Monthly Archives: October 2023

10/31/23

The Lasting Impact of Menchú’s Testimonio

While reading Testimonio, I was very moved by how tight knit Menchú’s family and community was. That being said, the way in which the progression of events was written made them even more heartbreaking. Menchú’s community moved as a unit and everyone took care of one another. Keeping that background story and information in mind when reading the second half of this story really brought emphasis on what desperation can force a person to do. We see pure desperation when Menchú’s brother is sold out for 15 quetzales, by a member of a community that he once supported and in turn they supported him. We see how these brutal treatments and torture physically effect communities, but also how they can try to turn them against one another. Moments like this in history are so brutal and key to the destruction of families, cultures and communities. These events not only pain a moment in history but can transcend generations. This reading was so difficult for me personally, as I distanced myself from the reading, to make me feel like this moment in time happened further from the present than it really did. I believe it is always important to keep in mind how close these times are to people and how they still impact our living relatives to this day, or even ourselves. They are not events of the past, they are events that have occurred in the life of those still living. It was hard reading all the way through to the end, to see how they organize and are resilient was moving, while I also kept in my mind how my family chose a different route to a similar situation. To flee and forget. There is a lot of pain fighting the urge to forget these history’s, but what this reading has brought to light for me, was the importance of telling the story, not forgetting history, and not becoming dull to the pain. While writing this, I cry for my family, for those who had to bear witness to such tragedies, and those who fell victim to these brutalities.

10/19/23

Casta vs Rococo – One same Era, Two different times

Reflecting on the paintings of the 18th century reminds me of the Rococo art I saw during my trip to France. In France, the art of that era celebrated life’s pleasures, with its ornate details and pastel hues. In contrast, casta paintings in Colonial Latin America delved into as seen through the reading complex tapestry of racial diversity and societal structures. While Rococo art offered an escape into a world of leisure, casta paintings confronted the intricate realities of the colonial society. These paintings weren’t just art; they were mirrors reflecting the multicultural, intricate world of Colonial Latin America. Casta paintings display a unique perspective on the challenges and diversity of the era, making them a vital part of the region’s history and artistic legacy.

In the tour of the Rococo at display I had it was explained that in the 18th century, art often aimed to convey religious devotion, depict leisure, or embrace classical ideals,however it it very Interesting to see that casta paintings dared to be different. They took on the role of sociopolitical commentary, addressing the complexities of racial mixing, identity, and social hierarchy. 

From memory, Rocco art depicted leisure and love, offering an escape from reality. Casta paintings, however, were deeply rooted in the societal realities of the time. They weren’t about escaping; they were about addressing the caste system and reflecting the complexities of the diverse colonial population. 

 

Today, in Mesoamerica, art continues to be a powerful medium to express struggles and challenges. Artists often address issues like indigenous rights, and social inequality through their work. A path to reach a larger audience would be the the use of murals and street art to raise awareness like the famous Diego Rivera, known for his powerful and politically charged murals like the Man at the Croass roads (1933). The mural showed a person holding a hammer and a symbol that looks like a sickle, which represented Rivera’s strong backing of workers and communism.

 

10/15/23

Late Thoughts on Menus

This week’s readings on Cookbooks and Menus were honestly thrilling reads. As I have shared in class, I am very passionate about food and the food industry, having worked both back of the house in the kitchen and front of house as a server for over 5 years. One particular point I really enjoyed from Gora’s reading is the mention that menus are contracts of sorts, that lay out what customers can expect from a given restaurant. I had never thought of menus this way, as contacts, but it’s true. I am realizing that menus are also grounds upon which the customer-staff power dynamics are played out: they protect me as the server by providing me a guideline that I cannot deviate from, and they protect the customer by informing them about allergens, ingredients, and often, restaurant policy (ie, often menus will have fine print saying “gratuity automatically applied to groups over X”, etc.).

It was also fun to do the activity with the Alimentaria Mexicana menu. Our in-class discussion and Tamara sharing about the fancy restaruant she went to in Mexico City (I’m sorry, I forgot the name!) made me think about this restaurant I have been hearing about in El Salvador. It’s a new restaurant called El Xolo / El Xolo Maíz / El Xolo – Maíz Criollo (all the same place folks!). Here is their website.  It is located at MUNA, the National Museum of Anthropology, in one of San Salvador’s nicest, safest, richest neighbourhoods. The restaurant is currently #91 in the Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list. The title of the website is “El Xolo – An Homage to Criollo Maíze and to Local Produce”, and their ‘About’ section speaks of using ingredients originating from indigenous Salvadoran communities, “removing intermediaries to create a direct impact in our producers, dignifying their work and supporting them in the development of better agricultural practices.”

