Monthly Archives: November 2023

11/27/23

Noelia as Alfonso’s Umami

Alfonso in Umami, a widower and an anthropologist who studies the concept of Umami. He defines it as “one of the five basic flavors our taste buds can identify. The other, the ones we all know, are sweet, salty, bitter and sour. Then there’s umami, more or less new to us in the West. We’re talking a century or so. It’s a Japanese word. It means delicious.” (152) Him describing what umami is, tends to be a point of conversation he repeatedly has with  many important people in life such as Linda and his dead wife Noelia. Umami touches those around him, asking them to think more about their own individual food ways. Alfonso lives in a house called Umami. He also expresses how umami is the reason why he married his wife as it was a concept that intrigued her and begun their future relationship. Umami has contributed to so many aspects of his life, but when his wife dies, it’s almost as if one of his five flavors die, his umami dies. After the death of his wife, he drowns in grief and looses parts of himself such as his devotion to amaranth, he takes a sabbatical and spends his days drinking and uninspired.

11/16/23

My Colonized Mind: Reflections on El Maíz en Tiempos de Guerra

Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a restful reading break!

I wanted to share my reflections after watching El Maíz en Tiempos de Guerra (Maize in Times of War). At the beginning of this term, I had a conversation with Tamara about my fear that Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, would one day decide that the world no longer gets access to their seeds. This worry has loomed over me ever since I learned, in a previous Environmental Politics class, about how Monsanto owns the “patents” for so many of the seeds and grains we rely on. Tamara replied something along the lines of “Well, that would be good for Indigenous people who don’t want those seeds because the Monsanto ones threaten their ancestral seeds.” I had never thought about this before: my colonized mind and Western, Americanized education never taught me about ancestral seeds and the plight of Indigenous people to protect them. 11 weeks into this term, with a better understanding of foodways and food sovereignty, and having watched Maíz in Times of War, I can say that while I still fear that Bayer-Monsanto–who own & control 60% of the world’s seeds (Futures Centre, 2023)–will one day decide that they no longer want to provide us their patented seeds, I now find hope and comfort in the leadership of Indigenous communities like those we learned from in the documentary.

In our neoliberal societies, we have become so reliant and used to industrialized farming and diets that rely on processed, triple-packaged, highly marketed food items. I have never thought of my food or the seeds my diet relies on as “mother, daughter, guardian.” (Maíz en Tiempos de Guerra) Going forward, I will be more mindful of the spiritual connection between my foods, the seeds and grains I eat. This documentary was once again an impactful reminder of the need for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, and for Indigenous pedagogies to be introduced into our Western, Eurocentric education systems.

Side note: Reading the EZLN Declaration was so fascinating, especially the connections between the Zapatista and Indigenous struggle in Mexico leading up to 1993, and the current plight of the Palestinian people. This sounded way too familiar: “They don’t care that we have nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a roof over our heads, no land, no work, no health care, no food nor education. Nor are we able to freely and democratically elect our political representatives, nor is there independence from foreigners, nor is there peace nor justice for ourselves and our children.” (1) Once again, a reminder of how intersectional and interconnected the struggles of the oppressed are.

 

Thanks for reading!

-Y

 

Posted: Nov 16, 9:34 AM.

11/10/23

The tortilla discourse – Mexico’s policy

Tortilla discourse describes the time around the 1900s in Mexico, mainly about the national policies and the false belief in food choice. It is the period led by Porfiriato, who denigrated the consumption of maize and tortilla, instead, the wheat from Europe. It classified the races into 3 kinds: wheat corn and rice, and saying wheat consumption is supreme, involved the concept of ethnocentrism that believed the colonizer, the Western world is always correct.

The detail of the policy is ridiculous, one of them outlining that the daily required protein level is twice higher than today’s standard when the government finds out the national level of nutrition is insufficient. Later they found out, that wheat and maize do not have significant differences in providing nutrition. It reminds me of the story of tomatoes, a poisonous fruit that causes death turns out is the using of lead-rich plates. From another aspect, the government wants to address the problem of inefficient Indigenous workers in factories and ascribe the causes to wrong food choices. However, the truth is the government failed to convert their thoughts of the industrialized world. According to the article, Indigenous people at that stage didn’t have any ambition for money which was far different from their cultural value.

