Unit 5 Reflections

The Cooking Pot – A Weapon of Resistance

The Quechua, another Indigenous group we could spend a whole semester on! I really enjoyed this week’s readings, especially the “Commons Against and Beyond Capitalism” because it introduced a new concept for me, the commons, and confused me enough to research this idea further to better wrap my head around it. My biggest take away in this reading is that shared spaces include a shared knowledge that requires a community to maintain (and build) that knowledge. I look forward to our class discussion about this reading to see what you folks think about this concept as well.

Something that’s been ruminating around in my head during this course is the use of the cooking pot. There are obvious uses for it – cooking, washing clothes, means of commerce etc. But what stands out to me to most, especially this week, is how the cooking pot has become a weapon of the resistance. Globalization, neoliberalism, social reform, class rights and fights for equality all intersect with Indigenous peoples’ foodways. I guess that’s sort of the point in this class, right? How to widen our perspective when studying Latin America to include the variety of ways Indigenous experiences has evolved over time. Take for instance, the community fighting for their water in the film “Hija de la Laguna”. The lake is their waterway and, in some ways, their last connection to the survival of their histories. What I mean to say is that as extractive industries continue to impede on their ancestral land, their ability to survive and maintain the same lifeways of their ancestors is threatened. That is, in essence, the point of the film. The family structure is broken, their self-sufficiency is diminished and they are forced into a battle for human rights against a machine of lawyers and bulldozers.

So, what about the cooking pot?

In the film, the community rallies together around the lake to protect it from being mined. Upon their arrival, they set up camp with a makeshift kitchen to feed their community through the protest. The protestors knew the police would come attack their food line first so they maintained a protective circle around it to resist the police’s efforts to destroy it. This stood out to me because this police tactic theoretically agrees that sustenance is vital to the community which is ironic because they want to take away the most essential part of their lives, their waterway.

In “Commons Against and Beyond Capitalism” we learn about how women defend nature’s commons and stand against the destruction of the environment in grassroots movements. Women set up comedores populares in their neighborhoods to help feed the community and women brought their cooking pots to the piquetes, to protest and ensure the roadblocks are held. This is also a specific form of protest that dates back to medieval times. The cacerolazo movement of banging pots and pans has taken shape as an international symbol of solidarity. In Chile, pots and pans were used to bring attention to the shortage of food in 1971 and in support of the student protest in 2011. In 2001, Argentines took to the street to protest the economic crisis, corrupt leadership and the brutal violence occurring daily. And in 2019, Puerto Rico came in full force, my aunt included, and called for the removal corrupt Governor Ricardo Rosselló by banging pots and singing for over 15 days outside his mansion. These are just a few examples of how cooking pots are being used, still, to symbolize decades (or better centuries) of inequalities piled on the marginalized and Indigenous communities in Latin America. The noise generated from the pots unifies the community and reinforces their message, they can never be silenced even if the officials won’t hear their voices.

 

As we wrap up this course, I look forward to hearing your connection with the cooking pot and what it symbolizes for the Indigenous group you studied or better yet, what it means to you.

I will leave you here with some videos of cacerolazo demonstrations and a song by Ana Tijoux, appropriately titled, Cacerolazo. This song was written in response to over 30 years of violences towards the Chileans and Indigenous communities and is set to the sounds of banging pots and pans.

