Pushing the boundaries of indigeneity and agricultural knowledge: Oaxacan immigrant gardening in California

Abstract

This article explores a community garden in the Northern Central Coast of California, founded and cultivated by Triqui and Mixteco peoples native to Oaxaca, Mexico. The practices depicted in this case study contrast with common agroecological discourses, which assume native people's agricultural techniques are consistently static and place-based. Rather than choose cultivation techniques based on an abstract notion of indigenous tradition, participants utilize the most appropriate practices for their new environment. Garden participants combine agricultural practices developed in Oaxaca with those learned while working on California farms. Through the process of community gardening, immigrants find a new interpretation of their own shifting indigenous identity, based on culinary and agrarian practices in a new place. Additionally, they form solidarities between historic ethnic divides of Triqui and Mixteco, based on newfound commonalities in the garden. This case study provides an important example of the current articulation, construction, and deployment of indigeneity in the context of migration and agriculture, and its implications for immigrant opportunities and futures.

"Nature is there; its free": Urban greenspace and the social determinants of health of immigrant families

“…While gardening, familiar traditions, from the design of garden spaces to digging soil, watering seeds, harvesting and food preparation provide continuity in agricultural and culinary traditions (Corlett et al, 2003;Minkoff-Zern, 2012). Likewise, memories stimulated by bodies of water (Cadzow et al, 2010), forests (Kwiatkowski, 2004), parks and greenhouses (Rishbeth, 2004a(Rishbeth, , 2004bRishbeth and Finney, 2006) serve to bridge home and host country.…”

Urban livestock ownership, management, and regulation in the United States: An exploratory survey and research agenda

“…This focus on community and culture is in community- (Domene & Saurí, 2007;Eizenberg, 2012;McClintock, 2010McClintock, , 2013Turner, 2011). A number of scholars have also detailed the importance of urban agriculture to immigrants, as a source of recreation, culturally significant foods, community, as well as a repository of agronomic and culinary knowledge (Airriess & Clawson, 1994;Baker, 2005;Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2012;Minkoff-Zern, 2012; act. White (2011b, p. 16), for example, describes how many African American women in Detroit engage in urban agriculture as activists w consider themselves freedom fighters against Economic arguments are less prevalent among our respondents.…”

Sowing Seeds of Displacement: Gentrification and Food Justice in Oakland, CA

“…However, like sustainability more generally, place is often valorized in a way that is postpolitical and posited as a universal good (Swyngedouw, 2009). Some focus on the ability of gardens and other local food systems to help communities create a sense of home in a new country and maintain connection to cultural foodways (Mares and Pena, 2011;Minkoff-Zern, 2012;Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2014;Alkon and Vang, 2016). Some focus on the ability of gardens and other local food systems to help communities create a sense of home in a new country and maintain connection to cultural foodways (Mares and Pena, 2011;Minkoff-Zern, 2012;Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2014;Alkon and Vang, 2016).…”

“…Food justice activism subverts this approach by reframing urban places as sources of potential power for low-income communities of color. Some focus on the ability of gardens and other local food systems to help communities create a sense of home in a new country and maintain connection to cultural foodways (Mares and Pena, 2011;Minkoff-Zern, 2012;Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2014;Alkon and Vang, 2016). Others have attended to the more pragmatic benefits of place, emphasizing the opportunities food justice can hold for community-led economic development (Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny, 2004;White, 2011;Anguelovski, 2014), social network creation (Aptekar, 2015) and social movement building (Weissman, 2011;Loh and Agyeman, 2017).…”