Fajita followup: geographic origin as inherently contested concept

 Yesterday's post about what every reasonable consumer of Mexican food knows sparked some interest in my household. It's not a new observation that Twiqbal's common sense can involve things that are not actually common sense to all reasonable people, and my spouse was struck by the fajita story specifically. After a bit of research, he came up with the following, which complicates the characterization of fajitas as Tex-Mex, but certainly doesn't contradict the idea that authenticity is a social construct. The question--familiar to students of geographic indications more generally--is how the law should intervene in attempts to stabilize or shift that social construct. Even if the law doesn't, economically motivated producers will do so, sometimes with indifference to existing meanings, it's not always obvious how legal intervention affects consumer welfare (even straight-up false "Hecho in Mexico" could arguably be welfare-promoting if consumers wrongly preferred food made in Mexico which otherwise satisfied fewer of their preferences because they misinterpreted Mexican origin as a signal of other qualities).

So: Mario Montaño writes that "the origin of fajitas has been well documented to have been somewhere in the South Texas border region." But he objects to calling fajitas "Tex-Mex," on the grounds that "The American food industry, enacting the principles of cultural hegemony, has effectively incorporated and reinterpreted the food practices of Mexicans in the lower Rio Grande border region, relabeling them “Tex Mex” and further using that term to describe any Mexican or Spanish food that is consumed by Anglos. Although Mexicans in this region do not refer to their food as Tex Mex, and indeed often consider the term derogatory, the dominant culture has redefined the local cuisine as “earthy food, festive food, happy food, celebration. It is peasant food raised to the level of high and sophisticated art.”

Mario Montaño, “Appropriation and Counterhegemony in South Texas: Food Slurs, Offal Meats, and Blood,” in Usable Pasts, ed. Tad Tuleja, Traditions and Group Expressions in North America (University Press of Colorado, 1997), 50–67, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nrkh.7.