LYRICS

Banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging on pots and pans
banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging
Who else is awake?
Renounce Piñera
in the street
La Moneda is ours
Wooden spoon
in front of your bullets
and curfew
Banging on pots and pans!
They aren’t thirty pesos
they are thirty years
the Constitution
and you pardon them.
With fist and spoon
in front of the machine
and all of the State
Banging on pots and pans!
Listen, neighbor
to the neighbor and the barricade
of gasoline
With lid, with pot
in front of the clowns
the revolt arrived
and the banging on pots and pans
Banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging on pots and pans
banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging
Camilo Catrillanca
Macarena Valdés
No more pensions
Under the Trans Pacific Partnership
For education
and for health
neither the reason nor the force
No more servitude
Banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging on pots and pans
banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging
Listening from afar
the pans
and the pots ring
it is that we are not satisfied
We put the spoons
in front of the water cannon
We are not afraid
Banging on pots and pans!
We are not at war
we are alert
alive and kicking, handsome
Chile is awake
Wooden spoon
in front of your bullets
and curfew
banging on pots and pans
We are not aliens
nor extraterrestrials
Not a joke or nothing
It is the rebellious people
We take the jewels
and you didn’t kill
the assassins
Banging on pots and pans!
Banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging, banging, banging on pots and pans
banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging
(voice on telephone) As they say, what’s coming is alien…what’s coming is…
A-sass-in
We didn’t take so much
except for fear
Aim, shoot
assassin of the people
If there is not justice
there is not peace for the government
Now you tell me
who is the violent one
(voice on telephone) The most important thing is…as they say..the most important thing is to keep our cool…keep our cool…keep very very cool
No keeping cool
head is banging
no keeping cool
head is banging
no keeping cool
head is banging
Revolt, revolt
Banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging on pots and pans
banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging
Revolt, revolt
Banging on pots and pans!

 

Unit 4 Reflections Part 2

Hello!

I thought with our rushed conversation towards the end of class yesterday that I could add a bit more of my own insight to the US and Mexico relationship with Maize. I wrote a paper on the topic a month before NAFTA became USMCA in 2018. Its short and not super thorough but a good quick read for folks who want a quick context of how neoliberal free markets resulted in food insecurity for Mexico.

The sources used for this are also good context points for further research especially Duncan Green.

-Grey

side note: this was my first paper after 10 years off from college haha so some of the terms used are not the best.

 

Loss of Security:

The Impacts of NAFTA on The Mexican People

 

On January 1st, 1994 the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed into action. Hidden between the lines of this monumental document were the lives of the Mexican people who stood to suffer the most for lack of representation. More important than their labour, equality or human rights were the interests of transnational corporations. During the years 1982 to 1993, Mexico saw a decline in economic growth and job creation as a result of neoliberal policies such as reducing the role of state and depreciating the currency. This led to Mexico joining the negotiations of NAFTA. Pressure from the United States combined with their use of neoliberal policies such as privatization, trade liberalization of commodities, and devaluing currency influenced the Mexican government to succumb to unequal regulations that would impact Mexican people the most. As they had already witnessed how neoliberalism caused a decline in the economy previously, many of the Mexican people did not support such a trade agreement (Nápoles 76). After the signing of NAFTA, labour regulations changed dramatically forcing many families to work in the mostly foreign owned maquiladoras or in the informal sector. Additionally, the import liberalization on important commodities, specifically maize, jeopardized food security and accessibility. Because of neoliberal policies advanced within NAFTA, Mexico entered a social crisis resulting in negative impacts on food and job security.

The signing of NAFTA promised an economic boom with a focus on a free market, more exports and mutual interest in international trade. The trade agreement aligned Mexico, Canada and the United States in order to establish a stronger America. Unfortunately for Mexico, NAFTA is plagued with political and economic inequality. According to author Duncan Green in his book Silent Revolution, “the disparities within NAFTA are stark. The U.S. economy is almost twenty-five times larger than Mexico’s and the social and developmental gulf is arguably even wider” (143). This fact illustrates the unequal playing field between Mexico and the United States. Richer market economies, like the U.S., can afford fluctuating market prices while poorer countries suffer in comparison. Smaller economies focus on a few commodities and stand to lose the most if that commodity is liberalized. The ideology of neoliberalism obscures the inequities and hardships experienced by Mexico. As Duncan outlines,  “neoliberals argue that liberalizing imports improves economic efficiency and benefits everyone. Local factories can import the best available machinery and other inputs to improve productivity, while consumers can shop around, rather than be forced to buy shoddy home-produced goods” (Duncan, “Silent” 135). While theoretically plausible, in practice it often offers an unfair playing field by flooding the market with cheap imports that undercut local economies. For Mexico, maize is such a commodity.

