Interracial Marriages: Punjabi Sikhs and Mexicans Since 1916 - Essay Sample

Introduction

Marriages between Punjabis Sikhs and Mexicans can be traced to as early as 1916 (Dhaliwal, 2018). The Asian Indians had lost their battle for naturalization and whiteness in what was called Thind decision. The antimiscegenation laws prohibited Indians from marrying whites until 1948 (Dhaliwal, 2018). At that time, only a few Punjabi men were allowed to bring their women from India.

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The Mexicans had begun their migration in around 1910 during the outset of the Mexican revolution. They worked in agricultural fields that were farmed by Punjabi men (Dhaliwal, 2018). However, Mexican women met Punjabi men, mostly in northern and central California. Thus, the Punjabi men and Mexican women met each other as farm laborers, and they began developing relationships that would eventually lead to marriage (Bradfield, 2016).

Punjabi Mexican marriages had a significant age difference; Punjabi men were 12 to 20 years older than the Mexican wives were (Bradfield, 2016). However, they had many similarities between them; they were not educated and were of lower-class status working in the central valley region's agricultural economy. According to most county clerks, they were considered suitable for marriage because of their brown color. Besides sharing a rural way of life, with similarities in food and culture, their religions, Sikhism and Catholicism were also seen as compatible (Bradfield, 2016).

Punjabi Mexican marriages were soon all over California's agricultural areas. However, unions began to experience many conflicts (Bradfield, 2016). There was disagreement over what Punjabi men called excessive freedom by Mexican women, and their Punjabi husbands required considerable time to adjust. For instance, in India, women were not allowed to walk freely or in the company of male partners in the streets like the Mexican women did in California (Dhaliwal, 2018).

Many of the Mexican Punjabi marriages ended in divorce due to the many conflicts they experienced. Mexican women complained that their husbands committed adultery, were drunk too much, and demanded too much household chores from them, and some complained of physical abuse by their husbands (Bradfield, 2016). On the other hand, Punjabi men complained of their wives visiting their relatives whenever they want, acting as they wished, and would not even cook or clean for their Punjabi male friends.

Even though the Mexican Punjabi intermarriages were not integrated into the Mexican community or neither accepted by the Anglo whites, Mexican Punjabi families formed unique communities of their own (Bradfield, 2016). A pattern of Mexican female relatives and Punjabi male friendships defined their communities.

Relevance of Foodways

Food culture determined in part by religion shaped the Mexican Punjabi communities (Bradfield, 2016). The Sikhs diet mainly contained vegetables, milk, fruits, and roti bread made of wheat with a shape like a tortilla. The Sikh men were known to consume a large portion of milk and ghi with their food (Bradfield, 2016). Mexican women had to learn how to cook Punjabi meals for their husbands. Besides, they adapted the dishes to use more familiar or local ingredients. They would learn how to prepare the Punjabi traditional dishes from their husbands.

From the community's earliest days, Mexican women could cook in the gurdwaras that were an essential hub for all Punjabi Mexicans besides being a Sikh place of worship (Dhaliwal, 2018). Mexican women who learned to cook Sikh traditional food from their husbands helped local wives prepare langar, which is the community meal served in all gurdwaras. They also helped them make chapattis (Bradfield, 2016). However, when Punjabi women arrived, they did not want Mexican women who used to cook in gurdwaras to cook because they wanted to cook their way, even though the Mexican women had learned how to cook Indian food from their husbands.

The Mexican wives wanted to cook food to please their husbands while the husbands as best as they could be to communicate what food they liked back home (Dhaliwal, 2018). Both Punjabi and Mexican culture used similar spices in cooking. Spices like chili and cumin, the Punjabi flatbread made from whole-wheat flour called roti, looked like tortillas.

The two Punjabi Mexican cuisines blended well not only in homes but also in local restaurants in Yuba City, where the Sikhs are large. The roti was Indian, while quesadilla was Mexican. The two cultures were merged into one meal (Dhaliwal, 2018).

Raul's El Ranchero restaurant in Yuba City operated for almost forty years, serving cuisine that put much stress on chicken curry and roti (Ream, 2016). It was a place where Roti Quesadilla was a popular dish. The Punjabi Mexican cuisine was a cultural amalgamation that occurred more than a century ago with the marital bliss of Sikh men and Mexican women brought together by their immigrant status. The roti quesadilla represented the Mexican Punjabi community in California. The family of Rasul that created it succeeded in making something true to their identity (Ream, 2016).