It triggers me to think about what is “modern” economy and what is the appropriate way to create a society which could integrate Indigenous and settlers as well as development. The main reason is the unequal tie between former colonizers and the Indigenous. The case of South Africa shows the relationship. The apartheid was definitely not the right way but after the reconciliation both South Africa’s economy and safety decreased. The structural reason behind this is some legacy of apartheid exacerbates social inequality, however, people usually consider it as “their” problems, rather than seeking solutions and ignoring what the former colonizers did before.

In contrast, a positive policy emerges in the form of José Vasconcelos’s rural schooling idea. This program not only eliminated illiteracy but also solidified Spanish as the official language, significantly enhancing the overall educational quality of Mexico’s population. The ripple effects of this initiative extended to the later 1960s, marking a period known as the “Mexico Miracle,” characterized by sustained economic growth and development.

11/9/23

Food As Love, Food as Struggle

Hola a todes,

This week’s poems have been thrilling reads. Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Making Tortillas was a vivid introduction to the relationship between queer (lesbian) love and tortillas. Today, though, I would like to discuss Caridad Moro-Gronlier’s Tortillera Poems, specifically Entry and Compulsion: A Chronology. 

While there is a lot I would like to discuss about these poems, the main theme I would like to center around today is the role of food as comfort and food as resistance within these poems. In Compulsion: A Chronology, Moro-Gronlier says “She is mean, but I taste her love in the steam that rises from rose-studded porcelain bowls she collected one dish a time…Así comen las niñas buenas, she says, approval thick as stew in my spoon.” This passage (stanza 2, lines 4-5, 9-10) was, to me, reminiscent of Tuesday’s reading, The Mystery of Survival, when the narrator was offered elote by her mother, but decided to eat coconut instead. I know that in my own life growing up in El Salvador, families don’t always comfortably speak love to one another, especially the men in our families. But they will give us food: we share food, we go out and bring food home, we bring food when we visit friends, we never show up con las manos vacías (empty handed). As shown by this poem, it is the same for our Cuban writer, as was the same from Gaspar de Alba’s Chicano perspective.

I also really enjoyed how, in Compulsion: Chronology, we can see how a specific food/edible items are used by Moro-Gronlier to represent specific points in her life and in her struggle with her sexuality, body-image, self-control and family dynamics. This reminded me of a poem that I wrote as a part of our midterm project. For my midterm project, I created a poemario, a collection of poems. The poem that reminded me the most of Compulsion is my poem, Tortilla Con Huevo. Overall, reading Tortillera reminded me of why I have been loving food studies so much, and why I am now so in love with poetry about food: specific food items carry so much history, cultural context, family history, self-image, self-control, and as we see so poignanty, food items represent love, and as maíz tells us, it represents resistance… All in a simple food item! Que vivan las gastronomic interjections! Here  are my poems. Poem 1: Tortilla Con Huevo is written chronologically and also ties in specific food items to specific chapters of my life.

Nos vemos pronto mis querides!!!

 

(Posted 9:33 AM Nov 9th)

11/9/23

Kneading Poetry

This weeks poems present how the act of food and intimacy can be used by queer Latin American women as a way to use traditional spaces and acts, such as making food, as a way to express themselves within and contrary to heterosexual expectations and prejudice. The poem that stood out the most to me, was Moro-Gronlier’s Compulsion: A Chronology, as the structure has a very specific syntactic structure, with each final line ending in a determiner phrase. The first six stanzas end in a first person singular pronoun (I, My) while the eighth and ninth stanzas end in a third person singular pronoun (He), with the final tenth stanza regaining the first person singular pronoun (I). The way that Moro-Gronlier structures this poem with the determiner phrases switching between a first person and then third person and finally first person again, gives the interpretation that the male heterosexual relationships that Moro-Gronlier describes takes away the joy and freedom that she experienced in her childhood and with feminine relationships, with food and intimacy and only when she takes back that intimacy with food and sexuality does she partly regain that freedom, but not completely.

