Food is on a lot of people’s minds this week, as home cooks throughout the country are planning out what traditional dishes will be on their tables come Thanksgiving Day. However, in Arizona, there is one food that a lot of people are talking about that has very little likelihood of being a part of many Turkey Day spreads: the chimichanga.
This is because, in Arizona there is a movement underway to declare the chimichanga the state’s official food. Anyone who frequented the popular but now defunct national restaurant chain Chi Chis is likely to be familiar with this Tex-Mex staple of meat and cheese, wrapped in a flour tortilla and deep fried. However, in Arizona there are some who now claim that this dish is an important element of our local food culture, and thus it should be forever branded as uniquely Arizonan.
The legitimate history of the chimichanga is much in question. One story goes that a cook at a Mexican restaurant in Tucson, possibly the still extant El Charro Café, accidentally dropped a burrito into a deep fryer, inadvertently creating a dish she or he named chimichanga, a Spanish expression meaning “thingamajig.” Another story goes that the dish was created in the 1940s at a bar in Nogales, Mexico, and the name chimichanga is derived from the Spanish for “toasted monkey,” an allusion to the dish’s deep golden color. However, it is doubtful that the dish was actually invented by any one cook, either within or outside of Southern Arizona, as, according to culinarian Diana Kennedy’s Cuisines of Mexico, cooks South of the border had been deep frying burritos for years.
In any case, as the phrase Tex-Mex cuisine in and of itself connotes, the chimichanga is undoubtedly a cross-cultural food. Like many other Tex-Mex foods, including burritos, nachos, fajitas and quesadillas, the chimichanga has its roots both in traditional Mexican and U.S.-American cuisine. In this respect the chimichanga can be seen as a literal symbol of the deep interconnectedness of these two nations in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Just like many other elements of border area culture, economics and society, the origins of Tex-Mex food can not be isolated on any one side of the border, as it has its roots in the region as a whole.
It is because of this that it is extremely peculiar to many that the state of Arizona would take this historical moment to declare the chimichanga, a culinary paradigm of cross-border interconnectedness and our state’s shared history with Mexico, the state food. The effort to build an impenetrable fence separating Arizona and Sonora has never been more furious. Deportations are at a record high, and the options for Mexicans hoping to legally cross the border into our state are perhaps at the lowest point they have ever been. In short, today many in this state are doing everything in their power to completely separate ourselves from our Mexican neighbors.
Despite the efforts to effect such a severe separation, it is perhaps telling that at least this one element of our shared border culture, the chimichanga, is still being embraced in Arizona. It is a sign that no matter what individuals in this state do to separate these two countries, there are certain cultural linkages that can never be dissolved.
If the movement is successful, the chimichanga may be named Arizona’s official food in time for the state’s centennial celebration in 2012.
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