Roti Quesadilla was invented in Rasul's E ranchero restaurant opened in 1954 in Yuba City in central California. After realizing people liked their food, Gulam Rasul and his wife Inez Aguirre left agricultural work to start the restaurant (Benson & Helzer, 2017).. They had 13 children, many of whom helped with work in the restaurant from time to time.

Even though the El Rancheros menu was mostly Mexican, they served a few Indian dishes like lamb curries and chicken curries, rotis, and seasonal curried vegetables (Benson & Helzer, 2017). It was the first restaurant in Yuba City to serve any south Asian food.

The restaurant's sole crossover dish was the roti quesadilla. It had a piece of melted cheese, onions, and shredded beef that was sandwiched inside the paratha (Benson & Helzer, 2017). The cuisine came with a curry chicken dipping sauce, rice or beans, and as well as salad.

The roti quesadilla became so popular that it was nicknamed the Hindu pizza. The Rasuls served the kinds of food that they made for themselves (Ream, 2016). Punjabi Mexicans at that time run a couple of other restaurants in California, which included El Centro, but none of them had the staying power of El Ranchero. Moreover, no restaurant served both Indian and Mexican dishes and anything that combined food traditions from both the Punjabi and Mexican culture on a single plate (Ream, 2016).

During the forty years it operated, the restaurant became a gathering space for the whole community. Punjabi Mexican families found a place to stop at whenever they found themselves in Yuba City.

Nowadays, chefs and restaurants think much about marketing. They are deliberate on flavors and culinary traditions they combine. Unlike Rasul's El Ranchero, catering to Punjabi Mexicans and serving the roti quesadilla was more than just cuisine. It represented the organic community of Punjabi Mexicans that were brought together by cultural similarities, labor laws, and the confluence of immigration policies.

Foodways are linked to the past and an anchor to the future; it allows families to seek ways of living while also preserving the sense of community. Food culture has transformed into a fascinating new culture with a cutting edge, adventurous, and creativity. In life, food is necessary, but in culture, it is essential to thought the world. Things we eat can say much about us, where we come from, who we are, our social, economic, and religious position, and our ambitions. Foods have become pivotal to our sense of identity and spirituality, and in most cases, it serves as the center point of religious and secular feasts.

In modern societies, foodways are often mobile, traveling, and settling to serve people and renegotiate a sense of place for migrants, refugees, or visitors in the streets and homes (Lohman, 2016). Food is also essential in signifying ethnic identity among communities in the diaspora and in maintaining connections to homes. Immigrants use different foods to show cultural differences and distinctiveness, but they also use it to make claims about the power and importance of ethnic food.

Today, most Indian restaurants across the central valley have Mexican influenced dishes on their menu. Some restaurants like Punjabi Burrito serve what they call a fusion of Mexican Indian cuisine, a mixture of flours for tortillas drawn from the inspiration from traditional Indian Mexican flatbreads. However, the cuisine has no cream, no gluten, and no sugar with a clear emphasis on healthy foods (Lohman, 2016). There is nothing like Raul's Roti Quesadilla, which existed because of a specific community at a particular time in history.

Founder of Curry up Now, Akash Kapoor started the fast-casual Indian meal in 2009 from inspiration by Korean Kogi BBQ taco trucks. The burrito is served with fillings like Kashmiri stew, samosas, saag paneer, and quesadilla, which sandwiches Indian style meat and mozzarella cheese (Lohman, 2016). The food invites comparison to the Rasul's signature dish but has evolved from a completely different cultural moment.

References

Benson, H. L., & Helzer, J. (2017). Central Valley Culinary Landscapes: Ethnic Foodways of Sikh Transnationals. California Geographer, 56. http://scholarworks.csun.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.3/193760/CG2017.pdf?sequence=1#page=33

Bradfield, H. H. (2016). The East Indians of Yuba City: a study in acculturation (Doctoral dissertation). http://csusdspace.calstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.3/180034/1970BradfieldHelenHaynes.pdf?sequence=3

Dhaliwal, D. (2018). Yuba-Sutter: A Case Study for Heritage Conservation in Punjabi-American Communities (Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California). https://search.proquest.com/openview/ec027d8e186d08e9dbdbf06f320ec09d/1?pqorigsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

Lohman, S. (2016). Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. Simon and Schuster. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl

Ream, H. L. (2016). Ethnic foodways in the making of transnationals: Central Valley Sikhs (Doctoral dissertation). http://130.17.111.21/handle/011235813/1037