Traditionally, Mexico was the largest producer of maize with a long history of domestication and cultivation expending thousands of years. In the early 1990s, maize production in Mexico employed roughly three million people accounting for the livelihood of over 18 million people (Nadal and Wise 4). Additionally, maize is an important and basic food staple for the Mexican people. The liberalization of maize pinned Mexico against the U.S. in the fight to be the lead agro-exporter. Mexico unfortunately lost ground in the agricultural sector as maize no longer succeeded in out-producing U.S. in prices. Maize was included late in the negotiations of NAFTA, as concern grew heavy for Mexico to liberalize one of their primary crops. The settled agreement offered a 15-year phase in period for gradually increasing exports while gradually decreasing trade tariffs (Nadal and Wise 5). The goal was to allow a slow transition period for Mexico to introduce competition into the market they dominated while not crippling their export dependency. Unfortunately for the farmers of Mexico, the Mexican government declined this agreement within thirty months claiming production shortfalls and outside pressures including other government institutions and grain processors within the United States and Mexico (Duncan, “Silent” 147). Beginning in 1996, U.S. exports of maize to Mexico increased dramatically, tripling in quantity from 1.6 million tons pre-NAFTA to 6.3 million tons post-NAFTA (Nadal and Wise 5). Also, prices had fallen by 48 percent that same year (Duncan, “Silent” 147). Mexico began to depend on cheaper U.S. maize for consumption with imports rising from 8.9% to 21.3% after NAFTA (Nadal and Wise 6). Additionally, the quality of U.S. yellow maize was inferior to Mexican white maize as most of the U.S. crop was genetically modified. This led to a dependency on cheaper, less nutritional food causing a severe devaluation of food security. In addition to the impact on food security, the hike in exports to Mexico caused severe environmental damage, which included “agrochemical impacts resulting from fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides; introduction of genetically modified organisms; soil erosion; and biodiversity” (Nadal and Wise 8).

Mexican farmers were hit the most by other adjustment measures like cut state subsidies, and the abolition of state purchasing and supply agencies (Duncan, “Silent” 147). The fall in prices and exports for the Mexican maize farmers did not lead to a decline in maize production however. Many small farmers continued to cultivate their crop through the unbalanced market but had to make adjustments to their daily lives. Most farmers were no longer able to turn a large profit but were able to make ends meet by supplementing their income. Farmers’ family members, mostly women and children, were sent to work in the labor-intensive maquiladoras, while the rest joined the informal sector selling goods on the street or offering services (Duncan, “Silent” 159). Many farmers even sent their family members to the United States leading to an increased dependency on emigration (Nápoles 76). In 1995, over 400,000 Mexicans crossed the border into the United States for better opportunities (Nápoles 85). While many of the farmers survived the change of market, the adjustments made were instrumental to the destruction of their family structure and offered no long-term solutions. Women were forced to work multiple jobs with long hours which impacted their community and home life, while many men turned to alcohol, drugs and violence in the wake of lost jobs and wages (Duncan, “Face” 87-9). Self-sufficiency in the agricultural development of maize became scarce as a sole income generator for a family and access to food decreased as costs went up. According to author Gerardo Otero, “the invasion of U.S. grain has led to the bankruptcy of a huge number of Mexican peasants, whereas the increase in vegetables and fruit exports from Mexico has not been enough to generate employment for peasants that became redundant” (391). Most importantly, because of the liberalization of maize, the cost of tortillas, a staple food item typically eaten at every meal, increased in price for local consumption. Consequently, the liberalization of maize simultaneously impacted Mexican farmers in multiple ways; it contributed to malnutrition, family breakdown and exploitation of labour.

Another crucial impact to the Mexican people that jeopardized their security was the introduction of foreign interest into the labour-intensive industrial market that shaped policies to favour international interest over Mexico’s interest. One key change as a result of NAFTA’s loosening labour regulations was the rise of maquiladoras along the Mexican border.  With the new lax labour, safety, and environmental laws, foreign companies flocked to Mexico to set up shop with their offer of abundant cheap labour. According to Green, “locking in neoliberal reforms via NAFTA makes Mexico a far safer prospect for foreign investors deciding where to locate their factories” (Green, “Silent” 146). Transnational companies built factories within the free trade zone for cheap products and paid no duty on imported parts, most of which were exported back to the United States free from taxes. When prices got too high, these foreign direct investors would relocate to countries with cheaper labour. According to Green “the 40 percent devaluation of the Mexican peso in early 1995 provided another boom for the maquiladoras” (“Silent” 129). Optimistically, the influx of foreign investment yielded more jobs for the impoverished Mexican people as employment grew by 3.7 percent per year during the 1990s as exports increased. Though the increase in jobs offered many unemployed Mexicans a chance at generating wages, they were misled into the quality of their work assignments and the promise of job security faded (Green, “Silent” 131).

