El Centro workshop inspires community in the kitchen

El Centro Académico Cultural de Humboldt hosted a hands-on workshop at the Food Sovereignty Lab (FSL) that taught students how to make different foods from various Latine cultures on March 27. The event was organized by Leti Phillips Armenta, a psychology graduate student at Cal Poly Humboldt and food sovereignty and wellness student assistant at El Centro.

Live demonstrations were given by Milena Cunningham from the Social Justice, Equity & Inclusion Center (SJEIC) who showed how to make Columbian arepas and Guillermo Garcia Zacarias, a CPH politics student, who showed how to make pupusas.

After these demonstrations concluded, attendees were then given the opportunity to recreate the instructions provided and make their own portions of each dish.

The event ended with another live demonstration, led by Guillermo Salazar from Mariachi Mar Pacifico, who showed participants how to make Salvadoran quesadillas, a sweet-bread dessert.

Music was played throughout the demonstrations as people moved around freely from station to station, cooking, asking questions, and mingling with one another. The event acted as a community space for people to come together and learn from one another.

Along with the workshop’s live demonstrations, the event also included a brief explanation of The Milpa Cycle, an ancient Mesoamerican agricultural system that promotes sustainability when growing food.

“It’s pretty much a symbiotic relationship of various organisms: trees, plants, herbs, bacteria,” Phillips Armenta said. “They make this piece of land rich in its soil and the fruits that it provides.”

Food Sovereignty

Through this event, students from El Centro as well as other Latine students were given the ability to learn about various recipes and ingredients that align with their cultural identity that they may otherwise not have had access to.

The FSL acts as our campus’ only kitchen where students are able to host food-related events, making it an excellent environment for practicing and teaching food sovereignty, the right that every individual has to food that is culturally appropriate for them.

“Everybody has different access to foods,” said Cynthia Ammerman Muñoz, an assistant professor in the Department of Native American Studies. “Not everybody has the same access, whether it’s income or location. And something that these workshops are teaching students is how to get affordable produce or affordable foods and what to do with them, teaching them how to cook with them.”

Motivation for holding workshop

El Centro decided to host this event as a way to combat different grievances that students have expressed in regards to their time on campus, one being homesickness, which many students experience.

Some feel as though there’s a disconnect from others who share the same cultural lens as them, which can influence language, values, and even jokes. Additionally, students have felt that they didn’t have access to a healthy diet. This was a result of conflicting schedules with the campus’s cafeteria, a resource many rely on to obtain their daily meals.

“Beyond just connecting people based on where they come from,” Garcia Zacarias said “I think it’s a way to honor the very individual skill of the person.”

The workshop acted as a space where students could come together to learn how to make simple, affordable meals that could simultaneously help to connect them to their culture as well as other students.

“It doesn’t matter what culture you are from, what your background is,” said Ammerman Muñoz. “Everybody is welcomed.”