Moctezuma's Table: Rolando Briseño's Mexican and Chicano Tablescapes (Volume 17) (Rio Grande/Río Bravo: Borderlands Culture and Traditions)

The table provides the food that sustains physical life. It is also the setting for people to share the fellowship that sustains cultural, community, and political life. In the vision of artist Rolando Briseño, food is a powerful metaphor, a way of understanding how culture nurtures the spirit. When cultures collide-as they inevitably do in borderlands settings-food, its preparation, and the rituals surrounding its consumption can preserve meanings and understandings that might otherwise have been lost to the mainstream social narrative. Briseño’s exhibit, La Mesa de Moctezuma/Moctezuma’s Table , originally hosted by San Antonio’s Instituto Cultural Mexicano and later by the Instituto de México, Montreal, Canada, brings to vivid life the artist’s conception of food as life source, social symbol, and embodiment of meaning. Now, editor Norma E. Cantú has gathered the art, along with the words of fifteen poets, writers, artists, and scholars who reflect in various ways on the layers of interpretation to be derived from Briseño’s works. Their thoughts provide focal points for musings about food, transborder relationships between food and art, personal connections to food, individual works within the exhibit, and the intense and immediate connections among culture, food, and self.

The table provides the food that sustains physical life. It is also the setting for people to share the fellowship that sustains cultural, community, and political life.

In the vision of artist Rolando Briseño, food is a powerful metaphor, a way of understanding how culture nurtures the spirit. When cultures collide-as they inevitably do in borderlands settings-food, its preparation, and the rituals surrounding its consumption can preserve meanings and understandings that might otherwise have been lost to the mainstream social narrative.

Briseño’s exhibit, La Mesa de Moctezuma/Moctezuma’s Table, originally hosted by San Antonio’s Instituto Cultural Mexicano and later by the Instituto de México, Montreal, Canada, brings to vivid life the artist’s conception of food as life source, social symbol, and embodiment of meaning.

Now, editor Norma E. Cantú has gathered the art, along with the words of fifteen poets, writers, artists, and scholars who reflect in various ways on the layers of interpretation to be derived from Briseño’s works. Their thoughts provide focal points for musings about food, transborder relationships between food and art, personal connections to food, individual works within the exhibit, and the intense and immediate connections among culture, food, and self.

Santa Barraza: artist of the Borderlands editor

"Moctezuma’s Table: Rolando Briseño''s Mexican and Chicano Tablescapes, edited by Norma E. Cantú, is an extraordinary art book that invites the reader to embark on an exciting journey related to both visual and gustatory senses. It is a delight for the intellect as well since the book encompasses a variety of scholarly essays providing the reader with historical and geographic information to complement Briseño’s artistic renderings of Mexican/Chicano food. The eye will marvel at the bright and cleverly conceptualized paintings offered by this talented artist. This is a splendid book to see, read, and to savor, via the imagination, its succulent Mexican/Chicano cuisine: bocaditos, sopas, entrées, side dishes, and desserts all are magnificently rendered in word and painting."—María Herrera-Sobek, editor, Santa Barraza: Artist of the Borderlands

— Maria Herrera-Sobek

Content: Foreword, "The table of Baroque feelings/senses" / by Wilfrido Ávila García -- Artist's statement / by Rolando Briseño -- pt. 1. Botana/cocktail snack, antojitos/hors d'oeuvres, and an entremés/appetizer -- How we got our buenos fideos / John Phillip Santos -- Moctezuma's table and its many readings: meal as art, art as meal / Graciela Kartofel -- Moctezuma's first dinner / Timothy J. Knab -- pt. 2. Sopas aguadas y secas/soups -- Feeding the soul / Daniel del Valle -- Musings on Moctezuma's table / Isabel Rico -- La mesa de Moctezuma y la memoria/Moctezuma's table and memory / Blanca Garduño Pulido -- pt. 3. Platos fuertes/entrées -- Of moles and maíz: rehistorization of Mexican and Chicano culture / Amalia Mesa-Bains -- The use of Aztec, Maya, and American popular sources in the work of Rolando Briseno / Jacinto Quirarte -- Indigenous heritage, culinary diaspora, and globalization in Rolando Briseño's Moctezuma's table / Rubén C. Córdova -- The globalized table / Kaytie Johnson -- pt. 4. Frijoles/beans, side dishes -- Nopales, amor y corazón: legacies of food through love / Josie Méndez-Negrete -- El pleito / Sandra Cisneros -- pt. 5. Postres/desserts -- Precious vessels: recipes old and new for chocolate and all other earthly and celestial delights / Frances Treviño -- Briseño / Roberto Santibañez -- Epilogue: Rolando Briseño: an artist's life. The table provides the food that sustains physical life. It is also the setting for people to share the fellowship that sustains cultural, community, and political life.Briseño’s exhibit, __La Mesa de Moctezuma/Moctezuma’s Table__, originally hosted by San Antonio’s Instituto Cultural Mexicano and later by the Instituto de México, Montreal, Canada, brings to vivid life the artist’s conception of food as life source, social symbol, and embodiment of meaning. The table provides the food that sustains physical life. It is also the setting for people to share the fellowship that sustains cultural, community, and political life. In the vision of artist Rolando Briseno, food a way of understanding how culture nurtures the spirit. When cultures collide, food, its preparation, and the rituals surrounding it can preserve meanings and understandings.