As the fall in wages attracted foreign investors, the livelihood of the Mexican workers in the maquiladoras was dramatically impacted. As presented in the film ‘Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos’ the treatment of the workers in Mexican maquiladoras violated basic human rights. They were treated poorly, harassed by supervisors, not offered proper security to work efficiently without injury, and women were subject to inappropriate pregnancy checks. In Faces of Latin America Green adds that women are most impacted by these conditions as they are met with conflict and violence. Women, mostly aged 16-25, are more likely to work in such conditions in an attempt to provide for their family (Moffatt 19). Journalist Allison Moffatt also writes, “the factories share high standards for quality and low standards for the treatment of employees” (19). The employers of the factories take advantage of the women by only offering part-time work for lower wages; further, they were not offered labour contracts, which increased the instability of their family structure (“Faces” 53). Women workers were also terrorized by their male supervisors who verbally abused them, restricted bathroom breaks and assaulted them while commuting to work as recounted in ‘Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos’. In Cuidad Juarez, a city riddled with maquiladoras, there have been hundreds of murders inflicted on the women working in this industry since the 1990s (Moffatt 20). These are just a few accounts of the horrific treatment Mexican people are met with while working under the umbrella of NAFTA. These companies operated under the guise of NAFTA with no global monitoring of their violations to the Mexican people. The workers are victimized yet have no other options but to endure such treatment as their families and job security are at risk.

The impact of globalization and promise of free trade continues to exploit the lands and people of Mexico. While NAFTA was promoted on a platform of economic boosts and equality between nations, Mexico was dealt a blow to their self-sufficiency and labour sovereignty. The issues surrounding the liberalization of maize and the rise of maquiladoras are two examples that illustrate the social, economic and political harms of NAFTA and the spread of neoliberalism. Nearly 25 years later, the same neoliberal tactics are still being used to victimize smaller economies and markets across Latin America. Mexico has continued to suffer at the hands of foreign companies who were invited into their lands. The social debt built on the backs of underrepresented Mexicans, largely indigenous, requires reparations into the damage left because of NAFTA. Like most issues involving Latin American, it is complicated.

 

 

Works Cited

 

Green, Duncan. Silent Revolution: The Rise and Crisis of Market Economics in Latin

               America. 2nd ed., Monthly Review Press, 2003

Green, Duncan. Faces of Latin America. 4th ed., Monthly Review Press, 2013.

Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos. Directed by Saul Landau and Sonia Angulo, United

States, 2003

Moffatt, Allison. “Murder, Mystery and Mistreatment in Mexican Maquiladoras: It Is

Never Too Late to Make a Difference.” Women & Environments International Magazine, no. 66–67, 2005, p. 19. EBSCOhost,login.ezproxy.langara.bc.ca/

login?url=https://search-ebscohostcom.ezproxy.langara.bc.ca/login.aspx? direct=true&db=edscpi&AN=edscpi.A133172912&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Nadal, Alejandro and Timothy A. Wise. “The Environmental Costs of Agricultural

Trade Liberalization: Mexico-U.S. Maize Trade Under NAFTA.” Working Group on Development and Environment in the Americas. June 2004. https://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/DP04NadalWiseJuly04.pdf. Accessed 4 Nov. 2018

Nápoles, Pablo Ruiz. “Neoliberal Reforms and Nafta in Mexico.” Economía UNAM,

Vol. 14, May 2017, pp. 75–89. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.eunam.2017.06.004.

