Eat Chile, Know the Land

By Divana Olivas

To taste chiles is to experience the land. To be more specific, to taste the capsaicin in chiles is one way to know the lands in which they were grown. Luckily for us, birds cannot taste capsaicin, so they were able to spread the seeds from the South American continent up into Mesoamerica thousands of years ago. From the colonization of the Americas, and maybe earlier, their seeds spread to these lands now called New Mexico.

If eating chiles is a way to know the land, the recipes and stories and cultural traditions associated with the chile plant offer a way to appreciate and tend to the land. To continue with this metaphor, I imagine a small-scale, traditional chile farmer might add here that to plant and cultivate chiles is to be one with the land.

In the Land of Enchantment, chile is more than a product or brand; it is core to our state’s identity and cultural symbolism. Eating spicy chile is a point of pride, a common way to prove one’s respect and appreciation for this region and its culture. And if by eating a spicy pepper, one is gripped by physical pain, and if planting and harvesting chiles must be done by hand (not outsourced to machinery), both eating and growing chiles are also pathways to embodied knowledge, to presence.

In the dominant US food culture of the Standard American Diet (SAD), eating is not an experience that demands presence. The highly processed foods of the SAD diet, with chemical additives and high sugar and salt content, mute flavors and disengage us from what we eat. In the last sixty years, the few multinational corporate conglomerates that make up the global food economy have mass-produced food that tastes much the same, with similar ingredients yielding seemingly different products that line grocery store shelves.

In contrast, as growers, eaters, consumers, and people on and from these lands, chile invites us to be more fully present in the world. From the scent of freshly roasted green chile wafting across the road to the sensation of stemming dried red chiles for sauce, chile is a food that calls us to attention. But its distinctiveness has not always been welcomed.

I was born in Albuquerque and raised by Mexican immigrant parents from Chihuahua, and was therefore deeply embedded in cross-border chile cultures growing up. While a heavily militarized border now separates our lands, the Chihuahuan Desert region is connected culturally, economically, and politically. What emerges from the entanglements is a cross-border chile culture that invites presence through connection. As an assistant professor of Chicana/o studies, I embrace that cross-border chile culture in my research and teaching.

In fall 2024, I wondered how teaching with chiles could also be a way to connect with the land. At the University of New Mexico, I taught Chile, Culture, and Power in Nuevomexico, an advanced interdisciplinary humanities course where we grew our own chiles together, each taking Chimayó red chile seeds home to grow individually, while we delved into historical readings about chile in this region. As we all shared our personal connections to chile in class, I told my students how, growing up in a Mexican immigrant family, chile was foundational to our pantry. I grew up eating chile with almost every meal, whether it was the jalapeño I ate between bites of my turkey sandwich or the fresh serrano and tomatillo salsa I added to my eggs in the morning. At family parties, we knew if a dish was prepared by Minerva because it would be spicy enough to make you cry.

As a young girl, I associated maturity with my tolerance for spiciness. When I was finally able to eat a plate of my mom’s red chile enchiladas without the usual sprinkle of sugar to soften the spice, I felt accomplished, as if I’d graduated from the kids’ table and could join the adults at family parties. Today, when I finish a serving of the spiciest aguachile, with the accompanying crying, sniffling, and drooling, I feel lighter, like I’ve had an emotional release: a sensorial and embodied experience of being fully present.

Perhaps this emotional release is why we see the association between eating chiles and truth telling in pop culture. Since 2015, the popular talk show Hot Ones has featured interviews of famous people with host Sean Evans. Each episode of the show’s twenty-four seasons follows a similar pattern: Sean sits across from the celebrity guest with a flight of spicy wings, the servings paced strategically according to the level of piquancy. Between bites, celebrities struggle to formulate their more rehearsed answers and, as a result, typically share more raw and off-script responses not accessible without the help of capsaicin. Viewers are left to assume that the chile’s spiciness, which compels presence, also brings forth more authenticity.

