The Women Who Turned Ancestral Gastronomy into Haute Cuisine
Eufracia Kuyuedo and her daughter, the leader Anitalia Pijachi, are at the forefront of reclaiming ancestral Indigenous gastronomy in the Colombian Amazon—a model of sustainable eating and a delight for the senses.
Eufracia Kuyuedo, left, and Anitalia Pijachi, right, peeling cassava in their chagra, 20 km from the city of Leticia.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in El Espectador in July 2024. This report was produced with support from the Rainforest Journalism Fund in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center.
At 70 years old, Doña Eufracia Kuyuedo Fusiñoteriza carries many stories of discrimination. This one has a happy ending. It begins with a journey in search of opportunity: young Eufracia leaves the ancestral territory of the Murui people on the Igará-Paraná River to settle in Leticia, the capital of Colombia's Amazon region. There, she works in private homes, cooking, cleaning, and caring for children. She already knows—because it was drilled into her with beatings and gags by the nuns at the Indigenous boarding school back home—that she must not speak her language. In Leticia, she learns she must not eat her food either. “They insulted us: Worm-eaters! Toad-eaters! Ant-eaters! We felt ashamed, so we hid our dishes.” The contempt of her employers matched the revulsion of the missionaries who arrived in the Amazon in the 17th century. “Pots full of monkeys, rats, lizards, parrots, and all manner of filth, even ants and worms,” lamented the famished Jesuit Francisco de Figueroa.
But recently, what the “savages” eat is no longer considered filth. “Memorable flavors,” “use of fermentation,” “ancestral techniques,” and “management of cassava byproducts” are among the reasons the jury of Colombia’s National Prize for Traditional Cuisines awarded first place in 2017 to Doña Eufracia’s iyiko, the signature dish of the Murui people. The award recognized far more than a recipe: Doña Eufracia stood alongside her daughter, the ethno-educator Anitalia Pijachi, as the bearer and disseminator of ancestral knowledge, as well as biologist Alejandra Currea and anthropologist Iván Quiceno, who revealed the profound social and environmental implications of its preparation.
The contest, organized by Colombia’s Ministry of Culture, aligns with the global effort led by the FAO to promote sustainable agri-food systems like those of Indigenous peoples—systems that could help curb climate change and eradicate world hunger, one of the lingering goals of the 2030 Agenda. According to the FAO, around 735 million people went hungry in 2023—112 million more than in 2019.
From left to right, Anitalia Pijachi, Alejandra Currea, Eufracia Kuyuedo, and Iván Quiceno, winners of Colombia’s 2017 National Prize for Traditional Cuisines.
MORE THAN A CHAGRA
Doña Eufracia walks with a limp as she climbs the slope leading to one of her chagras, near the Tacana river, which flows into the Amazon a few kilometers downstream from the city of Leticia. The sharp pain in her knee, persistent for years, doesn’t stop her from grabbing her machete every morning and heading out to work—a lifelong habit. “My mother used to wake us at four in the morning, and by five we’d be out weeding or harvesting cassava. That’s how I learned. In our culture, it’s tradition for a woman to have a chagra—this is our identity.”
The chagra is a family garden that has long ensured Amazonian peoples a diverse and nutritious diet, as well as medicine, fuel, and construction materials. It’s a sophisticated, intelligent system that boosts biodiversity instead of harming it, and it begins, paradoxically, with the clearing of a small patch of forest. The felled vegetation is left to dry during the dry season, then burned in a controlled manner so the ashes can enrich the acidic Amazonian soil. Branches and trunks are collected to serve as firewood for cooking throughout the year, and the staple crops are planted—cassava foremost among them, a tuber that can be processed in many ways. Alongside it: plantain, banana, pineapple, sugarcane, chili, bell pepper, corn, beans, cucumber, tomato, and lulo. For two or three years, the chagra remains productive; then, as the soil becomes depleted, a new plot is chosen. The abandoned site is left to regenerate naturally, so it can be used again years later—or fruit trees are planted, which will eventually become a vital part of the local diet: açaí, umarí, canangucho, bacaba, cupuaçu, arazá, chontaduro, macambo. The musicality of their names is matched only by their nutritional value and delicious flavor.
Anitalia Pijachi, harvesting lulo, a fruit used to make juices and hot sauces.