Otero, Gerardo. “Neoliberal Globalization, NAFTA, and Migration: Mexico’s Loss of

Food and Labour Sovereignty.” Journal of Poverty, 15:4, pp. 384-402. JSTOR,

https://doi.org/10.1080/10875549.2011.614514. Accessed 8 Nov. 2018

Unit 4 Reflection

“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

Week 5 & 6 Reflections

Unit 3 Blog + Keyword #2 Reflection

First and foremost, my roots are in the Caribbean. Having the opportunity to learn about Indigenous peoples foodways has been so incredibly meaningful to me. I find myself connecting my experiences, and the experiences of my family, with the themes and takeaways in this class. Obviously discourse about colonialism cannot be omitted when talking about the histories of Indigenous peoples anywhere and it certainly causes generational trauma in families living in or being from the Caribbean. That being said, learning how other cultures thrived and continue to thrive is so impactful. My family has lived in Puerto Rico for many generations. We have a long history with our own colonization and the violence inflicted by our ‘ally’ the United States. We are essentially at the disposable of political platforms that dehumanize our existence and belittle our worth. Generations of this rhetoric has created an extreme case of diasporic racialization for Puerto Ricans living off island.

My mother was the first person in my whole family to leave the island. She moved to NY on scholarship at 16 with no English or family in the US. She met my father and created her own community of PRs in Spanish Harlem. Racism towards Puerto Ricans has always been a part of the social dynamic in New York, especially in Manhattan. NY has always been the landing place for a lot of latinx communities looking for new beginnings. Unfortunately, these communities are the most marginalized people and are outcasted in society (Like my mother, who was racially discriminated against when applying for jobs after high school or when she applied for my birth certificate and they assumed there was not a father in the picture.)

We call this our diaspora as many are displaced from their homeland, seen as strangers in their new land and torn between their old traditions and new cultures.

How do we maintain our cultures in new homes that do not reflect how we see ourselves? Community.

When I watched the short Native Dish video about durudia tortillas, it got me thinking about the community my mother cultivated when she was in NY. Puerto Rican (and other latinx communities like Cubans, Dominicans, Haitians and Ecuadorians) found themselves living in the same neighbourhoods in NYC. The predominately Puerto Rican Spanish Harlem was home to my father’s family who took my mother in as their own. In this community she practiced and maintained parts of her culture with her new chosen family. A lot of that included making the foods her mother taught her when she was young like pasteles, with the other mothers in the community. By sharing her traditions with that of her founded community in NY, she was able to maintain a grasp on the roots of her homeland similar to how Isha celebrates her culture with her friends and family. My mother cooked every night of the week and always made sure I was in the kitchen with her listening to her memories in the kitchen with my abuela.

The most important connection I made this week was the culture and significance behind the ereba traditions and the Puerto Rican tradition of making pasteles. Pasteles have a long history in Puerto Rico and are made only on special occasions. The task of making pasteles falls on the women in the family as is the tradition similar to the gender roles in Garinagu culture. The process is similar to ereba but certainly not as intense in terms of labour. For the masa: cassava, yautia, plantain, green bananas, and calabaza are grated by hand using traditional tools. (Many families have modernized the making of pasteles by using food processors but not in the Figueroa family). Meat is filled in the masa, it is wrapped in a banana leaf and boiled, similar to making tamales. Making the masa is a rite of passage. As soon as girls are old enough (or basically have the finger dexterity to peel plantains) they are taught the family’s recipe from their generations of mothers. As stated in the reading, Garinagu people also consider ereba a rite of passage that creates a kinship system between women in a community. The collaborative efforts in making ereba is important because it symbolizes a unity amongst the Garinagu families. This brings us back to community…there is a fabric that binds most marginalized Indigenous communities in the Caribbean and it usually involves food. Food is nostalgia, it is tradition, it is connection between parent and child and it is community.

Lastly, I wanted to connect all my thoughts this week to one of the keywords from our group assignments: syncretism, which can be defined as the amalgamation of different cultures.

I have blended my own cultures, having been raised in the United States from Puerto Rican families and now living in Canada. My stepmother is 1st generation Mexican and I have spent 90% of my life a part of her traditions and culture especially when I lived in California. While this is a bland example of how syncretic my culture is, it does highlight how travels in life can shape the traditions you pass on or uphold. In a more historic reference, and tying this to the readings, we read about the journey the Garinagu people took, while forcibly, from St. Vincent to Honduras and now spread across the globe. Amalgamation is a great word in the development of their culture and traditions because it was a great blending of a lot of journeys that dictates what knowledges are kept and traditions are continued over time.

