The great gift of the nanakateras of Acaxochitlán

A very important factor in research is ethics and this can be expressed in different ways, it involves how we enter and leave the community and the relationship of respect we establish with our informants. It is the gift received and the contradiction contributed, as the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss would say. That is why we must always return to the community to give the informants the product resulting from our project. The anthropological tradition has many ways of recognizing the valuable knowledge shared with the people of the communities that allowed us to live with and learn from them.

It was two years ago, right in the rainy season, that we met Cristina and Florentina, two nanakateras, which in Nahuatl means mushroom gathering women. They welcomed us into their home in the community of Los Reyes, in the municipality of Acaxochitlán and showed us their forest and offered us their stews. Today they are not only recognized by their community and their authorities, but even by the Conservatory of Mexican Gastronomic Culture, a UNESCO consultant organization, so their presence reaches national and international levels as collectors and traditional cooks. But their affirmation comes from a long history of struggle to be valued and vindicate their work, since for years they were stigmatized by the municipal authorities themselves when commercializing mushrooms. Hence they founded the Mushroom Festival in their community since 2012 along with 52 nanakateras.

Nanakateras at the Mushroom Festival, with biologist Leticia Romero Bautista

They, along with other women of their community, represent the living essence of that pre-Hispanic past that goes from the sowing of the cornfield, the gathering of mushrooms for both edible and medicinal uses (blue and white ears, buds, ganoderma, babositos, pork tropa), clothing (embroidered blouses traditionally combined in bright colors of red, green, blue, yellow, etc.), to the traditional clothing (embroidered blouses that traditionally combine in bright colors of red, green, blue, yellow, etc.), to the gastronomy, ranging from the various utensils (traditional smoke stove, with its wood stove, its comales, its shawls, shawls, skirts, etc.); quexquemitl, sashes, shawls, skirts and above all the gastronomy, ranging from the various utensils (traditional smoke stove, with its wood stove, its clay comales, its metate and metlapilli, pots of various sizes, wooden shovels), to the ingredients and condiments (calabacitas, chilacayotes, huitlacoche, corn, beans, green beans, quelites, various chilies).

The meeting with the nanakateras was thanks to the sum of two multidisciplinary projects, on the one hand the one represented by the biologist-mycologist Dr. Leticia Romero Bautista, in collaboration with the socio-anthropologist Dr. Silvia Mendoza Mendoza, both researchers at the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo. And on the other hand, the project "Identity in Megadiversity contexts. Processes of interacting reconfiguration" which sought to add to an existing research to combine science with art from virtual ethnography in a context of cultural and ecological diversity, promoted by María Angélica Galicia, PhD in anthropology, from the Institute of Anthropological Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Nanakateras in the video, with sociologist Carlos Mejía Reyes

Thus, after recording and editing the video "Mujeres hongueras de Acaxochitlán, Hidalgo, México", last Saturday, September 27th, the researchers involved presented Cristina Martínez Cruz, Florentina Martínez Martínez Martínez and the girl Camila Martínez Vargas with a recognition as well as the visual material in which they are the protagonists. We thank them and their families for the generosity with which they shared their knowledge, which they have transmitted from generation to generation.

September 27 awards ceremony for the nanakateras Florentina Martínez Martínez, Cristina Martínez Cruz, Camila Martínez Vargas, and the gastronomic cultural promoter Raúl Guerrero Bustamante by anthropologist Karina Pizarro Hernández.

Florentina and Cristina represent many of the women in our country who, thanks to their determination and conviction that what they do benefits both their families and a community tradition that must be preserved. One of the objectives of both projects was to empower them from their own knowledge and today we can see them very proud as national traditional cooks.

The two of them, along with Porfiria Rodríguez Cadena and Martha Gómez Aguilar, traditional cooks from Santiago de Anaya del Valle del Mezquital, in 2018 attended the VI World Forum of Mexican Gastronomy, representing the state of Hidalgo, held at the Museum of Latin American Art in California, United States and organized by the Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles and the Conservatory of Mexican Gastronomic Culture. Both also received the medal at the Viva la Cocina Mexicana en Norteamérica festival, held in Long Beach, California, as recognition of merit for their work in the dissemination and promotion of Hidalgo's cuisine.

Last year, Doña Cristina, along with 23 traditional cooks of the country, participated in the First National Congress of Gastronomy, Culture, Tourism and Business: Let's Try Mexico, in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur.

"And let's see, where are the mushrooms taking me. Well, I used to say that I was only from the cornfield, from the forest, that I couldn't get ahead. Well, all I did was walk and go through the woods, and look, the mushrooms have taken me all over the place. They and I didn't become famous," Doña Cristina expressed with joy.

Doña Cristina and Florentina cooking on an ecological sawdust stove, Cristina's own invention.