Slow Food in Chiapas, Mexico

Yareni, Cielo Lourdes, Adelina, and I preparing guacamole for the Slow Food event

Preparing Food Together

My friends from CISERP invited me to this Slow Food event which promoted healthy, local food and the reduction of food waste. We started the day started off in the kitchen. Our task was to chop up a bunch of tomatoes, avocados, and cilantro for the guacamole. The catch was that these vegetables had been donated because they were going to be thrown away. The Slow Food staff used this as a lesson to bring attention to the amount of food waste we produce because we are used to a certain, standardized presentation of fruits and vegetables that look visually appealing. Fruits and vegetables with bruises and different shapes are often thrown out because consumers want the "perfect" size, shape, and color.

La Chef, Claudia

The brain of the kitchen was Claudia, who everyone affectionally calls La Chef. Claudia is from the indigenous community San Juan Chamula in Chiapas. She uses her recipes and her consciousness of healthy, local food to support the indigenous traditions of her community. She wants indigenous recipes from Chiapas to gain more recognition for their rich culinary tradition.

La Chef, Claudia, with her vegan tostadas

Claudia purchases her products from small-scale campesino producers and only uses products that are in season. Being part of the Slow Food network is very important to her because it helps her to value more the local products of her land and her indigenous roots. With greater access to food products from other parts of the world, Claudia finds that people are forgetting traditions Chiapanecos. She argues that while coffee, cacao, and local cheese are cultural products to be proud of as Chiapans, the people of Chiapas shouldn't limit themselves to just these products but all of the other diversity of fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds, etc. that are produced locally.

Claudia's Vegan Tostadas

Claudia explained that the ingredients of the tostadas we were eating came from food that was going to be discarded. The carrots, for example, were brownish on the outside, but after peeling them, they were fresh and orange on the inside. The tostadas, which are usually prepared with chicken, beef, or pork and cooked in a sauce of tomato, onion, garlic, and Mexican chiles, were made with sautéed carrots instead. The tinga de zanahoria or the sautéed carrots were made with onion, blended tomatoes, chipotle chilis, and salt. The tostadas also had a layer of the guacamole that we had prepared and were topped with shredded radishes. The toasted tortillas came from a women's group from Teopisca that created a brand for their own varieties of tortillas made with beets, spinach, cacao, and other ingredients, giving them distinct bright colors and flavors. In the picture below, you can see the bright green, all-natural tortillas.

Colorful vegan tostadas

Claudia's Call to Act

Claudia spoke about the responsibility that each us of have to be conscious of our consumption habits. She said firmly,

"If we don't put our grain of sand, and if we just complain and complain and don't act, then it's better than we don't even speak! Sorry to say it this way, but we have to start to make these changes. We need to start teaching the younger generation so that they are aware and so that on our tables, we no longer have these harmful brands that are killing us. There are many brands that are harming us and contaminating the environment. Think about it. What does a typical gathering or celebration look like in Chiapas? Plastic cups.. single use plastic plates, utensils... Coca cola. Let's stop these changes and abuses to mother Earth and to ourselves as human beings. Let's start to act."

Claudia's recurring message was to stop complaining and start acting. She explained how large companies such as Coca-Cola (this is the most common example in Chiapas, although Claudia emphasized it is definitely not the only one) are making profits from this system, which go into the pockets of very few people. We need to be conscious of this when we make decisions about what to consume. Claudia prepared several natural juices (aguas) such as guava with lime and passion fruit. She emphasized how these juices are healthier and are more delicious than artificial, sugary drinks. She called for us to go back to the practices of our previous generations and recover our right to healthy, accessible food.

A Reflection: Why Aren't We Acting?

I think that a lot of people are aware of what Claudia is saying, but she is right, we still aren't making changes. As she puts it frankly, "If you are not going to change your actions then stop complaining." I was thinking about why people who have access to the knowledge and understanding of these issues don't change their actions (including myself).

First, I think it's important to recognize that, to some extent, this is a systemic issue that we cannot solely blame individuals for. For example, in some marginalized communities in Chiapas, coca-cola is more accessible than potable water. In circumstances like this, focusing on individuals' actions or communities for consuming coke wouldn't make sense. In these cases, the question wouldn't be "why are people consuming so much coke?" but rather "why is coke so much more available than the water that people need?" and "who is benefitting from that?" However, many of us have the awareness and the the choice, and yet, we still choose to consume harmful products and waste food. For some of us there is too much access, too much food, and too much cheap stuff at cheap prices.

When I reflect on why we fail to make collective change, I come back to the values we hold as a society. Many of us live lifestyles in which we work (often sedentarily or on a computer) in order to earn a wage that allows us to purchase and consume products. We work for consumption and leisure. This has created individual lifestyles that often lack a connection to our communities, nature and the production of the products we consume. Kathleen Smythe (one of my favorite professors of global development at Xavier University) argues that the direction of large-scale, corporate-led agriculture and the current global food system has led to the loss of physical labor, lack of sensorial input, and lack of relative social equality. As a result, she states that, "we know we are missing something. We know we have lost something but since we are not clear on what it is, we are subject to the whims of marketing." The market breeds dissatisfaction by showing us what we don't have and "need"-- a vacation, a car, dress, a new phone, junk food.

In her book Whole Earth Living, Dr. Kathleen Smythe suggests changes that can make a collective impact. These include:

"reclaiming some forms of subsistence labor could have important positive consequences. Just growing some of our own food could help stabilize global climate change and boost human welfare across the globe. We are global citizens. We cannot effectively act at that scale, but we can restore the health of our soils and our own bodies. Such acts collectively can have global consequences.. Such lifestyle changes would enliven our senses, enhance the feeling of belonging and attachment, and improve our bodies’ utility. That way we could begin to disempower the media and the culture, proving that our happiness and well-being are not to be found in disconnection and disengagement from ourselves, each other and the earth."

In line with this thinking we can question some of the values held as true by our society. For example, small-scale subsistence agriculture is often viewed as a form of poverty from the perspective of modernization, but self-sufficiency allows people and communities to meet their own needs (the opposite of poverty) and feel connected to the natural and social environments they inhabit. Real poverty comes from being separated from the sources of our food, water, energy, etc., leaving us dependent on the market. I think that it is increasingly important to question the cultural and societal changes we are experiencing. What are we gaining and what are we losing? This is the work of critical rural development: Questioning the trajectory of our development and getting to the root of how to work collectively in a direction that benefits the wellbeing of people and the Earth.

 Slow Food is a global grassroots movement of local communities fighting for good, clean, and fair food.