 

A great site to visit for an example of how pasteles are made:

https://www.plenitudpr.org/blog-english/vegetarian-pasteles

Week 4 Reflections

Ayahuasca Shamanism: A Tourist Attraction

 

This week’s readings on the Shipibo- Konibo people was quite eye opening in terms of providing a great example of cultural appropriation due to globalization. As discussed in the readings, the rubber boom in the Peruvian Amazon had a direct relationship with Ayahuasca Shamanism becoming the million-dollar industry it is today. It was in the establishment of reducciones that resulted in the transfer and exchange of cultures in the region that soon expanded into the global sector of communication. As a lot of things in Latin America or in Indigenous cultures, the western world appropriates ‘traditional’ cultures as their own for capitalistic value.

Enter Gringo Shamanism.

Ethnotourism fetishizes the ‘authentic Indigenous experience’ and determines how Indigenous cultures can be ‘marketed’ to extract capital from western (and by that, I mean colonial) states. The affects of extracting and appropriating Indigenous cultural experiences are immense. Firstly, it dilutes the significance of Ayahuasca Shamanism and misinforms the masses about its role in Indigenous lifeways. Second, it boasts of the ‘authentic’ Indigenous experience without discourse on colonialism, the enslavement of Indigenous peoples or how cultural appropriation has had a role in the loss of Indigenous knowledge.

I think the second point is most important, as Prof Smith mentions as well, because it ignores the histories Indigenous peoples have had for over 500 years since the Conquest. It severs the New World from any responsibilities to acknowledge wrongdoings or to acknowledge the violent histories these peoples have had for centuries. More specifically for the Shipibo Konibo people, the ignores the incredible exploitation, past and present, of their communities.

This is a common trend in a lot of ‘other’ cultures especially as travel has become accessible over time. Tourism is all about the ‘authentic’ experience and immersing yourself amongst ‘the people’. It is less about appreciating the cultures and more about making it your own. This can be dangerous because it presents the idea that anything in this world can be occupied by anyone else regardless of their relationship to the culture. There is this inherent ownership western cultures have with the Indigenous cultures that silences their history and exoticizes their ‘humble’ lives like animals at a zoo. This requires the Indigenous communities to then perform their culture for the eyes of outsiders who are exploiting their culture for entertainment purposes.

https://www.audleytravel.com/ca/south-america/region-guides/the-amazon
https://destinationindigenous.ca/blog/

All that being said, one part about this week’s lecture challenges the idea of cultural appropriation and the idea of ‘authentic’ or ‘traditional’ experience: Part of Shipibo culture is about appropriating other cultural forms into their traditions and in their art forms. If the Shipibo people can borrow aspects from other cultures, when is appropriating considered good or bad? Is it even appropriating?

Obviously, there is a HUGE difference between shaping your lifeway to include elements from other cultures versus paying thousands of dollars to take ayahuasca for the ‘high’ of it. There is also a huge difference between going to the Amazon and supporting a community-based lodge versus getting the brew from some dude on the internet in the United States. But it does beg the question, can cultural appropriation have a positive outcome? 

Week 3 Reflections: Keywords #1

Taking a look at the keywords for this week’s reflection, I realized all these terms intersect in one capacity or another. For me, the most important thing, is food security and food sovereignty. I, along with a few others in this course, am taking a Latin American Literature and Environment course taught by Profe Alessandra Santos. In that class, we read a short introduction from author Eduardo Galeano from his well-known book Open Veins of Latin America. In it he makes many a connection to how little food security or sovereignty Latin America has had since the Spanish Conquest:

 

“Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into European— or later United States— capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power. Everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral-rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources.” (12) (If you have not read this book, I highly recommend! Galeano has a way of being poetically just with his writing)

 