I have never been to El Xolo, but I would like to. I have heard that they have a set menu for each night, and that a dinner meal costs about $50 usd, plus any extras and drinks. Although I commend that they even mention respecting and supporting indigenous producers on their website, as this is not usual in Salvadoran society, their prices do not create a welcoming feeling to the average Salvadoran. Indigenous communities in El Salvador are largely overlooked, and live mostly in rural, poverty-stricken regions. It makes me wonder, who is the tartget customer base for this restaurant? Is it upper-class Salvadorans who often descend from the same oligarch families that have contributed to the displacement of indigenous communities and dispossession of indigenous lands to grow coffee plantations? Or is it the foreign visitors who stay at the Sheraton Presidente hotel, located just minutes up the street from MUNA? I do not think it’s Salvadorans, and much less indigenous or rural communities, who often receive just around $50 usd as their monthly government pension.

Check out El Xolo and tell me what you think. How does their website compare to the Alimentaria Mexicana’s website, especially given the context of each restaurant? Would be interesting to hear your thoughts.  See you all in class soon!

10/10/23

Tanta Restaurant: A Culinary Adventure in Peru

As I sat down to read about food, culture, and representation this week, I couldn’t help but think about my recent trip to Peru. I had the privilege of dining at Tanta, a renowned Peruvian restaurant in the heart of Lima, and it struck me how perfectly it exemplified the concepts we’ve explored in our readings.

The readings introduced the idea of taxonomy in food, which expanded on
categorizing ingredients and dishes. At Tanta, this concept came to life as I browsed through their menu. They proudly showcased Peru’s culinary diversity, featuring dishes with native ingredients like quinoa and amaranth, as well as international influences. It was like flipping through a culinary history book.

One of the fascinating things about Tanta is how it preserves Peruvian culinary traditions. The restaurant pays homage to classic dishes like ceviche and lomo saltado (picture of the meal I had attached below), demonstrating a commitment to retaining their cultural heritage. It was evident that in this restaurant the owners value their culinary history, just as our readings suggested.

In the realm of food, the term ‘authentic’ often sparks debates. As seen that authenticity can be compromised when influences creep into traditional dishes. Tanta navigates this discussion. While it offers traditional Peruvian fare, it also experiments with international flavors, catering to evolving tastes without losing its cultural identity.

Our readings touched on the idea of collective versus individual dining experiences. Peru has a rich tradition of communal dining, where sharing meals strengthens bonds. At Tanta, I witnessed families and friends coming together to enjoy their meals, emphasizing the importance of collective dining in the country’s culture.

Lastly, the name ‘Tanta’ itself holds cultural significance, as it means ‘bread’ in Quechua, an indigenous language. This linguistic choice reflects the restaurant’s dedication to promoting indigenous culture and traditions, aligning with our discussions on cultural values.

10/7/23

Menu literacy and inclusion

As I was reading through “Cookbooks as Historical Sources” many ideas were bouncing around in my head in relation to my own experiences in restaurants.  Before moving to Vancouver, I worked at an Italian restaurant run by Greeks. I had never really thought much of the menu as I had it all memorized and could recite it like a robot. The menu itself lost meaning to me once I started working at the restaurant. 

After reading the article, I took a second to reflect on the value of the menu. I realized how much about the restaurant a diner could learn from looking at the menu. Many of the dishes on the menu were written in Greek and many of the dishes also included ingredients you wouldn’t see in Italian food (or what I think of as Italian food) like gyro meat. The restaurant itself is not advertised as a Greek-Italian fusion, but if you look at the menu it makes it apparent that the restaurant is run by Greeks. 

Not only did the article making me take a second to reflect on my own experiences with menus, what also caught my attention was the idea of examining ethnicity and class within menus. 

The two ideas certainly intersect in the restaurant industry both on and off the menu. 

I don’t go out to eat very often and neither does my family. But growing up I remember a lot of my friends’ families (who were wealthier)  taking me out to eat with them. We would go to these “boujee” restaurants as if it was a casual outing.

I remember how stressed I would become when looking at the menu and realizing that every dish on it was foreign to me, or the language used were words I had never heard. I remember looking around the table and everyone else was chatting and nodding in regards to the food, I felt very left out. It felt like a secret elite club meeting and I was simply a visitor. 

Menus and restaurants can easily exclude people. Even though segregated restaurants are now deemed to be non-existent, there are other factors that prevent EVERYONE from attending a restaurant. The culture a restaurant creates can be appealing to others while unappealing to the rest. Whether it be price, cuisine, location and staff, all these factors contribute into what population of people dine at a certain restaurant. The people who dine at a restaurant also contribute to the creation of the restaurant’s culture. This puts a limit on the extent that people can grow their food vocabulary and mingle with people of other cultures and classes.

