INTRODUCTION: Mexican Deep Food: Bodies, the Land, Food, and Social Movements

The Mexican-origin people comprise a mosaic of millenary civilizations with diverse ethnolinguistic roots. There are officially sixty-two distinct Indigenous language groups in México today.¹ There is more diversity than this implies since many ethnolinguistic communities, like the Zapoteca in Oaxaca, have multiple regional dialects, and a good portion of these involves speakersnorthof the México-US border. We note the well-established presence of half a million Zapotecas living, working, and raising families in California and on the rest of the West Coast all the way up to Alaska.² This presence is exemplary of an Indigenous diaspora from Mesoamerica to multiple