ABSTRACT
In Chapter 23 of the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Méndez Cota analyzes and reflects upon the malleability and critical potential of ecocultural identity in Mexico as played out in activist narratives that foreground agroecological systems such as milpa farming. Among the diverse creatures that make up the milpa system, corn has been most visibly deployed in Mexico as a unifying metaphor of national identity. Meanwhile quelites (from Náhuatl: ‘tender edible weeds’), which grow on their own accord at the feet of corn plants, have historically commanded much less attention in mainstream images and celebrations of Mexican identity. Recently, however, quelites have emerged, alongside rural women, as important ecocultural agents calling for more just and sustainable futures for the Mexican nation. Méndez Cota focuses on the growing presence of both quelites and rural women in activist narratives seeking to redefine the nation through a metaphorical use of the milpa system. While such a shift in ecocultural identity can be explained by pointing at various empirical factors such as changing attitudes regarding biocultural diversity, civil resistance to neoliberal globalization, public health concerns, and the growing popularity of green and ethical consumerism in evermore crowded and polluted cities, the author’s analysis seeks to go beyond an empirical description of such factors by drawing on philosophical discussions in cultural studies and queer ecology. In particular, Méndez Cota advocates a de-essentializing or queer reading of contemporary milpa narratives that subverts anthropocentric and androcentric tendencies in Mexican nationalism so as to open up spaces for ethical thinking beyond gendered structures of an ecocultural identity that otherwise could remain unchanged.
