Truly Texas Mexican

Airing Friday, Oct. 22 at 9 p.m.

Over time and during conquest, Texas Mexican food (not tex-mex!) sustained Native American memory and identity. Cooking foods like nopalitos, deer, mesquite and tortillas, indigenous women led the resistance against colonization. The story of Texas Mexican food begins 15,000 years ago with the first people of Texas, when women domesticate the plants and cook the same game and fish we eat today. It’s the “comida casera,” (home cooking) of today’s Texas Mexican American, Native American, families. Women chefs, artists and community leaders in Corpus Christi, Brownsville and Harlingen share intimate food experiences that shape who they are today, facing a history of discrimination, dispossession and violence. This ancient cuisine questions what it means to be “American.” It offers a new type of encounter with the other, one of understanding, building a table where ALL ARE WELCOME.