10/6/23

The Everpresent “Now” of Humberto Ak’abal

During my reading of Ak’abal’s poems, I was struck by never feeling I was anywhere other than here. “Here” being in his world and mine, right now. Ak’abal’s poetry has a thrumming presence to it, a contemporary murmur that relaxes you into the moments you spend reading. I think it is his use of language that settles us into the poem, his structure which conversationally pulls us in, and his subjects that while historical, anthropomorphized, or otherwise separate from now, appear real and textured. Ak’abal declares in the introduction that he wishes to “call ourselves contemporary Mayas with pride.” In so many ways these poems echo that mission.

At multiple points in his poems, it feels as if thoughts are occurring naturally to the poem itself. It feels live and current. In In the Woodlands, enjambment of the final three lines makes for natural pauses as the writer considers each new sensation. Being wrapped in a woollen poncho, dreaming, is like falling asleep… in the woodlands. Another example is in a poem with a completely different tone but equally effective delivery 500 years. The space left before the final declaration and the original premise of the poem, there is an orality to it, and thus a presence.

It is not just that we are present in Ak’abal’s poetry, it is that time feels different as well. In our McLeod reading we learned about the different forms of Mayan cosmology and the way cycles, some long and some short, create a different reference to time. I see cycles all throughout these poems. In Corn Harvest Maize is brought from field to kernel in a cycle the begins and ends with walking. Human input that brings the ever-present food through a day. In Paradise, I see a much longer cycle taking shape, one which evokes a period before the colonial, the christian, and ends without resolving it. The maize goes from plentiful to forbidden. What is most compelling is when these poems are put in the context of their places within the collection of poems. Here, a third even broader temporal cycle appears, one that doesn’t have clear beginnings or endings. The weight of the 500 years poem hangs over this cycle, reminding us of the weight the Maya are forced to carry. Simultaneously, within this cycle, muddy feet traipse through fields of maize with reverence in an ever present now. In writing poems containing I and We and Us and declaring the “contemporary Maya,” Ak’abal brings into concert the long, persistent, sacred Maya present. The one that harvests maize, even when forbidden, the one that takes joy in a dreamy poncho, and the one that wishes to be a scrap of cloth so that perhaps one day they can fill the holes where the chill of poverty creeps in. This cycle, long and disjointed, without clear delineation or beginning, is why these poems are so compelling to me. They speak to a Mayan conception of time, as we have come to understand it. Lix Lopez began his lecture with something akin to “let us be grateful for another day.” These poems, with all their weight, do just that.

I am really sad I had to miss class this week, I loved everything I read from home. I was wondering what the brilliant minds of this class thought their “Long Cycle” might be? What historical weight do you carry, and what small cycle, daily interventions lighten the load? For me, I feel a loss of direction, a loss of utopia. It felt like people were fighting for something when I read history, and living now feels like being pulled in every direction, moving towards nothing. Then I meet people who do see the long cycle, the moral universe that bends towards justice, and I learn from them and am grateful. My daily cycle would be the ways people come into our lives to remind us of our values, even when the long view might obfuscate them.

10/4/23

Multilingualism and Language as Fertilizer – Week 5 Ak’abal poems

The first thing that I noticed when reading Humberto Ak’abal’s Here Was Paradise, was that the title was written in both Spanish and English. This use of Spanish and English with additions of K’iche’ Mayan made me realize that using multiple languages can make describing themes and experiences more easy and enriching for readers and learners. For example in the poem The Air, El Aire both the English and Spanish versions begin with a description of the actions of air, and the performances of air, but while the first line of the second stanza of the English version appears disconnected to the last line of the first stanza, this is not the case in the Spanish version. In the Spanish version of The Air, the noun “vueltas” ,which is the last word of the first stanza, is directly connected to the first word of the second line of the second stanza “vuela” which is a verb, so while the English version seems disconnected, this is not the case in the Spanish version which flows quite wonderfully, with its connection of “vuela” and “vuelta”.

I find Ak’abals inclusion of K’iche’ words within his poems act as a pause or point of attention, that do not act as distractors, but rather they act as the head of the overarching poem, with the English and Spanish being simply complements to the K’iche’. This relationship between the Spanish and English and the K’iche’, directly reflects the ongoing relationship between the Mayan and indigenous communities of Guatemala and the Mixed and European community. In the second portion of his book, Humberto Ak’abal ties the themes of agrarian and rural paradise where Mayan culture and traditions flourish, with the sickness and poison of the urban and Ladino areas of Guatemala. While in reference to the countryside, Ak’abal uses words like “dreaming” and “laughter” as descriptors, in his poems about urban settings, he uses words such as “poverty” and “injustice”. By using these words with contrasting themes and symbolisms, Ak’abal gives a clear explanation of the economic and cultural disparities which exist in Guatemalan society as a result of colonialism and racial prejudice.

