“Seeds carry a lot of knowledge…” Chef Enrique Olvera

This quote by Chef Olvera is the underline theme of this entire class. Each unit we dive into a new Indigenous community and learn about their foods and traditions. What connects each group, and often includes shared experiences, is that food holds traditional knowledge and keeps Indigenous communities connected to their ancestors. In the last unit we learned how the Garinagu people hid cassava plants in their clothing as they were being forcibly displaced from their ancestral land. By doing so, they maintained their traditional foodways for future generations and continued their cultural dependency on cassava.

In Mexico, maize is that essential food. Maize is a mother seed. It serves as the center of subsistence and commerce. It is eaten in a variety of ways, and the production of maize plays an important role in the lives of Mayan communities, past and present. Maize is medicine and used for textiles. Additionally, it holds religious and symbolic value. The stories of Indigenous communities in present-day Mexico unfold in the husks and kernels of the thousands of varieties of corn.

Over the last decades, and entirely due to NAFTA, the production and dependability on maize has challenged the livelihood of Indigenous communities and marginalized communities in Mexico who depend on maize for survival. Because of the global production of corn, the US has stolen the market and flooded it with GMO corn. Due to the US’s control of the price and distribution of corn, yellow corn is cheaper to import to Mexico than it is to produce using domestic farms and growers of white corn. This is an oversimplified summary of how neoliberalism and globalization has impacted the Indigenous foodways of Indigenous communities but it speaks volumes to the weight of free markets. The fact that the ancestral crop that took thousands of years to cultivate and domesticate in Mexico is no longer the key producer of this crop is so wild and quite frankly, brutal. Further, corn goes from a variety crop to a monocrop in less than 30 years pushing it into possible extinction as we juggle climate change and environmental shifts.

As I take a step back and return to Chef Olvera, I think the most important thing about this particular episode of Chef’s Table is community. Chef Olvera gives nod to his upbringing, the taco vendors in Mexico City who make the best tacos, and he gives attention to the traditional agricultural practices being used. From the cultivation of agave to the use of molcajete and the foods eaten in the harshest of times, Chef Olvera does not stray from his true identity and purpose behind his restaurant: using seeds of experience to frame his dishes.

Lastly, I imagine visiting the Maya Garden at UBC would have been a part of our in-class learning. It makes me super sad to think we might miss out on sharing time with the families cultivating this garden. Hopefully, we can all meet again soon or have a distant visit to the garden later in the term if it’s not too much trouble for the community there. I did not know this garden was a thing until reading about it this term and I gotta say, how incredibly happy it makes me feel to see Latinx peoples imagining and cultivating their own communities within Vancouver. It’s truly an inspiration to someone like me who feels every inch of the distance between me and my family in PR.

-Grey