Pilcher said. “What Glen Bell was doing was allowing Americans of other racial and ethnic groups to sample Mexican food without actually going into Mexican neighborhoods.”
For many Americans, the taco became a familiar consumer item while Mexican and other Latino communities remained more-or-less a foreign presence, outside of the US Southwest. Likewise, franchises like Taco Bell generally stayed out of majority-Latino communities. One would be hard pressed to find a Taco Bell in highly-Latino East L.A., Pilcher said.
This year’s election has illustrated the chasm still separating the Taco Bell community (mostly white consumers of Tex-Mex foods) from the taco truck community (majority Latino). But as the Latino community continues to grow in the US, these worlds are colliding with predictable results.
Read more: Our Insatiable Avocado Appetite Is Killing Mexico’s Forests
“Plenty of Americans do see the increasing prevalence of foreign cultures in the US, including Hispanic culture, as an unwelcome invasion,” Molly Ball wrote in The Atlantic.
In France, a country with a proud culinary culture and rapidly changing demographics, a similar confrontation has emerged with regards to a popular imported food — kebab.
“For the right, the kebab has become a symbol of the invasion of Muslims in France,” Pierre Raffard, a French scholar of Turkish cuisine, told the New York Times. “It is a powerful way to attack. What you eat is who you are. You are touching the most sensitive point of identity.”
In the US, where food is not quite so sacred as it is in France, the prevalence of tacos and taco trucks may not threaten a sense of national identity. But it sure seems like, whatever the case, the election of 2016 — the election of the taco — has ushered the food into the fold of history.