Doña Eufracia and her extended family live in an Indigenous reserve near Leticia. They have 50 hectares of forest available for their chagras, but have only cleared six—enough to ensure what this Murui chagra-farmer calls “abundance,” one of her favorite words: “The chagra is important so the family can have full bellies and be happy. If there’s hunger, there’s violence, there’s theft.” A plantation for the family and with the family: “We work together—women, men, adults and children, neighbors too help out when there’s heavy work to do.”
The chagra is the space of fertility: source of food, setting for sexual encounters and childbirth, driver of social relationships and festivals that flourish through the exchange of food. The FAO, in its report Indigenous Peoples' Food Systems, describes it well: “They [chagras] underpin cultural, social and spiritual manifestations.” And more than ever, it highlights their relevance: “They can contribute to current debates on sustainable and resilient food systems.” But it also warns of the factors that threaten them: “Market integration and monetization; climate change; biodiversity loss; external pressures; decline in the transmission of traditional knowledge; youth migration.”
Anitalia Pijachi during a lecture at the “Comiendo Sabroso” seminar at the National University of Colombia.
eating deliciously
The classroom of the course Comiendo Sabroso [eating deliciously] at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia campus in Leticia is especially crowded on the afternoon when doña Eufracia and her daughter Anitalia share their experience as chagra cultivators and traditional cooks. The success of the event is surely helped by the fact that at the end of the session they will offer their now-famous iyiko. But before the feast, Anitalia, 44 years old, a long-time leader working with the communities near Leticia and deeply knowledgeable about their socioeconomic situation, makes a rather bleak diagnosis. “It’s sad to say, but nutritionally speaking, we are doing poorly. Children no longer eat healthily. In the indigenous communities of this area, there are more stores than chagras. We see children underweight and too short; their food is very poor—Brazilian sausage, bread, and a little egg.”
Dany Mahecha, anthropologist and co-organizer of the Comiendo Sabroso course, where food practices in the region are analyzed (and tasted), observes that the integration of indigenous societies into the market economy has undermined their food autonomy in several ways. Commercialization: “They used to produce a great diversity of fruits for self-consumption. Now production is market-oriented, and more effort goes into what sells well.” The prestige associated with eating canned products: “People sell their fresh fish and buy a can of sardines.” The change in daily habits: “A wonderful palm-based drink like milpeso is lost because it takes time to prepare, while oatmeal takes five minutes.” Changing aspirations in new generations: “School stigmatizes physical and agricultural work and promotes individual economic success.” Despite all this, Mahecha has reasons to be optimistic. “For many years you didn’t see chagra products in the restaurants downtown Leticia. Today, tucupí, cassava starch, or fariña are very successful in elegant restaurants. The reason is that they are delicious. And those who prepare them are now considered wise.”
The feast that closes the session confirms that optimism. Attendees savor the iyiko: a fish stew in tucupí (a spicy sauce made from cassava and chili) with macambo seeds (fruit from the cacao family), bell pepper, chicory leaves, and a handful of ants that add a delicate aroma. Accompanied by casabe (cassava flour bread) and cahuana (a drink made from starch and pineapple). Between bites and sips, interjections of pleasure can be heard (“delicious,” “exquisite,” “very tasty”), critical appreciations (“textures, flavors, smells, all extraordinary”), and a categorical conclusion: “mastery level.” Doña Eufracia beams from ear to ear. And all the ingredients: from her chagra, from her hands.
With iyiko, a fish stew with tucupí made from seasonal ingredients, doña Eufracia and her team won the 2017 National Traditional Kitchens Award of Colombia.
INTANGIBLE HERITAGE
The success of doña Eufracia and Anitalia’s iyiko symbolizes, in a way, the redemption of the Murui people, who a century ago, during the rubber boom, suffered extraordinary calamities to provide enormous benefits to the ruthless “white bosses” and, in the process, kick-start the global automobile industry. On the brink of physical extermination, the survivors of that genocide faced, from the mid-20th century onwards, evangelization and civilization processes that, through missionaries and schools, suppressed their cultural expressions—starting with their language, shamanism, and of course, their cuisine.