Humberto Ak’abal’s poems use language to reflect the lived experiences of the K’iche’ community and through the use of poetic styles and structures to contrast and celebrate K’iche’ Mayan traditions with Western and non-indigenous cultures. As a question for discussion, why do you think that Ak’abal uses descriptions of animals and elements such as Earth and Air when describing the consumption and cultivation of maize?

10/3/23

Reencuentro and the Importance of Food – Reflection of Lix Lopez Visit

Elder Lopez’ visit this past Thursday was truly a gift. Prior to this term, I was not aware of the Mayan in Exile Garden at UBC. Learning about this space from Elder Lopez left me feeling hopeful, as it was a lesson of the positive impacts that result from Indigenous self-determination and Indigenous food sovereignty.

When reflecting on the visit, I think back to the concept of “desencuentro” that we learned about in class. As explained by Tamara, there is a desencuentro, a misunderstanding or non-meeting, between different cultures and different ways of knowing. Namely, there is a desencuentro between the oral and the lettered: lettered cultures clash with cultures that rely on orality. In class I brought up how lettered cultures, by not recognizing ‘other’ ways of knowing, like those of oral cultures, deny themselves an expansion of knowledge. It was an honour to learn about how Elder Lopez, when faced with the desencuentro between his Mayan worldview/traditions and Canadian/Western society and worldviews, resisted and made his way back to his ancestral roots to eventually become a Ceremonial Knowledge Keeper. It is exciting that, thanks to the Mayan Garden, future generations of Mayan children will be able to experience a reencuentro and learn about their ancestral culture at the garden.

Elder Lopez’ visit also responds to the central and recurring themes we’ve touched on in class: The importance of food, and the importance of studying food. Near the beginning of his presentation, I was excited to hear Elder Lopez talk about how when people have safe food supplies, they can build empires. This idea is what has sparked my passion for food security and especially Indigenous-led initiatives toward food security. Moreover, food and the cultivation of food crops have been central to the preservation of Elder Lopez’s, as well as his community’s, traditional knowledge. One of my favourite moments of the presentation was near the beginning, when Elder Lopez spoke about how all the generations before him, all of his ancestors, had gardens, and so gardening is in his blood. In this way, food and the cultivation of food is also spiritual, and has the ability to both connect us to something bigger than ourselves while also leading us back to our roots and ancestors.

I am enjoying learning new ways of studying food, such as approaching food and food crops with the knowledge that they have spirits, that they hold knowledge.

Something to reflect on: Has the way you approach food and food crops changed as we learn about the role of maize in Mayan society? Are you more likely to wonder about the soul of the vegetables/plants that you are eating?

10/2/23

Señor Lopez: Reflection

I really enjoyed having Señor Lopez come and visit. Throughout the summer I had actually been working at the farmer’s markets around Vancouver and went to the UBC one. There I saw the produce and flowers that came from the Maya farm. It was so incredible to then learn about their story and how they were able to have that farm.

When listening to the cosmology of how maize came to them in Guatemala, I was intently listening. I had a few reflections on the story. One was the fact it was fleas and lice that had helped bring corn to the people. In western society, those creatures are seen as a pest. Very rarely do I ever reflect on their usefulness or their part in the living world. I feel like with the inclusion of these creatures in their cosmology, it shows that every creature has a role and purpose. It was the same when I was reading the Popul Vuh, I also had this reflection when they used the mosquito to learn the names of all the demons. I thought it was such an interesting choice of creature, as I find them incredibly annoying and to be a pest. However, in the story they had a purpose. It also gave an explanation as to why the mosquitos buzz in our ear. The same with the story of Señor Lopez, it gave us an explanation as to why lice and flea live in the fur of animals. Lastly, I wanted to mention that I found the use of these creatures is giving value to them, having them be part of the story rather than just a side character, something to be forgotten. It again puts importance on the whole rather than just a part.

The other part of the story that I found incredibly interesting was when Señor Lopez talked about the hole in the rock and how this hole (when it closes) will bring great changes. It was interesting in that this story had been told for hundreds of years, predicting a time of great changes, and in our current world state that is actually happening. He mentioned global warming and the effects that have taken on the crops that are there. But I think it can also be a reference to the increase of GMO products. When he said that now the hole was closed, I had a moment of fear almost. For our world and for what we have been warned about, and yet we haven’t done anything to change it.

Briefly, I loved when he said, “it changes the soul of the maize.” I was thinking about how in the article about  “Why study food?” It talked about how we have distanced ourselves greatly from the food. We just eat it, and we no longer take the time to know where it comes from, the work it took to get there, but we also don’t take the time to realize it too is a living being, a part of the greater circle of life. It gave me pause in the things I take for granted, the food on my table and my own opinion on GMO products.