Agriculture as it relates to race, class, and gender

Que Vivan los Tamales is an excellent source of understanding how race, class, and gender are shaped by food and its development. Throughout the text, Pilcher examines the way that food production historically shaped women's identity. Women's power was placed in their food, and they used tortilla making as a form of self-expression. The advent of industrialization and mills, however, permanently altered the place of women's work in Mexican culture. Although wealthier women were able to stay at home and continue to make their own tortillas and meals, poorer women had to leave their homes and enter the factories so that they could work in markets with the time saved. This ultimately changed the structure of race, class, and gender as corn agriculture that was once women’s work became mechanized. This effectively altered Mexican culture as industrialization made their long-established agricultural system ineffective and irrelevant. As time progressed, the mills took over, and identities and gender roles were no longer necessarily shaped by food production. Over time, industrialization exacerbated the differences within race and class, and permanently shifted Mexican identity away from agriculture.
In more contemporary times, this domino effect plays out again and again. In Ghana, for example, the country receives federal food subsidies from the United States in the form of rice. Rice, however, is the most grown crop in the country. The American rice that is sent to Ghana is whiter, less grittier, and most importantly, free. Women in particular in Ghana are most disenfranchised by the federal subsidies as people who are desperately poor understandably take the free rice over the rice they have to pay for. These subsidies have wholly depleted Ghana’s economy, and it was said that giving them rice was the same as giving Inhuits snow. Women in Ghana lose their livelihood, which is necessary to support their family. Similar to what happened in Mexico with industrialization, the class system is illuminated, as it is impossible to get ahead. The intersection of race, class, and gender in agriculture is undeniable.