Part 2: Preserving the Mexican Identity Through Prehispanic Cuisine

Adriana Legaspi is dedicating her life to the preservation of Mexican culture and identity by promoting the importance of traditional ingredients and dishes.  She runs the Gastrotour of Malinalco which offers participants hands-on cooking classes and tours of the market in Malinalco to buy organic fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

What follows is the second part of our interview with Adriana Legaspi.

How have processed foods affected the average diet in Mexico?

Unfortunately, the diet of the average Mexican has reached an extreme point. In fact, the problem of infantile obesity is particularly egregious; we hold the dubious title of  the highest rates of childhood obesity in the world. Fats in fried food are added to our main carbohydrate, corn. The fats add flavor to tacos, quesadillas, tlacoyos, memelas, sopes, etc. but also tons of calories to the daily diet of thousands of office workers and blue collar workers who eat out everyday.

Despite the provenance of a precolumbian diet where animal fats were practically non-existent, (as were refined sugars other than fructose and honey from bees or ants,) we cannot conceive nowadays of a life without our daily ice cream, candies of all types, sweetened cereals, commercial foods, dairy products laden with salt and other chemicals to preserve them. And the worst of it is the ubiquity of junk food and the deplorable fast-food companies that arrived in Mexico 20 years ago and have made a killing far beyond their wildest expectations. Adding to this situation is the decrease in physical activity of the average Mexican, whether it be the rural person who has come to the city or the office worker, neither of whom has the opportunity to walk or exercise.

Traditional food, on the other hand, has ritual meaning and a built-in societal code of reciprocity such as communal cooking on saints' days or for weddings. Today, all of that has been lost. Mole, for example, is eaten not just for festive occasions, but rather anytime and everywhere. In the past, food like this, as well as all manner of desserts, was reserved for important events.

During colonization, the local tradition of corn gave birth to dishes like the guajolota, which is nothing more than a gastronomic aberration. It is a corn tamal inserted into a wheat bread roll, accompanied by corn porridge.  Millions of Mexicans eat guajolota for breakfast.

The precolumbian diet was healthier than today's and the public health problem we're facing is undeniable. Schools and universities are doing their part to control the availability of junk food but the all-powerful interests of transnational corporations are difficult to reign in. Mexico is the number one per capita consumer of soft drinks in the world, over and above the consumption of the United States, despite our genetic propensity for diabetes. Health care and the cost of treating chronic disease arising from this lifestyle and diet will bankrupt us if something radical is not done soon.

If you could have an impact in what people eat in Mexico today, what would it be?

Simply that people should reconsider the native crops and integrate them into their diets in the manner of the native pre-colombian peoples: a preponderance of vegetables or food derived from vegetables, greatly reduced in protein derived from animals, the use of steam, oven, and comal as cooking strategies to eliminate fats and sugars.

What region of Mexico appeals to you most as a chef/cook and scholar?

In the mesoamerican way of thinking, life was one unit integrated with the sky, the underworld, life among the living and among the dead, nature, the seasons, the earth, biology, and our spiritual life. When you know this, you also know that all wealth and interest varies according to where you are.

To go to Oaxaca or Michoacan where the local ethnic groups are so present and their cuisine is so varied and colorful is an indispensable condition for anyone who, like myself, is devoted to this subject. But it's no less important to visit what was once known as Árido América (the desert states of the northern part of the country) where the pitahaya cactus blooms in flaming colors only after a rain, and in the same state of Hidalgo, in the Valle del Mezquital, seat of the Otomí tribe, you will find a magnificent variety of local resources related to the maguey, to insects, small animals, and cactus flowers.

Regarding the more personal, I cannot help but mention Malinalco, where I direct the prehispanic gastrotour and where I teach about this topic. Malinalco is a privileged area, a point of transition of two climates, one being

subtropical and the other  being high montain terrain. It is a microclimate in and of itself, where almost every native crop can grow, such that its market is a reflection of this in the precolombian manner: zapotes, mameys, calabaza flowers, chayotes, papaya, pineapples, nances, capulines, tejocotes, guava, quelites, wild mushrooms, cacahuacintle corn, cactus dressed for cooking, zompantle flowers, and so many more things that amaze the eyes. Those who participate in the tours tend to focus on photographing the markets more than anything else.

Here is where I hope to spend the rest of my days (although never in retirement) but, rather, having left the city, waiting for you to come and visit me so that we can walk its cobblestone streets, visiting its market and cooking a precolombian meal.



*Photos courtesy of Adriana Legaspi.

Part 1: Preserving the Mexican Identity Through Prehispanic Cuisine, An Interview with Adriana Legaspi

There is a movement afoot in Mexico to preserve the traditions of its indigenous cuisine and the ancient knowledge of the use of curative herbs. It involves the rescue and preservation of the ingredients, methods, and utensils common in the pre-colombian past of Mesoamerica in the hopes that they do not flicker out of existence in our lifetime. With globalization and the proliferation of fast food franchises, it is no surprise that these ancient traditions are becoming a distant memory. In twenty-five years, who will know how to prepare tecorral tea, muicle, tlacoyos, or tamales de atepocate or know what they are, for that matter?

