Moderator's Note: We are posting a short "op-ed" piece by our esteemed colleague and fellow acequia farmer, Estevan Arellano of Embudo, New Mexico. This piece reminds us that the concept of convide is essentially a Native declaration of a commitment to conviviality and is much older than the Slow Food Movement. Estevan is an award-winning author and most recently the editor and translator of Gabriel Alonso de Herrera's famous 1513 text, Ancient Agriculture: Roots and Application of Sustainable Agriculture. For a preview of this fabulous book, please visit Ancient Agriculture. We apologize for the lack of accent marks in the Spanish words in this blog entry; a problem with the editing format currently prevents use of the accent marks.
Convide
Nowadays there is so much confusion about what is "sustainable," "organic," or "natural" food that, as Indo-Hispanos, we sometimes forget our own ancestral models that have worked historically and make more sense to us as a people. One such concept that has fallen by the wayside in too many places, as we ironically embrace and debate such abstract concepts as "food security" and "food democracy," is the philosophy of convide, or the sharing of food among neighbors.
Indo-Hispano (Chicana/o) communities have been sharing water and food since time immemorial. The sharing of the water comes from the concept of equidad, or equality, as stated in the Qur'an and is the ethical practice known as repartimiento.
Therefore, repartimiento and convide are two basic values that have made our communities sustainable over the past four hundred years here in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.
Convide - from the concept con vite - that is, "with" and "alive" - is an idea that has allowed our communities to survive and thrive when it comes to eating healthy food. Even the Slow Food Movement, the brainchild of Italian journalist Carlo Petrini, has embraced the concept of convivium.
Here in the Rio Arriba, when the women made something special, be it biscochitos, tamales, a special caldo or guiso, the whole community would aprobar or "taste the food." In this manner, for centuries no one went hungry. The same would happen when an animal was butchered and everyone shared un pedacito, a "piece of meat." The day of the matanza was a day of fiesta. This was the ultimate form of con vite and prefigures by centuries the same ideas that are now the basis of the Slow Food conviviums.
For the matanza, everyone had a specialty: The chichorranera/o was the one who made the chile colorado de matanza (when it was pork); the tortillera was the maker of the tortillas, etc.
Then there was the hueso del caldo (soup bone) that people shared to make caldo when times were really bad. The hueso would flavor the spring water that was infused with wild edible herbs (quelites) and boiled soft tubers.
The New Mexico Acequia Association has recently launched a food project that involves an assessment of the state of traditional local foods in four watersheds including the Embudo, which includes the communities on the rios Picuris, Santa Barbara, El Valle, and Ojo Sarco, all the way down to where the rio Embudo empties into the Grande or Bravo del Norte.
The three most important concepts that you will hear from the elders for strategies of survival are repartimiento, convide, and working en co-operacion (mutual aid and cooperative labor). The best example of this third concept is the acequia, a truly worker-owned and democratically self-governed cooperative.
By sharing resources, be it water or food, and cooperating in labor, the people here were able to sustain themselves with high altitude grass-fed cattle, lamb, and goat. For us, this meant that the livestock summered up in the upland grass meadows of Tres Ritos.
Our local food includes heirloom chile, both green and red; corn, which people used to prepare a wide range of traditional foods from tamales to posole. Local "Spanish" wheat was used to make flour which was then made into the favored Lenten pastry or panocha. This was made from sprouted wheat seeds, which were dried and then ground on metates into a whole-grain flour.
The traditional foods included fabas, lentejas, and all types of meat: Beef, lamb, goat, pig, and chicken were all raised by the families and their neighbors. The traditional foods, when subsistence hunting was more common, included wild quail, turkey, pigeons, deer, elk, and at one time even buffalo. The diverse cuisine of the Rio Arriba included different recipes for the use of fish including freshwater eels. The manito culture developed a nutritious and healthy regional cuisine based on the possibilities of the environment.
This was only the beginning of what was produced "natural y con la ayuda de Dios," naturally and with the blessing of God. To this saying, the people often added another phrase: "para nos, para vos, y para los animalitos de Dios" (for us, for you, and for God's animals). Con la fe (with faith) in the land, water, and all creation, we survived by adopting and following these ethics of repartiendo, conviviendo, and cooperando.
Conviviendo, helping one another as members of a community, instead of simply "sustaining" one self to save and then invest somewhere else, is what has blessed us with "una vida buena y sana y alegre." We are resilient because we have followed the simple philosophy of sharing water, food, and work, and this has also made our lives more "festive."
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