The taco's origin is disputed. Some historians argue that people in the Valley of Mexico ate small fish wrapped in tortillas long before the Spanish arrived, while others trace it to silver miners in the 18th century. Bernal Diaz del Castillo described a feast arranged by Hernan Cortes for his captains in Coyoacan, which is often cited as an early European taco meal. The earliest written use of the word taco that is widely cited comes from an 1836 cookbook by Antonia Carrillo, where it describes rolling pork like a tortilla taco. The term was regional, and the Mexico City usage eventually became the national default.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.