While I’ve used the word taste to describe eating chiles, technically the spiciness of chile is not detected by taste receptors. Unlike sugar’s sweetness or the sourness of limes, chile’s heat triggers a neurochemical process, a somatosensory response. The capsaicin in chiles is what makes the entire body respond to the burning sensation, the pungency of the plant. These capsaicinoids activate neural pathways that cause pain. Some people are born with fewer capsaicin receptors, and these receptors have been shown to build tolerance over time. This explains how New Mexicans or others who grow up steeped in a chile culture don’t experience the same intense physical reaction as people who taste a spicy pepper for the first time.

But the taste for chile can be learned. While it is our pain receptors and somatosensory system that are activated when eating chiles, our taste receptors pick up on the complex flavor profiles of green and red peppers. Jalapeños have a grassy, fresh taste when eaten raw, and when they are smoked and dried, the pepper becomes chipotle, with a rich, smoky flavor. New Mexico green chiles are earthy and vegetal, and smoky when roasted, perfect for stews. When ripened until red and dried in the sun, the same New Mexico chiles have a deeper, even earthier flavor profile, and are my favorite on enchiladas and in carne adovada.

In my class, we discussed how taste is not universal. It is subjective and culturally specific. Without growing up in a chile culture, many find it nearly impossible to enjoy the sensations that biting into a spicy chile will induce—the burn, the numb lips, the watery eyes and runny nose, the achy ears, the sweaty forehead.

Those willing to endure the pain that comes with a spicy chile will be rewarded with the depth of the inimitable flavor. And they, perhaps, may never go back to a life without chile. It’s a common saying for New Mexicans that a day without chile is like a day without sunshine. An even more common phrase is the state question: “Red or green?” But for most New Mexicans, their question is likely “Hot, medium, or mild?” Just as important as the type of chile is its heat; how spicy is it?

Chile’s unique flavor profile was not always celebrated in New Mexico. As Anglo settlers moved westward, their encounters with chile became another way for them to rationalize their violence. In order to justify the indefensible acts of pillaging villages and extracting resources, they drew stark differences between people. Even the foods people ate became a source of extreme vitriol. Chile, now a staple of this region, was once seen as one of the reasons for people’s alleged “backwardness.”

My students and I learned how chile, among other crops, was studied intensely by land-grant institutions working to increase agricultural production from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. In southern New Mexico, plant scientists like Dr. Fabián García and Dr. Roy Nakayama worked diligently to breed chiles that could be easily enjoyed by a broader national market. They bred for chile characteristics such as taste, texture, and size.

For example, Big Jim chiles’ milder flavor, thicker skin, and greater length were engineered for commercial production and a national eater. As chiles became mainstream, rather than diners learning to embrace the terroir of New Mexican–grown chiles that might be shorter and spicier, the chiles were manufactured for specific aesthetics and palates. I wonder now, what was lost along the way? Does mass production have to equal less flavor?

Above, I said that to eat chile is to experience that land, that to grow chile is to be one with the land. But would a farmworker picking chiles, doing backbreaking work for relatively little pay and in poor working conditions at a large agribusiness farm, agree that to cultivate chiles is to be one with the land? If and when our green chile is actually grown in Mexico, does that make us any less connected to these lands as we share the food with family here?

The future of global food production is tenuous, and we feel it here with less water to irrigate fields, with flash floods and forest fires. While the milder chile pepper was once a strategy for market growth, now New Mexico State University’s Dr. Holly Brause, researching the state’s chile industry, has found that drought conditions and farmers’ adaptations to water scarcity may produce more mild chiles; the chiles are less pungent and spicy, even as New Mexicans’ preferences for spicy chiles remains. As this source of cultural identity grows uncertain, transplants to New Mexico can still feel more connected to this land when they can sit through a bowl of spicy red chile with beans and actually enjoy it.

Given the complex history and future of chile in our region, questions about how we can better connect and tend to the land we live on are more important now than ever. Eating and loving spicy chiles is a way to keep posing these questions—and loving this land.