Enter Adriana Legaspi, founder of Gastrotour Prehispánico Malinalco, an anthropologist of the palate and a woman on a mission to preserve these traditions. She is neither the first nor the only person in Mexico bent on what Adriana calls "the ethnogastronomic rescue" but she certainly stands out with her passion and conviction.

A multi-faceted business woman who is not only proficient in the kitchen, Adriana also has degrees in communications, political science, and public affairs. Many years ago, she and her husband purchased a weekend home in the cobble-stoned mountain village of Malinalco outside of Mexico City. Adriana found herself in her element, naturally drawn to the wizened old 'doñas' in the ancient market of Malinalco, chatting, learning recipes and listening to their stories of old times and ways.

With encouragement from friends and with a penchant for social causes, Adriana founded a project which would direct her seemingly boundless energy toward two goals: to preserve the culture and identity of the region and to help the women with a much needed income. This was the genesis of the Gastrotour Prehispánico of Malinalco.  The tour consists of a hands-on cooking class on weekends, starting with a visit to the market in Malinalco to buy organic fruits, vegetables and herbs grown by the seller herself at zero kilometers. She invites her guests to observe the fauna and the flora depicted on a convent wall, thus ensuring a thorough understanding of the historical backdrop of the food they are preparing.

What follows is the first of a two-part interview with Adriana about her work to preserve the Mexican identity through its prehispanic cuisine:

When did you first become interested in cooking?

The truth is that I'm a product of a generation that did not hold cooking in high regard because it was associated with a lack of culture or professional status. I am the first generation of female college graduates in a family where the women had always considered marriage and the running of a household as the first priority.  My sisters and cousins began to take on minor professions in banks. The more professional we felt, the more we shunned the kitchen. Nevertheless, I'm a descendent of Italian immigrants to Mexico on my father's side for whom food and its preparation were of utmost importance in daily life. The quantity, the quality, freshness, uniqueness, and delectability for a traditional community in Northern Mexico where we lived, set us apart. As soon as I began my career in the hospitality industry, my own personal history became relevant as I found myself charged with the responsibility of organizing unique dining experiences at the empresarial level.

How did you come to get involved in the gastronomic tours of prehispanic cuisine in Malinalco?

This is a very long story whose chapters played out slowly starting from the first moment I arrived in Malinalco with my husband over 20 years ago. In spite of the enormous cultural offerings we enjoyed living in Mexico City, on weekends we spilled out of the city in search of open spaces and fresh air. That's how we ended up in Malinalco on many a weekend enjoying lunch in the subtropical climate of this town 88 kms from Mexico City.

We often ate at a restaurant called El Tecorral situated in a grand old house dating from the 17^th century where we took in the gardens, the climate, and the people. Soon we found ourselves buying a property in a place where every neighborhood had its Caocalli or Teocalli typical of Indian villages with a prehispanic past. The Augustin monks who arrived in Malinalco to evangelize in the 16^th century built the Convento de la Transfiguracieon del Señor and directed every barrio to have its own saint and chapel. Ours came with a chapel; we purchased it from a seller who still has a a Nahua surname: Donaciano de la Fuente Tecayahuatl.

Little by little I became involved in the life of the town, admiring its geography, its ecology, and naturally, its cuisine. I became aware of the strength of its indigenous origins and the pride in its traditions evident in daily life. Imagine a prehispanic market where you can find tlacoyos, a type of oval tortilla filled with fava bean paste or ricotta spiced with chilies, cooked on a clay comal by vendors like Doña Carmen. I started, then, to make a mental inventory of all that grabbed my attention to begin my ethnographic research. I began interviewing the elders, finding and documenting ingredients, looking for their existence in a precolombian past. The rest came naturally.

I felt the need to help the economic possibilities of the women of the market who rely on their own meager income. The weekend visitors were not necessarily buying their products; hence, the beginning of my classes: to teach my students the importance of this food, its contextualization, the value in its freshness, helping these students to understand who we are and why we eat as we do. Then, going home to turn the ingredients into a meal.

Why do you think it's important to get back to authentic roots in mexican cuisine?

First of all, because the Mesoamerican diet is healthy... and because to eat guided by prehispanic and Mesoamerican principles of when to eat something is healthy.  Eating guayabas before and during winter, for example, provides the body with the vitamin C necessary for the immunological system to withstand the freezing weather of the central high plains of Mexico.

What is the attitude and/or interest now of the professional (upper and middle) classes in Mexico regarding authentic prehispanic cuisine?

Well, in reality, I think there is growing interest throughout the world, among those who can afford it, to eat authentic and traditional food. The designation of Mexican food as a world heritage cuisine has made it stylish, and chefs throughout Mexico are recuperating the tastes and recipes, creating them with modern techniques and charging exhorbitant prices.

To be continued...


*Photos courtesy of Adriana Legaspi.