Food, Community, and Resistance
A new book by Gina Núñez-Mchiri features ingredients used regionally across borders but is ultimately about building community. Photo Courtesy Núñez-Mchiri
Guillermina Gina Núñez-Mchiri was born in Salinas, California. As a child of farm laborers, she moved with her family every two to three months. When she was not in school, she was working in the fields. Dr. Núñez-Mchiri, soon-to-be dean of San Diego State University-Imperial Valley, has since dedicated her studies to anthropology, environmental issues, political ecology, social justice, immigration, and border dynamics.
Through her project with NAHJ and the Ford Foundation, Núñez-Mchiri returned to food and food systems more directly with a recipe book, tentatively titled “Border Foodways: Culture, Care, and Community Building on the U.S.-Mexico Border,” that transforms border narratives through the use of oral history. Through interviews and cooking demonstrations, Núñez-Mchiri and her team of students at the University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP) documented how immigrant cooks build community and express care and create a sense of belonging through food. One example is the way in which women in El Paso’s colonias, or small neighborhood communities, combat food insecurity and also share a recipe.
‘There are people in our community that are not fancy chefs. They're not PhDs, but they carry people's knowledge and our wisdom and our practices’
Núñez-Mchiri sought to create a cookbook rooted in the experiences of those making the food, which includes immigrants and people living along the border. The book features recipes and highlights the history and value of ingredients used regionally across borders, but is ultimately about more than the cooking process: Her goal is to build community, respect, and understanding of the food and those who prepare it.
In the book, Núñez-Mchiri highlights urban cook Antonio, who showed her students at UTEP how to make tamales. The purpose of the presentation was to highlight the resourcefulness and beauty of preparing a meal with traditional ingredients that counter the unhealthy diets consumed by many working-class families because of necessity. The book, which is presently in digital manuscript form, is accompanied by videos of cooking demonstrations.
“You can read about Antonio, but when you see him on a short video, it just brings Antonio to life,” says Núñez-Mchiri. ‘That there are people in our community that are not fancy chefs. They're not PhDs, but they carry people's knowledge and our wisdom and our practices.”
Traditional food cooking workshop offered at UTEP. Photo Courtesy Núñez-Mchiri
In the book and video, Núñez-Mchiri documents the meal and the ceremonial process Antonio follows when making tamales, which includes awareness of the ingredients and a ritual burning of copal — an aromatic tree resin traditionally used by indigenous communities on both sides of the U.S. Mexico border and beyond. In this case, it was used to bless the food and the people witnessing the preparation of the meal.
Núñez-Mchiri was motivated to respond and engage with injustices and equity issues she saw happening across the country with essential workers, many of them immigrant food workers, amid quarantine and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. “(People in) communities of color have died at higher rates… I can't be a scholar and be talking about food, knowing that my people are dying. Knowing that people like my parents are dying, that would bring me to tears… I remember the fires in California, the farm workers were in the fields. We were in the pandemic, the farm workers were in the fields.”
Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Núñez-Mchiri and her students have been collecting and documenting oral histories for the cookbook. She believes that beyond the recipes, the cookbook is a vehicle to honor the resourcefulness that allows immigrant communities to feed their families and their communities. “We need to have the written record. We need to have the testimonies, the videos, the products that say, ‘Here's your story. It will be archived. Someone will be able to access your story and write other pieces,’” Núñez-Mchiri said.
Guillermina Gina Núñez-Mchiri. Courtesy Núñez-Mchiri
Núñez-Mchiri was intentional about featuring both men and women. She highlights how immigrant women have used food to provide for their family and their community. From street vending to preparing meals for church fundraisers, through food, these women are nourishing entire communities. Núñez-Mchiri also highlights men in the kitchen. One of her profiles focuses on Jonathan, a young man who makes tortas, a type of sandwich, for people experiencing homelessness. Another focuses on the story of meals prepared by Edgard, a young queer Chicano artist who provided meals to refugees as a form of resistance to then-President Donald Trump’s border enforcement-centered immigration policy fueled by anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric.
Edgard would travel around Juarez, Mexico, to buy bread for tortas he and his friends would prepare for refugees. Núñez-Mchiri remembers him saying, “I'm one guy, and I didn't even learn to cook from my mom. I worked at a restaurant, but I have friends, and I'm gonna ask friends to help me cook.” For Núñez-Mchiri, this narrative captured food as resistance.
Núñez-Mchiri hopes that through her book and videos, people will walk away with a more nuanced understanding of who is involved in our food systems and communities. By documenting food preparation and distribution as a form of care and community building, she is centralizing, collecting, and archiving the oral histories of people who use cross-border recipes and ingredients to look after the wellbeing of their communities.
When asked what inspired the project, she said, “A lot of it is inspired by my heart and my love for my community, from people like my parents, people who I've worked with in the fields… I know what hands smell like; even when you wash and shower, you still smell like an onion because the oils penetrate your skin and your nails. I know what it feels like when you have a fever because your back hurts so much. That has given me the empathy and the sensitivity to say these people matter. My people matter.”
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Cora Cervantes-Orta was born in México and raised in Los Angeles. Growing up within a diverse community taught her to understand issues from different perspectives. She completed her undergraduate studies at Columbia University and her Master's degree in Multimedia Journalism at New York University. Her work has been published by NBC News Digital, Al-Jazeera, NPR's Latino USA, Salon, NAHJ: palabra and Narratively. She has produced stories for MSNBC and NBC News NOW. During her time at NBC Universal she has worked as Diversity Coordinator for NBC News and MSNBC, and as an Associate Producer for MSNBC’s Politics Nation with Al Sharpton. Currently, she is an Associate Coverage Producer for NBC News. Cora is passionate about equity in representation, in the media. She currently serves as Vice President of NAHJ’s Los Angeles Chapter. She resides in East Los Angeles, California.