“Feeding identity: an exploration of food, race, and territoriality in Coquí, Chocó”

I participated at the 2022 Annual Meeting of Ethnology “Mutual Parenting and Food” in Bolivia (RAE, its abbreviation in Spanish) with the presentation: “Feeding identity: An exploration of food, race and territoriality in Coquí, Chocó, Colombia”.

In this event I addressed how human beings relate to food and other vital elements for our existence, such as water.

Climate change, deforestation and other related activities have been detrimental for biodiversity. It is therefore essential to transform the ways that we relate to what surrounds us. In the context of the challenges that the Anthropocene poses, I found it pertinent to show how the community of Coquí, in the Colombian Pacific, has a lifestyle that shows care for the environment, and establishes their notion of identity and race based on the recognition of the diversity of the territory they inhabit.

In this community, it is possible to find types of mutual upbringing: identities and territorialities that position themselves, through the leadership of women and in their conception of the ‘Biogeographical Chocó’, as the home of all forms of coexistence, thus allowing us to foresee a path for the creation of community models based on racial, climate, and ecological justice.

People in Coquí build their identity through activities of daily life, such as agriculture, fishing, and cooking. Activities that are connected as such to governance structures seeking black territorial autonomy and good living practices.

Local discourses in this community are mechanisms to explain tensions with modernity, race, food, political agency, and territorial autonomy. The use of local ingredients such as coconut, fish, hierbas de azotea, corn, and plantain are vitally important tools to define, reflect upon, and, through that lens, understand a coquiseña community’s identity. Likewise, the prevalence of traditional dishes such as ‘sopa de resplandor’, juju, and tapado are dishes that maintain the legacy of the coquiseños’ ancestors and their struggle for freedom. They are a reaffirmation of the history of the African diaspora.

Foodways have been a pillar for the community to build its black identity around flavor, forms of production, food harvesting, and traditional knowledge. Through ingredients, metaphors, stories, and symbols around these themes, a sense of belonging is nurtured. For example, the hiding of seeds in the braided hair of a woman when trying to escape from the plantations or finding cures for the body with plants from the forest to live much longer.

Territorial autonomy has allowed a consolidation of a radical and fugitive food geography, in accordance with what has been proposed by authors such as Tina Campt, Fred Moten, and Stefano Harney in their research work. It also shows ontological connections of a relational nature with land, perspectives on black political activism, and notions of race and sustainable economies, which dialogue with the global capitalist model in how they use local products and their understanding of biodiversity. These topics are also explored by Vandana Shiva, Arturo Escobar, Michael Taussig, and Eduardo Kohn.

All of this is represented in associative projects such as the Zotea community restaurant in 2019, the construction of a hut of local knowledge from Coquí in 2020, and the publication of the book Abrazar la Tierra: Memorias Colectivas de la Cocina Ancestral de Coquí, Chocó (Ed. Hammbre de cultura, 2022), which aims to gather this traditional knowledge.

Alejandra Salamanca Anthropologist, Universidad de

D.C.