San Acacio Bottomlands, CO. As the harvest winds down, the smell of adobe ovens filled with chicos is now but a memory. Every time I walk by the spent hornos, I can still catch that smoky aroma of the chicos roast. Embers and corn cobs lay scattered about the grounds, a reminder of the two frantic weeks of horneadas.
More than thirty people participated in the seven oven roasts we did this year as a collaboration of the Corpus A. Gallegos Ranches and Rancho Dos Acequias. It is good to be part of a community that maintains deep-rooted agricultural practices and foodways as the soil medium for renewing our cultural and familial ties.
More than thirty people participated in the seven oven roasts we did this year as a collaboration of the Corpus A. Gallegos Ranches and Rancho Dos Acequias. It is good to be part of a community that maintains deep-rooted agricultural practices and foodways as the soil medium for renewing our cultural and familial ties.
Certainly, this time of year is one of great bounty as we brought not just heirloom corn to harvest but also bolita beans, calabacitas, habas, cilantro, beets, parsnips, turnips, potatoes, apples, pears, plums, chokecherry, elderberry, and numerous other row, orchard, and field crops.
I appreciate the deep wisdom guiding this unique agroecosystem and its food-related practices. The roasting of chicos illustrates this wisdom. The original practice of adobe oven roasts of corn began with the Pueblo first nations and has roots even further deep into the time of the Pueblos' ancestors, the so-called Anasazi.
The roasting of corn was an adaptation to the long harsh winters that made it impossible to farm for much more than four months out of the year. Lacking refrigeration or elecricity, the Hispanos that came to inhabit the Rio Arriba bioregion adopted the extant Pueblo practice of roasting corn for the vital winter stores. This was food sovereignty at its very best.
Our community still has a robust local food system based on the acequia agroecosystem and a huge capacity for the production of traditional food and forage crops that have been adapted to the environment over dozens of generations.
Yet, despite the persistence of the capacity to be completely food self-reliant, there is much hunger and malnutrition in the acequia communities of the Rio Arriba. This hunger, like other parts of the U.S., remains largely hidden.
Research on hunger in Costilla County, like other areas of the Rio Arriba, is scarce and social scientists have not yet shown much interest in documenting hunger and malnutrition beyond the "remote social science" surveys that are routinely done by concerned federal and state agencies.
Judging from the county level statistics available on-line at the State of Colorado websites, and extrapolating from what we know about rural hunger in other parts of the country, it seems likely that fully 30 to 40 percent of the full-time residents of Costilla County, are receiving some sort of food assistance including food stamps, "WIC," meals for the elderly, and emergency relief on a routine basis.
So, could one surmise that the safety net has worked and that there is no hunger in Costilla County? Such a conclusion would be inaccurate and misleading. There is not only hunger but extensive malnutrition in our communities as indicated by a childhood obesity rate that remains one of the highest in Colorado.
Just because people have access to food does not mean that they have access to the right kinds of food or that they are no longer hungry or malnourished. Indeed, one of the most devastating consequences of the rise of convenience shopping, fast food, and supermarkets is that people, even when capable, have stopped producing their own heritage cuisines.
Why should this matter? Is access to food not the key to resolving hunger and malnutrition? Nutritional anthropologists and other social scientists have long documented a strong correlation between the health of a given population and the persistence of traditional diets and food practices. Distinct human groups co-evolved with their environments; we are not just skin-bags filled with immutable genetic destinies. You know the saying: We are what we eat.
Indeed, the co-evolution of human health is profoundly affected by the nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants that we derive from our own place-based, multi-generational cuisine and food practices. It is the breakdown of heritage cuisines that is as much as anything else to blame for the continued deterioration of our health status in rural Hispana/o communities. That, and the closing of our health clinics.
How do we restore a more healthful and culturally-appropriate heritage cuisine? Is it enough to denounce fast food when fresh, natural, and culturally appropriate foods may not be available or accessible? How can we become healthy when our grandmothers' recipes are gathering dust in an attic somewhere above the kitchen table with a KFC spread for tonight's rushed family dinner?
While hunger and malnutrition are mostly aspects of the structural violence unleashed by global capitalist commodity-chains that are the dominant food system, we are also responsible at the local level for regenerating and sustaining our own autonomous local food systems.
I did an informal survey the past four months (June through September) to begin to get an idea of how much local food is actually consumed. When the first alberjon (summer peas) show up in May, they do indeed become the talk of the town. I visited with a dozen random families and all of them were enjoying the fresh peas that they purchased from local growers like Adelmo Kaber.
So, at least for peas and other summer vegetables, there does seem to be a direct link from field to a good portion of local tables.
However, the same cannot be said for the crops that are vital for the winter stores. Despite the rage for chicos indicated by the high demand from grocers spread from Denver to Albuquerque, local people are not generally taking advantage of local access to this vital crop that figures so prominently in the winter seasonal cuisine.
During this informal survey, one thing I noticed is that some families have a sharp generational divide over the matter of food and diet choices: The elders (grandparents and parents) still want to eat root-cellar tubers like beets and turnips, but the youth hold sway and get the family instead to go out shopping for fast food or processed foods from the supermarket. Our youth have lost their sense of appreciation for the local place-based heritage cuisine.
In this regard, we have a lot of work left to do in the acequia communities of the Rio Arriba. While we produce enough food to be self-reliant, we are not engaging in the other extended practices that allow the local people to eat locally and seasonally. In the middle of winter, instead of heading to the root-cellar to grab some beets and parsnips to go along with that delicious chicos stew, our families head to Walmart in Alamosa to purchase cheap meats and processed foods or to grab a burger and fries at McDonalds.
