This study proposes to explore the dynamics between food, memory and identity of two ethnic groups in the Puebla state in Mexico in a context of health disruption. Food shortages were present before and after the prehispanic period [1], and these events were recorded in the Codex Chimalpopoca [2] and the “Relaciones Geograficas del Nuevo Mundo” [3]. In the aforementioned events, the region of the Sierra Norte de Puebla played a strategic role due to the perpetuity of the food systems, which its inhabitants developed in a context of high biodiversity; the prehispanic famine [4] and the food shortages in colonial times [5], determining elements in the biocultural food configuration of the main ethnic groups settled in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, as well as in other ethnic regions. According to Morell-Hart [6], changes from cultivated to wild plants can be observed in paleoethnobotanical samples, and these dietary dynamics may constitute evidence of a response strategy in the face of a famine.
The indigenous treatment of the nascent food systems incorporated a strong influence of their worldview, allowing for new processes of experimentation and learning in the context of the existing plant biodiversity of the new world [7], this food bioculture was forged before the arrival of the Spanish in the New World and after their arrival new cultural elements were added. The capacity for indigenous agency was invaluable in overcoming prehispanic famine, and to date, this capacity remains unchanged; some examples in Mexico and Europe have been recorded and documented [8,9,10,11].
Food bioculture is extensive and more complex than is widely believed [12, 13] globally over 6000 indigenous groups are evidence of this reality [14]. Its potential is limitless and has enabled indigenous communities to cope with past challenges (e.g. pandemics) [9, 15].
Mexico is part of this reality; in its territories, we find 11 linguistic families in 68 ethnic groups. This fact shows a cultural richness that places this country as one of the ten most linguistically diverse nations in the world [16]. In this context is located the Sierra Norte de Puebla, a vibrant region in central Mexico that is home to seven indigenous groups: totonac, ngigua, nahua, hñähñu, tepehua, mazatec and mixtec, each group possessing a cultural richness that is manifested in rituals, ceremonies, foods and worldviews derived from their prehispanic and colonial past. According to Maffi [17], the concept of biocultural diversity expresses a holistic idea of the diversity of life in nature and culture. It considers biodiversity, cultural diversity, and linguistic diversity as interrelated and interdependent manifestations of the net of life.
The phytogenetic resources of the Sierra Norte de Puebla region share an origin with Mesoamerica, constituting 15.4% of the species of the world food system (1500 edible plants are located in the Mesoamerican cultural region, of which 182 are from the Sierra) (see Fig. 1), which gives rise to an important biocultural richness [16, 18,19,20].
This provides the region and its people with an ethnic food heritage that includes a diversity of diets and edible plants (known in the region as quelites); through this study, we will present some of these diets, their preparation and plants used. This diversity of edible plants is distributed in indigenous territories through a network of local markets that constitute the phytogenetic bank of indigenous peoples [16, 21, 22], which has allowed indigenous people to preserve several original genetic lines in their territories, marking the relevance of ethnic bioculture [16, 23].
Food and ethnic identity: relationship and scope
Food has been a human need since humans appeared on Earth. The ways in which humans eat have been mediated by their cultural identity and the territory in which they live. It is to be expected that each social group will have food and eating habits that are differentiated by the specificities of their territories [24].
Food habits determine the frequency and intensity of consumption of certain foods and flavours, but also the configuration of these habits can be shaped by adverse events at the micro-, meso- or macro-level [25]. Ethnic foods have persisted over time linked to their territories, and recent studies argue that this food group has been able to adapt to the preferences and needs of a variety of consumers from different cultures [26, 27]. A study in Mayan territory argues that the persistence of these foods historically is associated with access, power relations, modern responses for an edible plant-based diet is growing, and in the West needs is reflected in a diet with higher inputs of green ingredients [28, 29]. Indeed, ethnic foods have gained prominence in modern civilization.
