The Seri Traditional Food System: Cultural Heritage, Dietary Change, and the (Re) Awakening of Dietary Resilience Among Coastal Hunter-Gatherers in the Mexican Northwest

Hernández-Santana, Guillermo; Narchi, Nemer E.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-99025-5_7

Cited by 4 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…The nineteenth century saw a dramatic decline in the Seri population: rough estimates place the population at some 4000 individuals in 1830 to around 300 in 1865. These figures reflect some of the effects of the darkest period of Seri-Mexican conflict, known as the Encinas War (1855–1865) (Hernández-Santana and Narchi 2018 and references therein).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…The Seris celebrated the new lunar cycle during the last lunation of the year, Imám Imám Iizax , ‘moon when the cactus fruit is ripe’ (Moser and Marlett 2010:413), in a tradition of shared food, pitaya wine, and singing and dancing. Today, a two-day, community-wide event held at the end of June is celebrated as the Seri New Year (for a complete description of the Seri calendar and its relationship with food collection, see Hernández-Santana and Narchi 2018). During the celebration, tourists are welcomed to savor local food and drink, such as the pitaya wine that plays an important part in the festivities.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Incidentally, people in the community maintain small convenience stores, where it is common to find a large number of highly caloric products, such as sugary drinks, canned foods, processed bread, instant soups, potato chips, candies, and other snacks (Hernández-Santana and Narchi 2018). The increase of high-caloric diets within the community evidences the destruction of a food production system resulting from culinary colonialism ( sensu Grey and Patel 2015).…”

Section: Discussion: What Happened To Seri Sweets?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Continuous conflict forced the Seris into isolation in coastal areas, as well as onto the remote Tiburon Island (Bowen 1983). Because of this isolation, their local ecological knowledge, including their diet (Hernández-Santana and Narchi 2018), remained remarkably unaffected by exogenous epistemologies until more consistent contact with the market economy in the twentieth century brought significant change.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What Happened to Seri Sweets? Dietary Transition through Culinary Acculturation

Narchi

Marlett

Hernández-Santana

2020

Journal of Ethnobiology

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During the decades of 1960–1980, Richard S. Felger and Mary B. Moser researched the botanical knowledge of the Seris (Comcaac), a hunter-gatherer and fishing people living in the arid desert of northwestern Mexico. They recorded and published an extensive body of species-specific data so rich in biological and ethnographic detail that it is possible to reconstruct a quickly eroding, annual dietary cycle; such a comprehensive account is a precious resource to study transitions in the community diet. In this article, we focus on Seri sweets and sweeteners, represented by 16 fruits, four agave species, one perennial halophyte, pollen paste (beebread), and honey. We rely on archival research to explore various data sources, situating ethnobiological questions in a socio-historical context to provide information on the spatial distribution of resources and the community's livelihood, which can be correlated with specific political zeitgeist. We examine how the swift integration of the Seri society into the state-mediated market in the early-mid twentieth century introduced greater use of exogenous sweeteners and displaced local food items, resulting in culinary acculturation that affected the community's health and well-being. Through understanding the process, we aim to present local foods in ways that are comprehensible to younger Seris in order to foster efforts toward food sovereignty in their community.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussion: What Happened To Seri Sweets?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

What Happened to Seri Sweets? Dietary Transition through Culinary Acculturation

Narchi

Marlett

Hernández-Santana

2020

Journal of Ethnobiology

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“…Nowadays, there is a worrying erosion of local food systems, causing the disappearance of traditional food products worldwide (Pingali, 2007;Turner and Turner, 2007;Johns et al, 2013;Albert et al, 2015;Hernández-Santana and Narchi, 2018;Akinola et al, 2020). Fermented products have been poorly considered in the analysis of erosion of local food systems, even when some of them have almost disappeared.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing Micro-Landscapes: Management and Selection Practices on Microbial Communities in a Traditional Fermented Beverage

2022

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Colonche is a traditional beverage produced in Mexico by the fermentation of fruits of several cacti species. In the Meridional Central Plateau region of Mexico, where this study was conducted, it is mainly produced with fruits of Opuntia streptacantha; there, the producers perform spontaneous fermentation and/or fermentations through inoculums. Several factors can change the microbial community structure and dynamics through the fermentation process, but little attention has been directed to evaluate what type and extent of change the human practices have over the microbial communities. This study aims to assess the microbiota under spontaneous and inoculated fermentation techniques, the microorganisms present in the inoculums and containers, and the changes of microbiota during the process of producing colonche with different techniques. We used next-generation sequencing of the V3-V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene and the ITS2, to characterize bacterial and fungal diversity associated with the different fermentation techniques. We identified 701 bacterial and 203 fungal amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) belonging to 173 bacterial and 187 fungal genera. The alpha and beta diversity analysis confirmed that both types of fermentation practices displayed differences in richness, diversity, and community structure. Richness of bacteria in spontaneous fermentation (0D = 136 ± 0.433) was higher than in the inoculated samples (0D = 128 ± 0.929), while fungal richness in the inoculated samples (0D = 32 ± 0.539) was higher than in spontaneous samples (0D = 19 ± 0.917). We identified bacterial groups like Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc, Pediococcus and the Saccharomyces yeast shared in ferments managed with different practices; these organisms are commonly related to the quality of the fermentation process. We identified that clay pots, where spontaneous fermentation is carried out, have an outstanding diversity of fungal and bacterial richness involved in fermentation, being valuable reservoirs of microorganisms for future fermentations. The inoculums displayed the lowest richness and diversity of bacterial and fungal communities suggesting unconscious selection on specific microbial consortia. The beta diversity analysis identified an overlap in microbial communities for both types of fermentation practices, which might reflect a shared composition of microorganisms occurring in the Opuntia streptacantha substrate. The variation in the spontaneous bacterial community is consistent with alpha diversity data, while fungal communities showed less differences among treatments, probably due to the high abundance and dominance of Saccharomyces. This information illustrates how traditional management guides selection and may drive changes in the microbial consortia to produce unique fermented beverages through specific fermentation practices. Although further studies are needed to analyze more specifically the advantages of each fermentation type over the quality of the product, our current analysis supports the role of traditional knowledge driving it and the relevance of plans for its conservation.

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Social Cohesion and Environmental Governance Among the Comcaac of Northern Mexico

Martínez-Tagüeña

Rentería-Valencia

2019

Springer Climate

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The Seri Traditional Food System: Cultural Heritage, Dietary Change, and the (Re) Awakening of Dietary Resilience Among Coastal Hunter-Gatherers in the Mexican Northwest

Cited by 4 publications

References 63 publications

What Happened to Seri Sweets? Dietary Transition through Culinary Acculturation

What Happened to Seri Sweets? Dietary Transition through Culinary Acculturation

Constructing Micro-Landscapes: Management and Selection Practices on Microbial Communities in a Traditional Fermented Beverage

Social Cohesion and Environmental Governance Among the Comcaac of Northern Mexico

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