I find the terminology that Moreno-Gronlier provides in the preface to her collection to be useful when analyzing the relationship between queerness and food within Latin American patriarchal societies. While the origins of the word “tortillera” may originally have been used as a a means to attack lesbian women, within Latino/Latinx communities, the imagery behind the word is also why it has been reclaimed by queer women. Since the space of making tortillas in the Latin American household was occupied by women, and is a space for women to gather, it is easy to see why the idea of a space and occupation created for women, could be used as a way for self-expression by queer and lesbian women. In Gaspar de Alba’s poem Making Tortillas, she uses the description of making tortillas to show  how intimacy can be created through shared touch. The descriptions of soaking and grinding the maize are woven between the act of spreading our the maize over the metate, which requires the use of the tortillera’s strength and entire body to create the tortilla, which could represent how Latin American queer and lesbian women show strength against societal prejudice, or how commitment to the lengthy process of making tortillas is similar to the creation and sustaining queer relationships.

11/6/23

The Mystery of Survival

This reading was one that I found very difficult to read. I understand that there were other “cuentos” within the book, but the first one really struck me. The perspective of it being a child made the horrors of what had happened to the little girl even more disgusting and horrific. I sat down to read it and immediately was in shock. The usage of the child’s perspective here made the feelings I would have and did have even stronger. The descriptions were explicit, but enough that I was so heartbroken. I don’t even think heart broken is a strong enough word.

I found it very interesting that in this text, the narrator never was called by name. Lucia had a name, mama was mama, but the narrator was just a girl. This to me made it so that it could have been anyone’s child, anyone’s daughter, anyone’s memories. It made it more personal in a sense as when I was reading it I could place whomever as the girl.

The role of food here was subtle for me. Elote was mentioned once, and the girl had wanted coconut instead. I looked into it and was discussing with my partner, and we think that the coconut could maybe be a symbol for survival or durability. A coconut has a rough outside that protects the soft inside. A mystery of survival. Coconuts follow no rules, though. They will fall from the tree when they want, on who they want when they are ready. There is no obedience here. It contradicts what mama was saying is the key to survival. There was also a mention of the chicken broth. I think food was in essence a comfort. And the lack of food was a response to a trauma. Lack of food, not eating, is a trauma response. When an individual is dealing with trauma, it is hard to put the basic necessities of your body first. This small detail shows how much trauma this little girl has already gone through.

11/2/23

Anger at Injustice and inability to comprehend difference

This was a hard thing to read. I can only imagine what it was like to live. My anger is individual and small, focused on the soldiers that lost every ounce of their humanity. But I am also angry because of the many ways this story is entirely common. In her testimony, we learn from Menchu about how she lives. How her family strikes an intentional and powerful balance between the necessity of working the finka, and the pleasure in returning to the highlands. As we have learned all throughout this course, indigenous and specifically Mayan understandings of the world are very different to the settler and colonial ontoepistemologies. I’m sure it would appear ridiculous to a landed owner of a finka for people to leave and return to the cold highlands to harvest their ancestral crops when paid work existed down on the coast. I’m sure the collective nature of these living arrangements, the communal field that the village maintained in case anyone got sick, are what lead to the labelling of “communist.” But the tragic and inexcusable thing about understanding the world differently is that, from a colonial, capitalist logic it somehow justifies eradication of the other way of knowing the world. At this time the “Cold War” was about as hot as war can get in Latin America, and these global ideas of communism and capitalism were clashing in the minds of those who tell the people with guns who to shoot. But nothing like that exists for Menchu and her family. They are not communists, not because it is an overly complicated ideology, but because everything it has to offer is already represented in their ways of life. The reason communism inspires the industrialized worker is because it radically presumes that they are worth more than their labour, more than their time, and that together they can make it so. Those are presumptions already baked into the lives of Mayan communities. Life is not perfect, but the ways people relate to one another and their labour, their land, their gods, and those they do not understand are fundamentally deeper, caring, and inherently opposed to all the capitalist logics imposed on them. When that way of life gets in the way of profit, reliable labour, or a regime caught in a Cold War discourse, surrounded by national revolutions and reliant on American dollars to stay afloat, anything can happen in the countryside when only those that cannot speak Spanish can witness it. Who will they testify to and about what? That is the power of Menchu’s account, and her effort to learn to communicate in the same language as the oppressor has left a voice that can be heard more widely. I was wondering what people found most surprising about life in the highlands, or perhaps in her description of it? How did her chosen words colour your reading of her testimony?