Yu-Mex - by Otis Hagen Chevalier
Well first off, happy new year! I have to say, I missed this and I’m happy to be back to write for you, my dear reader. I had a long, reflective, and wholesome three-week break from work and from writing. Having your feet land on different ground such as Belgium, France, and Switzerland does something weird and triggers the mind to think differently.
My family and I took a train voyage to Brussels where we spent two nights and had the best beer I’ve ever had. We took off to Paris and then two hours outside to celebrate Christmas with my family and then looped down around to Switzerland to what will be the most magical and memorable moment in my life with my daughter walking around in fresh snow facing colossal mountains. A real winter wonderland with the Alps showing their magnitude and grandeur, and Mother Nature consoling you and almost calling you to come back to nature. One day, I just need to figure out how.
Besides that wholesome trip, have you ever heard of Yu-Mex? Let’s get random, I mean real random! A fair warning, it was hard to scoop decent culinary information on this one, but let’s go for it.
A family member showed me this internet site long ago called Every Noise at Once. If you look long enough you can find Yu-Mex, it is sandwiched between Classic Korean Pop and Chinese Worship. This site has most probably every genre of music you can imagine, but let me bring it back to Yu-Mex because this story just had my eyebrows strained for quite a while. This Yugoslav-Mexican genre of music exploded in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the 1950s and 1960s.
That unique ethnic blend of Yugoslav singing with traditional Mexican songs such as mariachi or ranchera is an insight into the scale and reach of Mexican culture. It provided a comforting image for Tito’s people, the Yugoslav communist dictator by the name of Josip Broz Tito.
He was in office from 1953 till 1980, and after World War II the relationship between USSR and Yugoslavia was wobbly. During the 1940s Tito was butting heads with Stalin and got Yugoslavia booted from the Eastern Bloc. In return, Tito prohibited Soviet music and movies which were susceptible to spreading communist propaganda. During the Cold War (1947-1991), Yugoslavia was left stranded by the USSR and they also avoided Western capitalistic ideologies until the 1960’s.
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Moša Pijade, one of Tito’s generals was inspired by Mexican art he witnessed in Paris, France. He came up with an idea to uplift Yugoslav morale with what he believed to be a reflection of a revolutionary spirit of freedom which Mexico portrayed through movies and art.
In came the cheap imports and distribution of Mexican films across Yugoslav cinemas and music to pair with. One of the first Mexican films to hit the screens in 1952 was the drama ‘Un día de vida’ (One Day of Life, Jedan dan života) which received a massive appreciation from the Yugoslav people and started an infatuation with the Mexican revolutionary identity.
After all, Mexico had a revolution in 1910 where peasants and the heroic Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata defeated a republican army and overthrew a tyrant named Porfirio Diaz who fled to France in 1911. Yugoslavs found this overly romanticized story so relatable to the past of World War II; a history of their culture is proof of an infatuation and imitation through music.
An imitation so prevalent that the cover of these vinyls tells enough. Hundreds of fake Mexican bands were forming and plenty slung on sombreros and became Slavic Mexicans. One of the most famous artists Slavko Perovic sold more than a million records in the 1960s, in a country of just 16 million.
This peculiar moment in Yugoslav history died down in the 1960s and became a memory for the elder generation.
Thanks to Miha Mazzini, writer, director, vinyl enthusiast, and blogger; he is one of the first to dive into this phenomenon that all started because he found a vinyl in a flea market that set him off on this Yugoslav mariachi history and documented his informational adventure on his site. Here is also a whole documentary he made on this peculiar moment in history!
“A[n] owner of a night club from Sweden wrote me that when they’re totally drunk and closing time is getting near, customers from ex-Yugoslav countries start singing Mexican songs.” - Miha Mazzini
Now this is a food newsletter after all…
So finally, my question was more geared toward what became of the food culture during that era in Yugoslavia. Did Yugoslavs not only imitate the music but try to replicate some dishes that they maybe saw in some Mexican films that ran rampant in the 1950s and 1960s? It might have been easier to dress the part and drink like Mexican revolutionaries and grab a guitar and sing your pain and sorrows away. Due to the incredible isolation that was forced on them, I doubt they had the luxury of culinary imitations.
My doubt remained even though I found a very interesting document provided by none other than the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America). This previously confidential document gives a dive into food production and agriculture and what was available to eat and drink in tons from 1930 to 1952.
This document explains the dire situation Yugoslavia faced in terms of food production. During the war, their agriculture suffered tremendously, yet before the war, there was no shortage of food. Least to say with over 2 million farms between 1934 and 1938, food has been one of Yugoslavia’s most difficult problems in the postwar years. The disproportion of food quantities and demand became critical and the disparity in consuming animal products between rich and poor was evident.
The upper middle class and more rich farmers consumed much larger quantities of animal products than the lower class. The poor lived off of bread, beans, and some fats, with some of the poor having to leave their homes because none of those was available. So during the times of agricultural revitalization it seems naïve to believe the choice of Mexican cuisine was readily available, but perhaps some tried to imitate with the little means available to them.
When I spoke to Miha Mazzini through email he told me that Mexican restaurants are all over ex-Yugoslavia, but he didn’t know how much they are related to real Mexican food.
Well, that is what I’m here for!
For fun, here is a modern view of dishes in ex-Yugoslavia provided by Taste Atlas:
The countries that were in ex-Yugoslavia were: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia (including the regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina), and Slovenia. That is a lot of ground to cover.
Nonetheless, a quick Google search of “Mexican restaurants in Belgrade” (Serbia) had me busy for quite a while and there are plenty to choose from. On Reddit, I found an entertaining question from someone who was hesitating to immigrate to Russia to open a small Mexican taco shop but was thinking more about Belgrade because “last time I was there they loved Mexicans.”
The Hyatt Regency Hotel had a ‘Fiesta Time’ in September 2023 with a Mexican dinner experience promising: Mexican Food, a Mexican Chef, 4 course-dinner, and Blok 21 (I have no idea what a Blok 21 is, but googling it shows me guns and Auschwitz… I hope this Mexican chef is still alive and well. He also looks like my old kitchen colleague but was American, annoying, and didn’t stop talking.)
Same thing for Croatia’s capital of Zagreb, the amount of Mexican restaurants and blogs is plenty but they seem iffy. According to an expat named Dora who moved to Zagreb from Mexico to study, she states: “There are some Mexican restaurants in Zagreb, but I have to say that it’s nothing like Mexican food!” Miha Mazzini was right.
As in the majority of European and Balkan countries, the Mexican food aisle in supermarkets is practically non-existent, very generic, or cringe. Just like the slow-growing Asian food aisle; it is far from scrupulous.
Here is a cheeky insight from Zagreb’s Mexican food aisle, which is sometimes relatable to Europe in general for that matter, according to Laura Martínez’s ‘Mi Blog Es Tu Blog’:
Cringe ‘Mexico Mix’ aside, there has been a massive Mexican cultural impact on ex Yugoslavia for one generation. That impact has not reverberated into something bigger, the movies and music have died down and the only things that may have survived are the vinyls, the movies, the soap operas, the Mexican restaurants trying their best, and the memories of Mexican ballads with a Slavic uncle dressed up head to toe as a mariachi to feed his nostalgia of a previously revolutionary spirit. Pretty impressive what you can dig up from a single vinyl.
Nopal-y Yours
The Greasy Pen.
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