By Ángel Tuninetti and the Centro de Estudios Heñói Team
Paraguay is a poster case for the damage that industrial agriculture can cause on food security and food sovereignty. The landlocked South American country was almost self-sufficient in food production until the 1990s, mainly thanks to the diversified crops and animal production of the fincas campesinas [small peasant farms].
Then, in 1996, GMO soybeans were introduced, and with them, an industrial agricultural model aimed at the production of commodities, followed later by other GMO crops, such as corn, rice, and wheat. Now the country depends on the import of vegetables and fruits, since 95% of the cultivated lands are dedicated to genetically modified crops for export. This production involves the use of 60 million liters of pesticides per year (10 liters per inhabitant), and is defended by mercenaries, the police, the army and the judicial apparatus. This is a war for the future of Paraguayan people and their right to food sovereignty.
To defend the right of the Paraguayan people to their food sovereignty and their culture, the Centro de Estudios Heñói, a small NGO based in Asuncion, produces and publishes its Recetario Soberano. It consists in collecting and rescuing traditional peasant and indigenous recipes kept alive and transmitted from generation to generation, but that are not part of the typical Paraguayan fare that you will find in recipe books and traditional restaurants.
How are traditional indigenous and peasant recipes rescued?
Through a process in which we seek to understand the cultural significance of recipes, linking them to their roots, memories, and their socioeconomic, political, and symbolic history for the communities.
The process of recovering traditional recipes starts with interviews with Indigenous and peasant leaders to capture their stories and memories, recording them through audiovisual media, and capturing the recipe preparation in their environment, as a communal event. The communities have embraced the project, and their leaders recognize the importance of their culinary traditions, such as the ingredients from the Chaco region, often not included in the “official” Paraguayan gastronomy. As Ana Romero, a young leader from the Kemha Yat Sepo, of the Enxet People, said, “in the Chaco, the indigenous food traditions of the peoples continue to be practiced, but we are a diversity of peoples, territories, and foods. In the Alto Chaco, we do have similarities in our food system; we are based on tuna, algarroba, mistol, and chili peppers.”
Ramón Medina, a leader from Kamba Kua, Pilar, emphasized the importance of community: “It is important to preserve not only the traditional food or recipes of Paraguay. But also, the entire history of community building, solidarity, sharing, inviting one another, the grand gesture of inviting one another. People liked and were happy to invite and be invited by others”.
Food sovereignty is intrinsically tied to land rights. As Mario Rivarola, the leader of the Mby’a community of Hugua Po’i, Caaguazú, pointed out, “to recover these typical foods of the Mbyá peoples, we need to recover the land to recover the Mby’a traditions and culture. That is the responsibility of the State, to comply with and enforce the national and international regulations that guarantee access to our ancestral territories”.
The first two recipes rescued
Ingredients: Corn flour, roasted and ground peanuts, cassava starch, milk, salt.
Preparation: Mix the corn flour, ground peanuts, and cassava starch in a large bowl. Add the salt and mix well. Add the milk little by little, kneading until you get a smooth, even dough. The amount of milk may vary, so add it gradually until the dough has the right consistency. Form the chipas and place them in a baking dish on banana leaves. Bake in a tatakúa (traditional brick oven) or preheated oven.
Ingredients: Corn with husks, fresh Paraguay cheese, pork lard, milk
Preparation: Remove the husks from the corn, wash, and set aside. Remove the kernels from the corn and ground with a mill. Mix the ground corn with the Paraguay cheese, pork lard, and salt until you get a smooth dough. Pour the mixture into each husk, close it, and tie it at the ends and in the middle, forming the characteristic “monkey waist.” Place the husks in a pot with enough water. Let it boil for about 30 minutes. Remove and serve.
Why work to recover these recipes?
First, because we are aware of the problems of food on a national and global scale. These include the loss of food sovereignty, understood as the human right and self-determination of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food, as declared by La Vía Campesina. Peasant and indigenous communities have the right to eat what they want and have eaten traditionally, but the current food production system is dismantling their capacities for resistance because of the destruction of biocultural corridors, due to the relentless advance of agricultural, livestock, and forestry extractivism on their lands and territories. Inadequate nutrition has also meant increased deaths from chronic non-communicable diseases like obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.
Secondly, because we want to question what is Paraguayan gastronomy. In local literature, what is generally referred as “Paraguayan cuisine or gastronomy,” includes recipes that are assumed to be traditional without questioning the colonial heritage they often possess. This general idea of Paraguayan gastronomy recipes is separated from the productive and creative labor behind the raw materials, the utensils, the culinary recipe itself, and the significance that all of these have for the organization and structuring of Indigenous and peasant communities. In other words, vorí vorí, sopa paraguaya, locro, and jopara, understood to be the intangible cultural heritage of Paraguay, could not exist without the productive Indigenous and peasant labor behind them. The “typical Paraguayan fare” you would find at a traditional restaurant or food fair often excludes the diversity and richness of the culinary art developed in different Indigenous and peasant territories.
Our approach recovers the meaning that Indigenous and peasant communities give to food, to specific recipes, and to their relationship with nature, culture, society, the economy, and the power relations that permeate the ways in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed.
In a country ravaged by extractivism, preserving and promoting ancestral cooking is an imperative to save traditional cultures and promote community building.