The appropriation of this ethnic food legacy has rested in recent centuries on the memory of indigenous people. The memory of the human species is genetic, linguistic, and cognitive [30, 31], and is expressed in the diversity of genes, languages and knowledge or wisdom [32]. This attribute allows the human species to look to the past to build a possible future. How would such a future be possible? Of course, by revealing the relationships that humanity has established with nature throughout history [33].
Humans persist in a variety of ecological environments, displaying an enormous diversity of behaviours [31, 34]. This has led them to develop coping strategies that have enabled their survival, and old and new challenges (e.g. climate change, pandemics, food insecurity) have led them to reassess their actions, for which biocultural memory, among other elements, is fundamental [35].
Globally, biocultural memory is represented by a “hard-core” of indigenous peoples numbering 476 million people [14, 36, 37]. According to Toledo [38] and Price [39], cultural diversity has generated differentiated contexts that have promoted learning, experimentation, and memorization of diverse relationships with nature.
According to Karim-Aly [40] knowledge is networked with idea and action. This takes on significance in research because science and practice are not separated. If theory and practice are divorced, they risk becoming invisible because they are disconnected from their context. This is especially true if we are talking about cultures with a strong connection to their environment.
The construction of an ethnic food knowledge has been made possible by the connections between culture and nature in a context of changes and mobilizations that indigenous people have historically capitalized on in a food bioculture [7, 41,42,43]. Food bioculture is defined as biodiversity humanized from ancestral times by indigenous groups. The interaction between indigenous people and nature has enabled a balanced and respectful social metabolism, which continues to this day [44].
The prehispanic and colonial history of indigenous people in Mexico has not been static but dynamic, trade routes or food shortage events are recorded facts [2,3,4,5, 37, 45, 46]. Mexico as megadiverse country has promoted the construction of a bioculture [47, 48].
In other ethnic regions of the world, we can identity these logics in the context of changes and mobilizations that make biocultural heritage possible, for example, the indigenous Warao, who have inhabited the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela for more than 2,000 years [49]. On the other hand, the indigenous people of the central Kalahari are estimated to be 18,000 years old [50]. In Australia, indigenous people have reached an age of over 50,000 years [51, 52], and Pygmies have lived in African forests for 60,000 years [53, 54]. Despite the resilience of indigenous people, we seem to have learned nothing; in less than three centuries, modern civilization has brought the planet to the brink of collapse [55, 56]. This analysis aims to show, through ethnic food memory, how informal institutions are important in the configuration of a new food reality that allows the revaluation of food heritage in the face of challenging scenarios such as climate change, food insecurity or pandemics.
Biocultural food memory
Biocultural food memory reveals the different interrelationships that a social group has with nature in the process of configuring its diet. The need to feed themselves has led indigenous groups since time immemorial to explore, learn about and experiment with nature, and these processes have provided them with extensive ancestral knowledge of the flora of the territories they have dominated.
But when we talk about food memory, we also evoke sensations and consider memories as an inseparable part of time [57]. This way of exploring food memory transports us from the past to the present and endows us with a prospective memory. According to [58], prospective memory is omnipresent in our daily lives. We rely on this type of memory to strengthen our resilience, an example of which was the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, where most indigenous people remembered the edible plants used by their ancestors to cope with different diseases [9]. In this sense, some indigenous communities in the Sierra Norte de Puebla have adopted this coping strategy that their ancestors used in the face of adversity, particularly health.
The characteristics of an ethnic diet are based on the worldview of the indigenous group, thus indigenous people have been able to identity plants for different uses in correlation with their needs. The indigenous groups memory records with each plant are kept by individual elders of the group and transferred from generation to generation through oral tradition. One example is Mafafa (Xanthosoma robustum), a wild plant that was used by indigenous nahua elders in the Sierra Norte de Puebla in Mexico and has now been rescued from nahua memory to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic as a food security strategy in the face of virus containment measures.
