Chili isn't Mexican food it is actually prison food that was perfected by trail cooks that worked for Texas cattle companies on cattle drives to Kansas area rail heads. Chuck wagon cooks had to work with what they could bring with them and what they could find along the way.
Are you saying that chiles origins was in prison food?
Yes, it was served as prison food in the Southwest, but so were a lot of other inexpensive meals that could feed many inmates on the cheap.
Lets look into the origins of chile.
The chile we know has a many faceted history ranging from Northern Africa, Southern Europe, Atlantic Islands, North, Central and South America.
Chile as we know it has it's US roots in Tex-Mex culture.
Chile is a distinctively Texan dish. It isn’t a direct import from Mexico, but rather a reflection of the more complex melting pot that is Texas culture.
The following is a hodge podge of excerpts from other people and my own words, these are not soley my words and I don't have links to credit them all.
Chile became popular campfire fare among cowboys on the cattle trail (most of whom were Mexican) and gold-seekers (called forty-niners) on their way to California. As evidence, DeGolyer points to a journal from a forty-niner, dated from 1849 to 1850:
I will tell how beef is prepared for a long journey. Take twenty-five pounds of beef and pounds of lard and of pepper, and procure the assistance of one or more Mexicans, and they will, by the process of cutting and pounding, so mix these articles that no fear need be apprehended of its preservation in all kinds of weather, and salt and pepper and lard become useless, as those ingredients are already a part of every meal you make on this mixture. A small pinch of this meat, thrown into a pan or kettle of boiling water with a little flour or corn-meal thickening, will satisfy the wants of six men at any time; and it is a dish much relished by all.
George W. B. Evans,
Mexican Gold Trail: The Journal of a Forty-Niner
In short, beef, fat, chile peppers, and seasoning were combined into blocks, dubbed "chili bricks," which were stored in saddlebags. Plunging part of a chili block into a pot of boiling water transformed it into a convenient, filling meal.
It was the cook in the chuck wagon who planned a night's meal. Conveniently a stew consisting of meat, herbs and chile peppers was easy for them to make since ingredients were readily available. The cowboy original chili recipes say that cowboys would plant herbs, chilies, and onions along their trails in patches of mesquite. The mesquite would keep foraging cattle from eating the required chili ingredients while allowing necessary ingredients to thrive. As the cowboys moved along the trails, the cooks or "cookie" would harvest the spices, onions, and chilies and combine them with beef to create chili. Although cowboy chili is a great recipe and one that does not include beans, chili concoctions have been around for centuries. T
Others suggest that a group of women first concocted the dish: the
lavanderas (washerwomen) who traveled through Texas with the Mexican Army in the 1830s and '40s, washing clothes and cooking for the soldiers. It's said their large washing pots doubled as cooking pots to stew venison or goat with chile peppers.
The original spice mixes used in the meat and tomato stews have some of their their roots in Moroccan cooking traditions.
“In the 1700s, the government of New Spain recruited Canary Islanders to move to San Antonio,” the Canary Islanders who made their way to San Antonio as early as 1723, used local peppers and wild onions combined with various meats to create early chili combinations. Their peculiar, chile and cumin-heavy spice blend resembled the Berber seasoning style of Morocco.”
The name "chile con carne" is taken from Spanish, and means "peppers with meat."
It was the Incas, Aztecs or Mayan Indians who used beans while also using peppers, meat and herbs to create meals, and have thus influenced all of Central and South America.
It also resembles the stews Native American tribes would make from wild game.
All of these trails lead to the US Southwest, and in particular Texas.
Chile became mainstream in Austin Texas and has spread across the US in many forms.
Some of those forms would never be called chile by those who hold it near and dear to the original meat, chiles and spices.