The community needs to extend its heritage agroecosystem into a more elaborate local food system that reaches every family in the watershed. More root cellars; more adobe ovens; more canning and preserving practices; all these and other practices could become part of a strategy to transform our fast food nation addictions into a local place-based heritage cuisine that is in balance with our bodies and the seasonal changes brought by nature.
Acequia farming families can lead us back toward the healthy heritage cuisines that located us as a place-based people who ate with the seasons and recognized the limits imposed on us by the forces of nature, the environmental conditions of our existence. Getting our youth to eat chicos stew for a week with home-grown beets and turnips this winter might just be a place to start.
I appreciate the deep wisdom guiding this unique agroecosystem and its food-related practices. The roasting of chicos illustrates this wisdom. The original practice of adobe oven roasts of corn began with the Pueblo first nations and has roots even further deep into the time of the Pueblos' ancestors, the so-called Anasazi.
The roasting of corn was an adaptation to the long harsh winters that made it impossible to farm for much more than four months out of the year. Lacking refrigeration or elecricity, the Hispanos that came to inhabit the Rio Arriba bioregion adopted the extant Pueblo practice of roasting corn for the vital winter stores. This was food sovereignty at its very best.
Our community still has a robust local food system based on the acequia agroecosystem and a huge capacity for the production of traditional food and forage crops that have been adapted to the environment over dozens of generations.
Yet, despite the persistence of the capacity to be completely food self-reliant, there is much hunger and malnutrition in the acequia communities of the Rio Arriba. This hunger, like other parts of the U.S., remains largely hidden.
Research on hunger in Costilla County, like other areas of the Rio Arriba, is scarce and social scientists have not yet shown much interest in documenting hunger and malnutrition beyond the "remote social science" surveys that are routinely done by concerned federal and state agencies.
Judging from the county level statistics available on-line at the State of Colorado websites, and extrapolating from what we know about rural hunger in other parts of the country, it seems likely that fully 30 to 40 percent of the full-time residents of Costilla County, are receiving some sort of food assistance including food stamps, "WIC," meals for the elderly, and emergency relief on a routine basis.
So, could one surmise that the safety net has worked and that there is no hunger in Costilla County? Such a conclusion would be inaccurate and misleading. There is not only hunger but extensive malnutrition in our communities as indicated by a childhood obesity rate that remains one of the highest in Colorado.
Just because people have access to food does not mean that they have access to the right kinds of food or that they are no longer hungry or malnourished. Indeed, one of the most devastating consequences of the rise of convenience shopping, fast food, and supermarkets is that people, even when capable, have stopped producing their own heritage cuisines.
Why should this matter? Is access to food not the key to resolving hunger and malnutrition? Nutritional anthropologists and other social scientists have long documented a strong correlation between the health of a given population and the persistence of traditional diets and food practices. Distinct human groups co-evolved with their environments; we are not just skin-bags filled with immutable genetic destinies. You know the saying: We are what we eat.
Indeed, the co-evolution of human health is profoundly affected by the nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants that we derive from our own place-based, multi-generational cuisine and food practices. It is the breakdown of heritage cuisines that is as much as anything else to blame for the continued deterioration of our health status in rural Hispana/o communities. That, and the closing of our health clinics.
How do we restore a more healthful and culturally-appropriate heritage cuisine? Is it enough to denounce fast food when fresh, natural, and culturally appropriate foods may not be available or accessible? How can we become healthy when our grandmothers' recipes are gathering dust in an attic somewhere above the kitchen table with a KFC spread for tonight's rushed family dinner?
While hunger and malnutrition are mostly aspects of the structural violence unleashed by global capitalist commodity-chains that are the dominant food system, we are also responsible at the local level for regenerating and sustaining our own autonomous local food systems.
I did an informal survey the past four months (June through September) to begin to get an idea of how much local food is actually consumed. When the first alberjon (summer peas) show up in May, they do indeed become the talk of the town. I visited with a dozen random families and all of them were enjoying the fresh peas that they purchased from local growers like Adelmo Kaber.
So, at least for peas and other summer vegetables, there does seem to be a direct link from field to a good portion of local tables.
However, the same cannot be said for the crops that are vital for the winter stores. Despite the rage for chicos indicated by the high demand from grocers spread from Denver to Albuquerque, local people are not generally taking advantage of local access to this vital crop that figures so prominently in the winter seasonal cuisine.
During this informal survey, one thing I noticed is that some families have a sharp generational divide over the matter of food and diet choices: The elders (grandparents and parents) still want to eat root-cellar tubers like beets and turnips, but the youth hold sway and get the family instead to go out shopping for fast food or processed foods from the supermarket. Our youth have lost their sense of appreciation for the local place-based heritage cuisine.
In this regard, we have a lot of work left to do in the acequia communities of the Rio Arriba. While we produce enough food to be self-reliant, we are not engaging in the other extended practices that allow the local people to eat locally and seasonally. In the middle of winter, instead of heading to the root-cellar to grab some beets and parsnips to go along with that delicious chicos stew, our families head to Walmart in Alamosa to purchase cheap meats and processed foods or to grab a burger and fries at McDonalds.
The community needs to extend its heritage agroecosystem into a more elaborate local food system that reaches every family in the watershed. More root cellars; more adobe ovens; more canning and preserving practices; all these and other practices could become part of a strategy to transform our fast food nation addictions into a local place-based heritage cuisine that is in balance with our bodies and the seasonal changes brought by nature.
Acequia farming families can lead us back toward the healthy heritage cuisines that located us as a place-based people who ate with the seasons and recognized the limits imposed on us by the forces of nature, the environmental conditions of our existence. Getting our youth to eat chicos stew for a week with home-grown beets and turnips this winter might just be a place to start.
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