The “Tequila Effect” or “How the Taco Won Australia”: The Appropriation of Mexican and Latin American Culture in Australia

Abstract

In Australia, Latin America is cool. At least for ever more urban-dwelling young adults, Latin America has come to mean an imagined landscape of attractive and colorful though indistinct cultural otherness, quite dislocated from its gritty realities of economic and political instability, mass poverty, and everyday violence. There is a vogue for the consumption of all things Latin American: notably music and dance, seen for example in downtown live music venues and salsa dance studios; for film and popular culture, with sugar skulls and skeleton images associated with the Day of the Dead and the papier-maché piñatas of Mexican Christmas celebration; and most obviously, in food and drink. As well as the now familiar Mexican restaurants found in our cities and suburbs, including the stylized taco trucks appearing in recent years, other national cuisines on offer include Argentinean carne asada and empanadas, Brazilian churrascarias, Colombian and Venezuelan arepas, and Peruvian and Chilean ceviche. These themed restaurants and the liquor outlets typically also offer an array of tequila, mezcal, and rum brands from Mexico, Cuba, and the greater Caribbean, and several beers not previously known, while the Brazilian soft drink guaraná can now be found in the convenience stores.