Mexico, a country located south of the United States in North America, is well-known for its rich cultural heritage, varying from music, food, festivals to languages. Among them, its complex gastronomy highlights Mexican culture and history. 

For over 10,000 years of history, Mexicans have developed their unique recipes reflecting their tradition, flavor, and diversity. Long before the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the ancient Mesoamericans, including the Aztecs and the Mayans, based their cuisine largely on the domestication of corn, which was their main source of diet. Gradually, Mesoamericans added other vegetables, including beans, squashes, and zucchini, into their local cuisine. Soon, upon the rise of Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th century, the foreign food products and recipes from Europe, mainly from Spain, combined with the Mesoamerican’s diet, together with giving rise to the culinary fusion and the rich tradition of Mexican cuisine. 

Each Mexican region boasts diversity in food and culinary traditions. However, most are based on corn, beans, and chilies in a variety of forms, driven from its ancient Mesoamerican diet. Some of the popular Mexican dishes that comprise its national cuisine include enchiladas, quesadillas, tacos, and pozole. 
Its cuisine is widely enjoyed by people around the world, as one can see in fast food chains based on Mexican food, such as Taco Bell and Chipotle. Although they don’t represent the unique and diverse tastes of original Mexican cookery, they greatly helped popularize Mexican culture to millions of people around the globe. 

Moreover, as its richness of cuisine drew the attention of culinary experts around the world, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Mexican cuisine the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in November 2010, marking the first-ever national cuisine to be selected. Upon its declaration, it wrote, “traditional Mexican cuisine is a comprehensive cultural model comprising farming, ritual practices, age-old skills, culinary techniques, and ancestral community customs and manners. Its knowledge and techniques express community identity, reinforce social bonds, and build stronger local, regional and national identities.” 
Even today, Mexican cuisine is constantly developing to form a new variety of culinary traditions, influenced by other cultural food and recipes from around the world, continually enhancing the richness of global culinary fusion in the 21st century. 

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