This quote has always stuck with me because it perfectly encapsulates the degree of influence from outside powers in Latin America. Over the last 500 years we have seen an extreme amount of exploitation in Latin America. First from colonization and then multinational occupation of Latin American resources. In terms of food, indigenous communities have dealt with a loss of food autonomy or sovereignty at the hands of failing economies. Small farms and communities cannot compete with the large free market, which is predominantly controlled by high political powers like the United States. A lot of land in Latin America is used for cash-cropping or resource extraction that benefits outside influence more while leaving local communities to suffer. For example, the impacts of extractive resources like oil. Local communities, largely indigenous, deal with the long term environmental and health risks of oil extraction of their land while the transnational corporations make the big bucks, often free of environmental liability. Because of neoliberal policies and foreign interference, food self-sufficiency is at a all time low in Latin America.

 

A lot of things lead to an overwhelming lack of food security in Latin America: rising food prices, inaccessibility to supply, economical failures, lack of public and social funding, an unbalanced access to wealth, extreme poverty for the most marginalized, food deserts, unfair trade agreements, landlessness, environmental change and the global impact of GMO foods just to name a few things. Not to mention the current VERY REAL impact on how COVID has shaped food insecurity in Latin America.

 

There are resistances though to the rise of food insecurity in Latin America. People are protesting food cost inflations in Mexico as the prices for corn increases, which is a staple ingredient of the national diet. More and more communities are popping up working together to be self-sufficient, sustainable and to regain autonomy over their land and lives, like the Zapatista autonomous communities in Mexico.

 

 

Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Scribe Publications, 2009.

Week 2 Reflections

Great reads for this week!

There’s lots to talk about, which I am sure we will cover in our discussion section tomorrow, so I am only going to highlight the main takeaway from this week’s readings.

 

“Indigenous Knowledge, Traditional Knowledge and the Colonization of Indigenous Studies”

Last year I took an intro to Aboriginal Studies course at Langara. Coming from a place like the US, where indigenous culture and history is erased almost entirely from the curriculum, I thought it was incredibly important to participate in this class as a newcomer settling in Canada. (side note: take a look at Trump’s plan for a ‘Patriotic Education’ curriculum). One of the biggest topics we covered was the colonization of traditional knowledge. The idea of colonizing traditional knowledge stems from a “The West” vs “The Rest” idea of Eurocentric power over ‘others’. Over centuries of forced assimilation, colonizers attempted to erase traditional knowledge, mostly through violence. After stealing, appropriating and commodifying indigenous knowledge as property of the West, we are now attempting to decolonize education.

What the authors touch on briefly in the introduction, and obviously continue to break down the variables of colonized education in future topics, is the idea that “white settlers make their [own] experience the center of life and work.” (14). Researchers come in and ask indigenous communities for ‘contacts’ and ‘networks’ and to do the labour for them having not formally been invited or asked to be a part of their community (12). Because they are researching such a topic like decolonization, whether it be indigenous studies or anthropological, there is this sense of ownership over the indigenous knowledge in the community when in reality, they do not have the same relationship with the nature and culture nor is it their right to be there. These researchers can never fully grasp or understand that their presence in that moment of asking the community to perform for them IS colonizing their traditional knowledge. It is important to note that by coming into an indigenous community as a non-indigenous person means that your lens is obscured by your own cultural experiences and your being there is not for them but for your own interests. In fact, it is more about cultural appropriation than cultural appreciation.

The authors also talk about how decolonizing and decolonization are trendy terms with no backbone towards change. Doing ‘decolonizing’ research on indigenous land and people, even with a positive intention, is still building a insider/outsider relationship with the community. It is important to think about the many aspects that intersect in a settler/colonized relationship like language, resources, racism, stolen land and sexism. To begin ‘decolonizing’ anything, you must change the power structure within the relationship, and you must acknowledge the history that built this hierarchy in the first place. Most importantly, understand how you play a role.

 

So, my first ending question goes back to our first class discussion: What makes research ethical and how can we decolonize our course in a meaningful way?

 

Second, how can we relate the topic of performative decolonization to what is happening with the Black Lives Matter, Indigenous Lives Matter movement currently happening in Canada and the US?  

 

 

Works Cited (informally)

Tuhiwai Smith, Linda, and Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. “Introduction.” Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View. Edited by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang, Routledge, 2018, pp. 1-23.

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