Food, memory, and identity in two indigenous societies of Puebla in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study
According to [59], the global food system depends on 30 cultivated plant species for its functioning, and three of these crops feed more than half of the world's population [60]. This dangerous reduction in species and their varieties is accentuated by the control of seeds by a minority of transnational corporations that generate increasingly specialized varieties without adaptive genetic plasticity [61,62,63]. Recent studies have pointed to the importance of incorporating new wild cultivars into the human diet to ensure food security [64, 65].
A small region such as the Sierra Norte de Puebla has 182 species of edible plants, which are collectively used and distributed through local markets in the municipalities that make up the region [66, 67]. According to [20], the genera Amaranthus, Begonia, Cucurbita, Brassica, Sechium, Peperomia, Rumex, Solanum, Porophyllum, Phaseolus and Nopalea are identified in the region (see supplementary data 1). There are other species that are not traded in local markets, these are exchanged by the indigenous people. All edible plants are consumed fresh; the forms of preparation are varied and include rudimentary methods of transformation to increase their digestibility and palatability, as well as to eliminate toxic substances.
Most edible plants come from the indigenous food system, i.e. from home gardens, family plots or milpas (symbiotically sustainable crop associations, e.g. maize-beans-squash). Many species are wild, and others are cultivated, but their use and management imply a process of humanization. The ancestral knowledge that the indigenous people of the Sierra Norte de Puebla have is a strategic advantage; for example, the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region has forced the indigenous people to make use of their edible plants that provide food of nutritional value. Disruptions in the local economy have dynamized the ethnic diet in the region; the changes combine economy and health, although they obtain a complementary economic income from sales in the local market, the consumption of their plants provides the healthy diet necessary to combat the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken humanity by surprise, the rapid spread of the virus has left several sectors of the economy (e.g. tourism, travel, food system) in shock [68, 69]. As of 16 February 2022, WHO has reported 412 million people infected and 5.8 million people dead from the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide [70].
COVID-19 threatens global food security, especially in developing countries [71]. The current debate on food security calls for the construction of a research agenda that responds to the goals of the 2030 Agenda and transforms food systems without overstepping the boundaries of sustainability [72]. According to [73] global governance met in Paris in September 2015 under the leadership of the United Nations and agreed on the 2030 Agenda. The 2030 Agenda comprises 17 sustainable development goals and 169 sub-goals that serve as a global benchmark for the transition to sustainability. The agenda recognizes that different issues such as poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, environmental degradation, among others, are intertwined and can therefore only be addressed in synergy.
The indigenous food systems of the Sierra Norte de Puebla are based on a socioecological reality that has been historically constructed since ancestral times. According to Guzman [74], this means that food is determined not only by the environment but also by the values and meaning attributed to food.
These food systems have historically been differentiated from the non-indigenous population, although they are increasingly integrated and altered by the latter [74]. The recovery of ethnic biocultural memory is not only strategic for future generations of indigenous populations but can also form the basis for non-indigenous food-poor territories to configure new food systems. In this logic, an alternative is proposed that allow for a transition towards the sustainability of food systems, and the proposal focuses on rescuing the food preserved by indigenous groups through biocultural food memory. A diet derived from edible plants is nutritious and makes it possible to respond to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the two indigenous societies, the totonac and nahua, the role of women was relevant, the testimonies collected during the fieldwork show that the management of food knowledge covers most of the phases, i.e. identification and management of edible plants, recipes, different forms of preparation and transmissibility of knowledge. According to Ardren [75], in the prehispanic period, indigenous women played a relevant role in the new world, particularly in food preparation. Crown [76] argues that the differences between diet (food actually consumed) and cuisine (cultural beliefs and practices related to food) should be seen separately since women have traditionally had the knowledge of cooking, changes in cultural values about food affect women much more than men.
According to archaeological evidence and ethnohistory, ritual foods were difficult to prepare, as they required specialized training or ingredients that men did not possess, the author suggests that women who held knowledge of such aspects of cooking were highly valued individuals [75,76,77].