In recent decades, the wind has blown in their favor. Indigenous peoples are now examples to follow. In 2003, UNESCO, through the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, encouraged governments worldwide to dedicate resources to protect the “melting pot of cultural diversity and guarantor of sustainable development.” In Colombia, the Ministry of Culture conducted a very pessimistic diagnosis of the situation of traditional cuisines in 2011, and in 2012 launched the Policy for the Knowledge, Safeguarding, and Promotion of Traditional Food and Cuisines. “Cooking schools were not teaching techniques native to Colombian cuisine,” explains Mónica Pulido, advisor to this policy. “Many preparations and products were being lost because the knowledge holders (sabedoras) were dying without passing on their knowledge to new generations, which implies a loss of identity. And there were external factors, like climate change, spraying to eradicate coca, the increase of monocultures, or the armed conflict.” Pulido emphasizes that the policy goes far beyond rescuing recipes: “We seek to generate recognition and protection of food production and its processing—that is, the entire agro-food ecosystem that contributes to food sovereignty, social cohesion, and environmental care.” Among the many initiatives promoted by the Ministry, a cookbook takes us back to Leticia.
Cassava flatbread, made from cassava flour, is one of the staple foods in the diet of the People of the Center.
ancestral COOKBOOK
One hot morning in Leticia, fifteen women from the indigenous peoples Magütá, Matapí, Murui, Yagua, and Cocama gather to confirm that their life stories and the recipes passed down from their grandmothers have been recorded in the Recetario ancestral. Cocinas indígenas de Leticia, Amazonas (Ancestral Recipe Book. Indigenous Kitchens of Leticia, Amazonas). There is the octogenarian doña Julia, from the Magütá people, with her inchicapi chicken stew: “We live daily from the chagra.” Or doña Evanilde, 56 years old, from the Yagua people, with her smoked meat, who was kidnapped by the man who would become the father of her children and took 40 years to reunite with her mother: “My dream is to open a restaurant.” Also present is doña Eufracia with her iyico: “It is what we offer to visitors. The first thing you do is: ‘Come to the kitchen, eat.’ To cool their heart and mind.”
Anitalia, who was part of the team that produced the recipe book, acts as the master of ceremonies: “There is no need to bring products from Europe; it’s time to showcase what is ours. The idea is to recover from you, who have never received attention, everything behind a dish. Let us honor this moment by remembering the grandparents who have already passed and took with them a wealth of recipes and wisdom.” Since winning the Traditional Kitchens award, Anitalia—deeply involved since adolescence in community processes—has channeled her advocacy for indigenous cultures through food production. “A door was opened to make the situation of the communities and women visible. Since then, I have been like that seed, as the elders say, showing, denouncing, and proposing.”
A few weeks after the recipe book’s launch, she travels to Huelva, Spain, as part of the Colombian delegation to the III Ibero-American Gastronomy Congress, Binómico, whose theme is to deepen “the influence of gastronomy, tourism, and agro-food as agents of global change and social transformation.”
The Pijachi-Kuyuedo family chagra has become an educational space for schools in Leticia.
GASTRONOMIC TOURISM
When she travels, and in recent years she has done so frequently, Anitalia misses her chagra. Enduring the sun while harvesting cassava or weeding, the laughter with her mother while preparing casabe or extracting starch, the tranquility of the nights, the baths in the river. The family, with the essential contribution of Don Arsecio Pijachi, husband and father, has committed to opening Chivavaña—the name of the chagra—to tourists, social and natural science researchers, cooks, university and school students. The dream: that this initiative generates enough income to keep the knowledge alive and relevant, while also ensuring a dignified old age for Don Arsecio and Doña Eufracia, who after working “like donkeys” since adolescence, have no right to a pension because, according to the law, they have not contributed to social security.
Collecting the larva of the mojojoy, a delicacy rich in protein and unsaturated fats omega-6 and omega-9.
One Sunday, like any other, the chagra is bustling. Daughters, grandchildren, a niece with her family, a university student from Bogotá, and the coordinator of an NGO in Leticia all gather together. In a group, they venture into the jungle, joking along the way. Doña Eufracia stumbles, falls face-first, and gets up laughing. "This knee won’t beat me," she says. She keeps limping until they find the fallen palm. Three months earlier, some holes were made in the trunk; beetles laid their eggs; now it’s time to harvest the delicious mojojoy larvae. The young people take turns opening the trunk and exposing the pulp where the larvae swarm gracefully: white, thick, undulating. Doña Eufracia grabs one, bites off its head, and swallows it.
Back at home, she removes the guts and throws the larvae in the pan to roast in their own fat: unsaturated omega-6 and omega-9 (and 18% protein). Unaware of the nutritional composition, carried away by the delicious flavor, the diners are happy.
Because in Doña Eufracia’s chagra, stories always have a happy ending.
