Mexica tortillas. Image credit: By David Boté Estrada - https://www.flickr.com/photos/logatfer/14374986878/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98098144

Nachos, a dish with Mesoamerican roots

Nachos were originally created in 1943 by a Mexican restaurateur Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya, who prepared the dish for American customers at the Victory Club restaurant in Piedras Negras, Coahuila. The original recipe incorporated fried tortillas cut into chips, shredded cheese and sliced jalapeno peppers. The corn and beans featuring in nachos have Indigenous origins, and Mesoamerican peoples devised techniques of soaking corn kernels in an alkaline solution to make a malleable dough for tortillas and tamales.

As with many other Indigenous dishes, some white settlers have tried to appropriate this dish, with American colonists arguing that nachos is primarily a Texan dish. However, the tortilla chips that feature in nacho recipes have their origins in Totopo, the original tortilla chips which derive from Zapotec peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Links and references
Eating Real Mexican: Identity, Authenticity, Americanization, Health, and Food Culture in the United States After 1900
Mexican Food in the United States | Origins
Taste, Politics, and Identities in Mexican Food: : Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz: Bloomsbury Academic
Becoming a Dish - The New World

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