Bakers and Basques: A Social History of Bread in Mexico

Mexico City's colourful panaderías (bakeries) have long been vital neighbourhood institutions. They were also crucial sites where labour, subsistence, and politics collided. From the 1880s well into the twentieth century, Basque immigrants dominated the bread trade, to the detriment of small Mexican bakers. By taking us inside the panadería, into the heart of bread strikes, and through government halls, Robert Weis reveals why authorities and organised workers supported the so-called Spanish monopoly in ways that countered the promises of law and ideology. He tells the gritty story of how class struggle and the politics of food shaped the state and the market. More than a book about bread, Bakers and Basques places food and labour at the centre of the upheavals in Mexican history from independence to the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution.