From the Plate to Gastro-Politics: Unravelling the Boom of Peruvian Cuisine (Food and Identity in a Globalising World) 303146656X, 9783031466564

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FOOD AND IDENTITY IN A GLOBALISING WORLD

From the Plate to Gastro-Politics Unravelling the Boom of Peruvian Cuisine Raúl Matta

Food and Identity in a Globalising World

Series Editors Atsuko Ichijo Department of Politics Kingston University Kingston-Upon-Thames, UK Ronald Ranta Department of Politics Kingston University Kingston-Upon-Thames, UK

This series aims to overcome the current fragmented nature of the study of food by encouraging interdisciplinary studies of food and serving as a meeting place for a diverse range of scholars and practitioners who are interested in various aspects of food. By encouraging new original, innovative and critical thinking in the field and engaging with the main debates and controversies, and by bringing together the various disciplines that constitute food studies, such as, sociology, anthropology, politics and geography, the series will serve as a valuable source for researchers, practitioners, and students. There will be focus on identities and food; issues such as gastrodiplomacy, settler colonialism, gender, migration and diaspora, and food and social media, while at the same time promoting an inter- and trans-disciplinary approach.

Raúl Matta

From the Plate to Gastro-Politics Unravelling the Boom of Peruvian Cuisine

Raúl Matta UMR 208 PALOC Institut de Recherche pour le Développement France, France

ISSN 2662-270X     ISSN 2662-2718 (electronic) Food and Identity in a Globalising World ISBN 978-3-031-46656-4    ISBN 978-3-031-46657-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46657-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Luiz Henrique Mendes / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Credits

Preliminary versions of portions of Chapter 4 were published in: Matta, R. (2013). Valuing native eating: The modern roots of Peruvian food heritage. Anthropology of Food S8, http://aof.revues.org/7361 and Matta, R. (2016). Recipes for crossing boundaries: Peruvian fusion. In Ayora-­ Díaz, S. I. (Ed.), Cooking Technology: Transformations in Culinary Practice in Mexico and Latin America. London and New  York: Bloomsbury, 139-152. Preliminary versions of portions of Chapter 5 were published in: Matta, R. (2021). Food for Social Change in Peru: Narrative and Performance of the Culinary Nation. The Sociological Review 69(3): 520-537 and Matta, R. (2017). Unveiling the Neoliberal Taste. Peru’s Media Representations as a Food Nation. In May, S.; Sidali, K.; Spiller, A.; Tschofen, B. (Eds.), Taste | Power | Tradition. Geographical Indications as Cultural Property. Göttingen: Göttingen University Press, 103-117. Preliminary versions of portions of Chapter 6 were published in: Matta, R. (2016). Food Incursions into Global Heritage: Peruvian Cuisine’s Slippery Road to UNESCO. Social Anthropology 24(3): 338-352. Sections of Chapter 7 were published in: Matta, R. (2019). Heritage Foodways as Matrix for Cultural Resurgence: Evidence from Rural Peru. International Journal of Cultural Property 26(1): 49-74. v

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of over a decade’s exploration on the cultural and political uses of food in Peru. The research that sustains it would not have been possible without the financial support of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the framework of the international network desiguALdades.net, the French National Research Agency (ANR) in the framework of the project FoodHerit (ANR-13-CULT-0003), the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the framework of the project Food as Cultural Heritage (MA 6129), and the UMR 208 PALOC (IRD-MNHN). I would like to thank my field consultants—chefs, activists, farmers, scholars, and friends—for their time and generous sharing of information. Thanks in particular to Mirko Lauer. Our conversations, initiated in 2007, were fundamental to further my interest in the topic. I am also indebted to Grimaldo Rengifo and Jorge Ishizawa for sharing with me their knowledge and networks. These were crucial for me to consider ‘the other side’ of the gastronomic boom, and to develop an understanding of and appreciation for indigenous foodways, which expand beyond this book. Over this long journey, a number of friends and colleagues have contributed—either directly or indirectly—to my research and to my learning process. I am grateful to Marie-France Prévôt-Schapira, Polymnia Zagefka, Carlos Iván Degregori, Gisela Cánepa, Sergio Zapata, Isabel vii

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Alvarez, Maya Ishizawa, Chantal Crenn, Marc Dallard, Maurice Rafael, J.P. Stewart, Eli Wentzel-Fisher, Esther Lauer, Maria Elena García, and Amy Cox Hall. Special thanks to Regina Bendix, Charles-Édouard de Suremain, and Jenny Herman for the support and encouragement they have provided me when I most needed it. Last but not least, profound thanks to my family, in particular to my parents for gently pushing me to get this done. This book is for them.

Praise for From the Plate to Gastro-Politics “Peru has been applauded as an example of successful gastro-diplomacy and a model that other countries around could follow to turn their food traditions and their culinary creativity into engines of social and economic development. In this well-researched and thoughtful volume, Matta examines the meteoric ascent of Peruvian cuisine and its growing international visibility, showing what actually worked and what didn’t in a process that so far has not been sufficiently questioned. Using gastro-­politics as his analytical lens, Matta explores the role of celebrity chefs, the new interest in  local products from the Andes and the Amazon, and the institutional efforts to put Peru on the cosmopolitan foodies’ map. Matta’s research constitutes a welcome contribution to the global debates about food and its complex functions in nation-building projects.” —Fabio Parasecoli, Full Professor of Food Studies New York University, USA “Raúl Matta’s book, From the Plate to Gastro-Politics, is a timely contribution to our understanding of complex phenomena such as the part played by food in the production and reproduction of national identities and senses of belonging. Through his anthropological descriptions and analysis, Matta shows how cooking, food, and gastronomic consumption are often turned into catalysts of cultural identities that, at the same time, may conceal structural inequalities and silence subordinate voices. It constitutes a brilliant analysis of how chefs contributed to shaping the association between gastronomy and national identity, offering a critical but nuanced and balanced description of the emergence of Peruvian gastronomy and the part played in it by chefs, food producers and media. This book is a must read for scholars and readers at large interested in the socio-cultural understanding of how gastronomies have the power to mobilize national identities.” —Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz, Full Professor of Anthropology, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mexico “Through a compelling and thoughtful narrative Raul Matta takes us on a revealing journey into the subjectivities, agencies, practices, narratives, and institutional frameworks that have shaped the recent gastronomic boom in Peru. In doing so he accounts for the complex and multidimensional interweaving of

gastronomy, nationalism, capitalism and food heritage as arenas in which gastropolitics and indigenous foodways serve processes of reproduction and contestation of old and new class and ethnic inequalities. As a Peruvian himself, Matta masterfully succeeds to weave together reflexivity and critical thinking regarding a phenomenon that has captured national imagination and the aspirations of progress of Peruvians from different social and ethnic backgrounds, who celebrate it as a way out of a history of domination, violence and poverty. Shifting between familiarity and astonishment, using an interdisciplinary approach and capturing the multiple voices and performativities contained in testimonies, official documents, publications, audio-visual materials and his own observation in the field, Matta unveils in a sensitive and rigorous way the contradictions that the gastronomic boom entail, pondering its transformative power.” —Gisela Cánepa K., Full Professor of Anthropology, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Peru

Contents

Part I From the Plate …   1 1 Setting  the Table: From Culinary Enchantment to Gastro-­Political Agendas  3 2 On the Formation of Peruvian Gastronomy 29 3 The  Professional Chef and the Establishment of Gastronomic Conventions 67 4 Cooking up a Global Cuisine 97 Part II … to Gastro-Politics 137 5 Gastro-Politics: Unveiling the Neoliberal Taste139 6 Food as Heritage: Peruvian Foodways’ Road to UNESCO177

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7 G  rassroots Gastro-Politics215 8 Final Considerations and ‘Reality Check’253 R  eferences265 I ndex293

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 El Rincón del Bigote, a celebrated seafood huarique in Lima. Photo courtesy of Maurice Rafael, 2011 38 Fig. 2.2 Lunch at San Blas Market, Cusco. Photo courtesy of Jenny Herman, 2022 39 Fig. 2.3 Surquillo food market, where locals and tourists buy fresh produce and enjoy fish and seafood meals. Photo courtesy of Jenny Herman, 2023 45 Fig. 4.1 Tuna Tataki and Tasting of Andean Tubers. Central restaurant, Lima, 2011 119 Fig. 4.2 Razor clams (top) and clams and yuyo seaweed (bottom). Central restaurant, Lima, 2023. Photo courtesy of Amy Goodyear121 Fig. 4.3 Ravioles de Cuy. Cicciolina restaurant, Cusco, 2022. Photo courtesy of Jenny Herman 123 Fig. 4.4 Crunchy Guinea Pig with Creamy Chickpea Tamales. Mayta restaurant, Lima, 2011 123 Fig. 4.5 Alpaca, olluco, ají panca, and cushuro. Mayta restaurant, Lima, 2023. Photo courtesy of Jenny Herman 127 Fig. 7.1 Waman Wasi’s Mikuna in Lamas, 2012 229 Fig. 7.2 Barter fair in Yungay, 2015 238 Fig. 7.3. The big potatoes of the Potato Park in Cusco, 2015 242

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Part I From the Plate …

1 Setting the Table: From Culinary Enchantment to Gastro-Political Agendas

Impressions from a City in Transformation I have always enjoyed Peruvian food, and have equally enjoyed doing research related to it. The fact that in my country, cooking crossed from being simply about food to becoming a political and social phenomenon enticed me intellectually. Indeed, there is a lot to say about the reasons that drove nearly a 100,000 youth to attend Peru’s numerous culinary schools, that catapulted chefs to fame and glory, that led the government to establish national days to celebrate local specialties (cebiche, pollo a la brasa, and pisco sour) and that, some years ago, provided chef Gastón Acurio with a chance to become the country’s president. However, I have not particularly enjoyed talking about Peruvian food with acquaintances, friends, and relatives. I have also become frustrated with the almost religious passion with which they have tried to convince me that Peruvian cuisine is the best in the world, and, indirectly (I could feel it), urged me not to be critical of it in my commentary. And I never was; food itself is never to blame. However, all of this has inspired me to seek to understand and dissect such a stunning enthusiasm about Peru’s cuisine. Let me present the contexts and circumstances which sparked my interest in the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Matta, From the Plate to Gastro-Politics, Food and Identity in a Globalising World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46657-1_1

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topic of this book, which builds on my experience as a Limeño who migrated to Europe in his early twenties. When I left Lima in 2001 to pursue studies in France, I could have not imagined how changed I would find my part of the city six years later, when I returned to look for ideas for my doctoral dissertation. I found it a more thriving, vibrant, and interesting place. What I refer to as ‘my part of the city’ is a conglomerate of six out of the 43 districts that make up the Peruvian capital. As a young adult, I considered these neighbourhoods, the most affluent and internationally oriented, too conservative, unchanging, and rather unexciting. Indeed, by the mid-1990s, the cultural offer in Lima was meagre despite the efforts of a few public and private cultural centres which hosted exhibitions, concerts, and film festivals. The local art and music scene was rather lethargic, recovering from the hangover of the social and economic crisis of the previous decade— and in some cases from the threat of political persecution (see Bazo, 2017; Greene, 2016). As for the arrival of prominent international artists, it was more than unlikely. With regard to food, besides cebicherías and seafood restaurants, always innovative and creative, the dining sector lacked diversity and audacity (see Lauer & Lauer, 2006). Lima, I was sure, had something different to offer outside its wealthy neighbourhoods. In areas mostly inhabited by Limeños with roots in other places of Peru, a more ‘recent’ population was striving to create meaning and belonging—to establish its unique culture—in an expanding, busy, and demanding metropole (Degregori, 1986; Degregori et al., 1986; Franco, 1991). However, I was little inclined to venture outside my familiar part of the city. Even if geographically close, the surroundings were, in the dominant view of my milieu, too socially distant. I grew up and was raised in a society that has been—and continues to be—marked by the trauma caused by the outcomes of colonial history: Racial discrimination against indigenous and dark-skinned populations, structural social inequalities, and the subsequent institutional, physical, and symbolic violence these processes engender. Indeed, in its history as a republic, Peru has dealt with fragile institutions ruled by dominant groups descended from Spanish conquerors. The ‘white’ coastal areas of the country were the first to integrate into the capitalist economy and established a primacy that lasts until now. Lima, in particular, historically

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plays an over-prominent role in the social, economic, and political fabric of the country. Home to an estimated 11 million people in 2023—a third of Peru’s population—it is by very far the nation’s governmental and industrial centre (the population of the second city, Arequipa, is only about one million). Over time and since its foundation, Lima has overwhelmingly dominated the ‘Indian’ Andean and Amazonian regions, which were branded as underdeveloped and archaic (Cotler, 1967). Little has been achieved to date in respect to this situation. Despite the establishment of new laws to address structural racial discrimination, recurring political events reveal that indigenous and peasant communities continue to suffer political marginalisation and social/racial discrimination (see Poole & Rénique, 2012; Coronel, 2019; Amnesty International, 2023). Yet, my social milieu has not precisely suffered from trauma and ostracism, but has built its privileges upon it. By chance of birth, I entered the side of those who have continued inflicting pain and suffering, and who now cope with the anxiety of losing or giving away what they think belongs to them. Privileged Limeños live therefore, if not in fear of the other, in learned avoidance of the unknown. Their cultural references, aspirations, and expectations mimic those of North American and European middle classes. They feel they have more in common with people living overseas than with co-nationals living on the other side of the city, let alone with those living in rural areas. Consequently, even though I knew that outside my bubble in the city there was more to see and possibly embrace, I never felt confident or adequately secure to verify my impressions alone, having never been taught or encouraged to do so. Therefore I did what many fortunate young adults in search of independence do when they think, pretentiously, that they have experienced all that their city has to offer: I went to study abroad. It was as if I had decided to board a plane to Paris at the very moment Lima started to undergo fundamental change. Upon returning for several months in 2007, my vision of the city changed drastically. I, who had little hope for seeing my hometown becoming a dynamic and appealing modern metropole, was surprised by the flourishing of cultural activities and businesses related to culture: Art galleries and showrooms, fashion and design shops, theatre and music halls, fine-dining restaurants,

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cocktail bars, and trendy coffee-shops indicated that different values were taking root at the heart of the urban life. The city’s new look expressed itself in the architecture, with well-appointed facades and interiors and a higher skyline, as tall residential buildings emerged where Limeños of previous generations had built family houses. Cable TV show and print and online media reinforced the concern for aesthetics: Architects, designers, chefs, and art critics entered the home space of the privileged to predicate a new, sophisticated lifestyle. This kind of facelift in affluent and middle-­class neighbourhoods and livelihoods occurred alongside a change in the mindset of individuals. One of the aspects which marked me most upon my return to Lima was the palpable optimism for the future expressed by the people I encountered. This was a real break from the defeatist sentiment dominating Peruvian society during the previous two decades; the sentiment that the best or the only way to pull through life’s hardships in a socially, psychologically, and economically broken country was to leave it. The 1980s and the 1990s were hard decades for Peruvians. The country had suffered from economic policies resulting in recession, extreme inflation, and isolation from international trade and the investment community (see Pastor & Wise, 1992; Ruiz Torres, 2005). Even more sadly, the viability of the nation was compromised by the armed conflict between left-wing revolutionary forces (Shining Path and MRTA1) and the state, leaving around 70,000 dead and countless individuals, many of whom were indigenous, with damaged lives (CVR, 2004). My childhood in Lima was one of evening curfews and fearing the dangers of public spaces. Under President Alberto Fujimori’s second mandate (1995–2000), Peru engaged in a new start by adopting neoliberal policies which opened up markets and reduced the scope of the public sector to meet the expectations of global investors (Arce, 2005). The economic recovery achieved record rates of growth, increased the volume of foreign investments, and favoured the consolidation of mining, tourism, and agri-business sectors, while aggravating inequalities between urban and rural areas. Consecutive years of relative peace and economic growth increased consumption and purchasing power in major  Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru.

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cities, principally in Lima, and instilled the idea that good citizenship depends on individual accomplishment and aspirations, rather than rights and civic duties. From the conversations I had with relatives, friends, and acquaintances, it seemed evident to me that the end of the internal war and economic reforms had awarded their first (and perhaps only) winners. By listening to them—white-collar employees and independent professionals—I had the impression that the success of some prompted a sort of confidence among others. They all believed that their efforts would one day pay off, and, most remarkably, that they would pay off soon. These Limeños were proud of the improving economic performance of the country and of the changes they were experiencing in their everyday lives, which owed much to the pace and extent of urban development accompanying economic robustness. Economic terms such as ‘growth’ and ‘investment’, and those even more technical like ‘gross domestic product’, surfaced in quotidian conversations. The consumerist and materialist momentum in Lima of the 2000s was also the result of changed household behaviours. Unlike previous times, middle- and upper-class couples increasingly delayed parenthood until their early and mid-thirties, meaning they had more time and money to spend in the expanding sector of leisure and cultural consumption. Immersed as I was in the social environment in which I would have likely lived, had I not left, I found that these early-thirties, affluent Limeños without family obligations were living dynamic lives; going out to concerts, exhibitions, gallery openings, cocktail bars, and especially, restaurants. Entering the restaurants in vogue in Lima is similar to entering fashionable restaurants in major global cities such as New York, London, Paris, or Hong Kong. The influence of minimalist architecture and design is noticeable; a simple and polished ‘look’ dominates. If greater access to cultural and leisure goods can be seen as a positive outcome, making Lima more attractive for locals and tourists, it also produced more debatable effects related to the processes of social distinction engendered among its inhabitants. Since many of these goods and experiences are marketed as exclusive, therefore serving the individualism and

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narcissism of the privileged (Lipovetsky, 1994), these displays of consumption take place within urban social contexts, bringing about new patterns and places of interaction. Today, Limeños with spending power are developing ever-refined sensibilities about where to go, and more particularly, where not to go. They know which activities to do, and with whom. They know where to be seen eating, and where they can opt for more ‘adventurous’ no-frills dining. The expanded possibilities of consumption and changing social groupings created new possibilities for class positioning and belonging, worthy of decoding from a social sciences perspective. Interestingly, the food domain has provided me with tools and substance to analyse the complexity of changes which occurred in the country at that time. If Peruvian cuisine and the emergence of a gastronomic scene in Lima allowed me, in the first place, to engage with the anxieties and hopes of the society of my upbringing (Matta, 2009, 2012), it also allowed me to engage with newer narratives describing the country as resilient and thriving in adverse circumstances. Peru’s history of violence has opened space for discourses of renewal and competitiveness, and for stories of inclusion and tolerance. Food played a central role in recent efforts to write a peaceful, inclusive, and prosperous national history. Peru has seen, as Atsuko Ichijo and Ronald Ranta identify, that “[c]onstructing, reifying, asserting and at times inventing a common food culture is a useful method through which national entrepreneurs and movements try to bring together different groups of people (divided by ethnicity, religion, geography or class)” (Ichijo & Ranta, 2016: 11). Peru has unprecedentedly constituted itself as a culinary nation and a gastronomic mecca not only for commercial and aesthetic reasons but also in pursuit of a political, economic and cultural project in which Peruvian cuisine brings myriad benefits to the country and leads to social reconciliation in a nation shaped by inequalities of race, class, and gender (Matta & García, 2019).

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Impressions of a Food Culture in Transformation I remember quite well how I became specifically interested in researching the class and social aspects of Peruvian food. It all started with an invitation from Miguel, one of my closest friends from childhood, to have lunch and catch up at his place in the San Borja district of Lima. He lived there part-time with his single aunt, a frequent traveller, often leaving him the apartment to himself. Miguel preferred to stay long periods in that small-but-elegant flat, rather than live in the large family house his parents owned in the well-off district of La Molina. He considered the family home too far from the places he frequented most, such as the districts of Miraflores, Barranco, and San Isidro, which he saw as the most hip and interesting. Miguel was enjoying a lot of free time at that moment, as he had still several months ahead before beginning a medical residency program in New York City. Before that day, I had never seen him behind the stove, and since I knew him, it was the first time that he spoke to me about food and cooking with such aplomb and authority. It was also the first (and so far only) time I had witnessed the making of a Bolognese sauce that took more than two hours to cook and used so many ingredients—as a student in Paris with a limited budget, I thought I knew about pasta. To my surprise, his preparation was very successful. Miguel explained to me that we were eating a recipe by one of his friends, a chef who had her own catering business, mentioning that among his more recent friends were several young chefs and restaurateurs. He added, amused, that chefs had become fashionable. Later I had the opportunity to put a face on the names of the people he spoke of, first on the pages of newspapers and magazines, and later in person as he introduced me to them for the sake of my research. Similarly, in another instance, while catching up with old acquaintances, I learned that two were ending long periods of vocational indecision by enrolling in prestigious culinary schools and undertaking apprenticeships in new acclaimed restaurants. During the course of months I spent in Lima for doctoral research, in gatherings, meetups and birthday parties for example, I noticed how food

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had taken on a relevance it did not have before. People mingled around catered tables of food, carefully planned, and around barbecues prepared under strict surveillance by a ‘connoisseur’. Food, either served at these private occasions or eaten in restaurants, was often a subject of conversations and chatting. In my evening outings with friends, we frequented bars and pubs less and less, and rather visited fashionable restaurants and eateries with prices barely affordable to young adults just starting out, let alone to a PhD student living on a scholarship. I suddenly found myself embracing food practices and eating behaviours—actually a whole lifestyle surrounding it—that I had never experienced before, such as eating at chic bar counters, watching food preparations on display, discovering new foods and culinary techniques through tasting menus, or food and drink pairings. These new sociabilities were not only a matter of aging and attaining family independence. Stepping in the job market and being on the way to financial maturity certainly helped, but they were not the crucial requirements to engage with food in the public sphere or to understand the changes occurring at that time. The experiences I was having were a clear indication that something significant was happening around gastronomy among a certain strata of social class, and Peruvian cuisine in particular: we were consuming it, talking about it and coming together around it, constantly. More broadly, if Peruvians had always been proud of their cuisine, that widespread enthusiasm for eating out was unprecedented; apart from my personal observations, this sentiment was echoed by those around me. Therefore, it could not simply have been the result of the arrival of global cultural patterns to a country that was eager to receive them. It also could not be seen as merely an episode in the recent history of gastronomy, that of a cultural knowledge that has become a global industry. If, at first, Peruvian cuisine and gastronomy conveyed an elite-defining function (as I witnessed its role in shaping the class belonging of my milieu), it gradually became a more democratising phenomenon that pervaded the psyche and ethos of society and of the nation. Peruvians’ fascination with everything that has to do with ‘their’ cuisine manifests indeed in everyday expressions of national pride. The media played a chief role in this by reporting on successful adventures in gastronomic entrepreneurship while building a sense of community

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around food in which individual strengths are seen as part of the country’s assets. Indeed, the wide dissemination of flattering news about local heroes in chef ’s hats follows a tendency to reframe individual achievements into national ones, as is common of sport competitions. This way, Peruvians did not need to wait to celebrate the too-infrequent goals of the country’s football team. Instead, they puffed their chests with every new fancy restaurant opened by Peruvians in major cities—even if they could hardly enjoy one of these places— and with every new foreign accolade restaurants such as Virgilio Martínez’s Central, Gastón Acurio’s Astrid & Gastón, Jaime Pesaque’s Mayta, and Mitsuharu Tsumura’s Maido earned. Today, these and other Peruvian restaurants are highly distinguished among the top restaurants of the world. The exaltation of alleged uniqueness, excellence, and superiority of Peruvian cuisine set the table for culinary nationalism, hence, also instilling a climate of competition within which Peruvians are particularly confident. This confidence, however, often comes with a chance of turning chauvinist and unfriendly if someone openly dislikes tastes and dishes venerated by nationals. Nobody was immune to the effects of culinary nationalism as it developed in Peru. Not even reputed public figures were protected from the fervour of the most vindicatory and self-assigned custodians of Peruvian food: average citizens. What better example than that of Iván Thays, who passed from being an internationally recognised Peruvian writer to becoming, in his own words, “the most hated person” in the country, only on account of sharing his personal, critical view of Peruvian food in his blog?2 Thays was vilified by many as a traitor to the country, as an anti-patriot. Such a lynching revealed the dark side of a taken-for-granted benign element of nationalism, pushing the limits of promoting national self-confidence. However, besides the pettiness of the attacks against Thays—taking place in a country where the opinions of a man of letters are not precisely influential—the media storm raised by the writer and Italian food-lover is useful to reveal how Peruvian cuisine redefines public understanding of the concepts of nation, identity, and citizenship.  Available at https://blogs.elpais.com/vano-oficio/2012/02/la-tinta-humeda.html, Accessed April 8, 2023.

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Yet, fortunately, Peruvians’ pride in their national cuisine is not solely based on chauvinism and nationalism unleashed by mass media. I will demonstrate instead that it stems primarily from longstanding knowledge and culinary sensitivity, gradually transformed or carried on by those involved with food (professionals or not), as seen in many other ‘food nations’. Advocates of Peruvian food may bolster their arguments by making reference to a complex culinary history that encompasses crop cultivation and practices resulting from the meeting of pre-colonial heritage with the legacy of centuries of immigration from various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, resulting in a powerful mélange of delicious, spicy flavours. However, all this does not make Peruvian cuisine intrinsically better than other national cuisines. All cuisines and gastronomies are built on subjective criteria of quality, authenticity, and value: they are at once social constructions, market products, and ubiquitous topics in everyday life—everyone has something to say about the pleasures of eating. In this sense, we might expect that the relative importance of a particular food trend, be it purely a chef ’s invention or a national cuisine, rises and falls over time. At least this is the feeling that I had when I read in newspapers and magazines that Peruvian cuisine is the “Next Big Thing”: There will always be a next one. I therefore propose to examine the rise of Peruvian cuisine in relation to a variety of historical, social, cultural, and economic factors rather than to trace a supposed culinary essence that leaves room to subjective evaluations and to the formation of myths. So, and without wishing to spoil the fun of many of my co-­ nationals, I attempt in this book an interdisciplinary explanation of the gastronomic boom based on facts and circumstances, some of which I briefly outline below. The so-called gastronomic boom cannot be dissociated from recent changes in Peru’s society and politics. As mentioned previously, in the 1980s and the 1990s, the country was not particularly attractive to live in or visit from a global perspective. After the war ended, tourism strengthened, along with the economy. In such a context, the interest in gastronomy, one expanding aspect of urban economies, is anything but surprising. These contextual factors matter as much as the changing trends in gastronomic business models and activity worldwide.

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The move of Peruvian food from the domestic into the public sphere was facilitated by the professionalisation of cooking in Lima, both through the creation of occupational associations and the increasing attractiveness of gastronomy as a vocation. The latter phenomenon is linked to the rise in the social recognition obtained by chefs during the 1970s and 1980s in Europe and the United States, when leaders of French nouvelle cuisine and fusion cuisine, respectively, became heads of their own restaurants. From then on, gastronomic business grew in importance as a key component of the cultural industries, while cookery increasingly gained respect. Although gastronomy has, over the years, become a highly competitive market in which compensation and reputation concentrate on a few top performers, chefs’ self-marketing strategies which made superstars of some have encouraged, in many places as in Peru, the opening of restaurants and an increase in publications, TV shows, and culinary institutes. Previous images of chefs as labourers struggling in the kitchen gave way to that of clever and fashionable chefs. Also waning was the notion of cookery as a risky and harsh career, associated with servile tasks. On the contrary, although still demanding, cooking had become a gratifying career option for many. The commitment of young people to professional gastronomy was thus crucial to building the prominence of Peruvian cuisine as a legitimate cultural field and as a profitable economic activity. The most visible leaders of the Peruvian gastronomic boom were (and still are) sons of well-off families who had opportunities to receive European and North American culinary training during the 1990s. Even though some of them had to overcome parental resistance, the diversification of sources of social prestige among the very conservative Peruvian upper class was already underway: Lima’s elite finally realised that, in current times, prestige could also be maintained by becoming, for instance, a celebrated chef, rather than by sticking to anachronistic imperatives of distinction. The social background of these young cooks was, however, crucial for them to become elite chefs, since it allowed them to speak with authority (even condescension) about their re-visitations of Peruvian cuisine. Indeed, they have not had to face social or cultural barriers when proposing novel creations, unconventional ingredients, and stylistic presentations to their clients (and social peers): Family background softened the task and avoided suspicions. Therefore,

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it would be not unfair to say that their first successes were equally due to their individual skills as to their privileged social positions. Technical knowledge and local biodiversity, alongside the ability of traditional elites to invoke their privileges in changing contexts, combined to allow diners and foodies to vaunt the diversity and versatility of Peruvian cuisine. Central to this is the use and valorisation of foods from the Andes and Amazon regions. Much of the work of the new generation of Peruvian chefs is devoted to changing public perceptions of these foods, to no longer be perceived as rustic and remote, but as modern and mainstream. Consequently, produce and ingredients kept away from fine tables for centuries now enjoy a better status. Chefs’ successful undertakings have gained massive media attention and perpetuated the idea that Peruvian cuisine had the potential to cross geographical, cultural, and social boundaries. Thus, Peruvian cuisine moved into a broader dimension, nourished national and international expectations, and encouraged vocations. And so it became a phenomenon often described as a revolution (Lauer & Lauer, 2006). The first part of this book, ‘From the Plate…’, deals with the themes sketched above. It describes and analyses the preliminary stages of Peru’s gastronomic boom, during which the awareness of the values Peruvian cuisine incarnates took shape. I draw on textual sources, ethnographic observations in restaurants, and on interviews conducted in Lima between 2007 and 2011 among chefs, restaurant owners, and scholars to approach as closely as possible to the people, contexts, and events that have shaped the contours of the food nation. Chapter 2 addresses the formation of gastronomy in Peru. It first outlines a distinction between a culinary field and a gastronomic field, to better explore the complexity of Peruvian foodways through the connections and intertwinements between these systems. It then posits the ludic approach to cooking—the act of thinking about, cooking, and consuming cuisine for enjoyment—as a precondition for gastronomy. Although rather agreeable, the pleasure of gastronomy does not come without social consequences as it implicates status-placing dynamics. With the nutritional dimension losing relevance, the symbolic power of food gains ground and leads to explorations and arrangements of foodways and foodscapes which fashion gastronomic sensibility and a sense of superior

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taste. The chapter also stresses the role of social elites as tastemakers, notably through their pioneering involvement in culinary writing. Chapter 3 focuses on Peruvian chefs and brings a critical eye to the reputation and creative freedom they seemingly enjoy and claim. Renowned Peruvian chefs strongly adhere to a discourse describing cuisine as a fine art and ascribe to the view of chefs as artists. And, as in any genre of art, conventions establish the foundations for producing characteristic and valuable works. By describing and elaborating on their creations as a result of passion, knowledge and engagement with the wider world acquired through their international journeys, the chefs of the boom formulate the conventions that shape Peru’s gastronomic field and which establish them in privileged positions within it. Yet a closer look shows that their dominance of the field also owes much to the fact that their individual lives and stories have been largely unaffected by the social and economic inequalities that structure Peruvian society. Chapter 4 discusses culinary gentrification in Peru, which consists of moving native foods into high, cosmopolitan canons. It is through this process that chefs have accessed fame, influence, and financial reward. I depict and illustrate how Peru’s top chefs re-appropriate and re-signify long-marginalised Andean and Amazonian ingredients, accommodating them to the palates of local and foreign elites through acquired skills and knowledge. I also explain that, in doing so, chefs displace indigenous knowledge. Along with providing an accurate description of the chefs’ techniques and an account of their motivations, this chapter engages with the work of other scholars who have conducted analyses of these processes in terms of coloniality.

Enter Gastro-Politics Every year, the local media reports on the latest rankings of the world’s best restaurants, with much acclaim and coverage for the repeated success of Peruvian restaurants and chefs. Celebrating others’ successes is not bad; it could certainly be inspiring. But does the good that is happening to a certain number of chefs really justify the elevation of one type of cuisine over others, resulting in the inspiration of national pride? I find

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this question pertinent since a good number of Peruvian star chefs do not necessarily attribute the dishes they serve to Peruvian cuisine; they prefer to claim that they offer dishes reflecting their personality. So how has the national cuisine become so central in the life of Peruvians? My explanation is that when the gastronomic boom struck in the mid-2000s, Peruvian cuisine suddenly joined Machu Picchu in making Peru a travel destination, since cuisine also has the capacity to involve people with a country on a sensory level and to attract tourists. Indeed, in times of multiculturalism and commodification of ethnic identities (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2009), the appeal of Peruvian cuisine has become an avenue for Peru to gain international visibility and obtain economic gains. Food burst into the political arena in such a way that its social consequences are yet to be fully determined. Actors from public and private sectors express commitment to implementing food-related development and social policies. Government trade offices and business lobbies promote the creation of Peruvian restaurants across the world and support the modernisation of traditional agricultural production, in order to compete in global markets. Furthermore, continuous diplomatic efforts are conducted to convince the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to inscribe Peruvian cuisine as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. While the food-politics apparatus was coming together, distinguished Peruvian chefs were already well-positioned to spread a promise of external conquest and internal prosperity among Peruvians. In Peru, as in many other countries, the entrenchment of media and food has made chefs experts at articulating principles and missions that exceed the kitchen, as well as addressing social issues in understandable, democratic ways. Among these chefs, Gastón Acurio stands out. One of the central characters of the gastronomic boom, Acurio has insistently proclaimed the power of food to inspire and enable social change. His rhetoric is much the same as one of a food activist, and it also happens he behaves that way. The chef envisions the use of ingredients as political decisions determined by environmental principles, ethical choices, and cultural proclamations—but not only that. Economic opportunities are also important. Indeed, besides promoting social and environmental values and positing Peruvian cuisine as bringing together consumers, farmers, food industries, tourism,

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nutrition, and health, the chef owns dozens of restaurants in some of the world’s major cities. So, in addition to being recognised for making Peruvian cuisine the country’s most appealing export, Acurio embodies the figure of the socially responsible businessman. These achievements have made him an esteemed leader and a good citizen role model. Led by chef Acurio and culinary elites, Peru has become a food nation in just over a decade. But the implications of this phenomenon extend far beyond the plate. This is where gastro-politics takes over. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai coined this term to describe the role of food in social organisation in Southern India. Gastro-politics denotes “conflict or competition over particular cultural and economic resources as it emerges in the course of social transactions surrounding food” (1981: 495). Appadurai demonstrated that the elaboration of cuisine and its socio-economic context builds up the capability of food to convey social messages. By paying attention to how people manipulate food (e.g., in terms of quality and quantity) and organise contexts of commensality, he came to identify what certain actions involving food were communicating: To which people, in what context, and with what immediate consequences. On a broader scale, and considering the increase in the flow and circulation of objects, foods, ideas, and individuals which characterise our time, the concept of gastro-politics expands in its reach to encompass “the deployment and assemblage of power relations linking food and cuisines to markets, political institutions, cultural and social identities, and gendered and racialized bodies” (Matta & García, 2019, para. 11; see also Matta, 2014). Appadurai also observed that food can have two completely opposite semiotic functions; one which serves “to indicate and construct social relations characterized by equality, intimacy, or solidarity”, and another which serves “to sustain relations characterized by rank, distance, or segmentation” (1981: 496). Gastro-politics, therefore, is as much about difference, tensions, and friction as it is about togetherness, aspirations, and achievements. Gastro-politics can be the cause, the expression or the solution of episodes of conflict and contestation around food and culinary practices located in

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a particular time and space, thus leading to different results depending on the context. As such, gastro-politics permeates the spaces, the rhetoric, the movements or trends, and the institutions (formal or informal) involved in such controversies … these conflicts more broadly reflect cultural and ideological differences as a function of the way in which groups and individuals consider food as part of their identity and relate to others (Matta & García, 2019, para. 11).

The debates gastro-politics kindles stretch across ethics and morality (judgements of good and bad) and extend to and beyond the frontiers between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Frontiers refer to the constant activity of differentiation, dichotomisation, and connection occurring in situations of interaction, interdependence, and contact between groups (see Barth, 1969). Gastro-politics appears then as the arena where ideas and actions surrounding the triad of food, identity, and ownership crystallise. It provides an analytical lens to the values, motivations, and behaviours of both the powerful and the less powerful in the face of the multiple possibilities for altering the value, meaning, and understandings of food. Processes of identification, construction of social image, and belonging (see Avanza & Laferté, 2005) provide operating concepts for gastro-­ politics in this book. These three processes capture the social, economic, moral, and cultural dimensions of contemporary food systems, and shed light on the negotiations of identity and ownership at play in both gastro-­ political configurations and on the narratives these configurations generate. Identification, social image, and belonging are today central concerns for producers and consumers, as well as for institutions and interest groups with direct influence on food and foodways, as they allow producers to connect their produce and creations to specific places, to local traditions and knowledge, and to communicate their distinctiveness, thus gaining recognition and economic advantage (see, for instance, Bérard & Marchenay, 2004). On the level of consumers, these processes reciprocally bring forth and allow for response to anxieties over the quality and authenticity of produce, to moral or ethical obligations (e.g., helping poor and distant populations by buying produce labelled as ‘fair trade’), or even to concerns of distinction and cosmopolitan curiosity. Governments, the private sector, and civil society organisations, in their

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capacities as regulators and value-adding actors, make these processes essential parts of their strategies. Identification, for instance, determines categories of ‘having rights’ (Noiriel, 1993; Graeber, 2015). This is strategic classification. In food, it applies to products and knowledge as well as people. The proliferation of distinctive designations, logos, and flags affixed to food packaging, restaurant windows, festival posters, and chefs’ uniforms are exemplars of this. Among these identifiers, geographical indications (GIs) are both the most widespread and the most controversial. GIs are signs used to identify products which have precise geographical origins and possess qualities strongly attached to those places (be it a nation, a region or a specific community). The economic value attached to this type of sign or label, as well as the information it provides to consumers, justify its definition and protection by law. However, the meanings attributed to GIs are far from unanimous. Among the multiple actors involved (small producers, peasant associations, agro-industrial producers, governments, etc.), there are winners and losers. A significant body of scholarship has shown how the intricate legal frameworks of GIs give rise to competing bottom-up initiatives which, based on contending understandings of ‘the local’ and new identifications (e.g., through the creation of collective or community brands and ‘bio-cultural’ food products), seek to question hegemonic frameworks of intellectual property (Argumedo, 2013; Parasecoli, 2017; see Chap. 7). Constructions of social image result from efforts to present oneself or another in a positive light (Goffmann, 1973). Producing a positive social image of oneself can affect the way we express ourselves, the way we work, our consumption patterns, and even our involvement in various social, political or community activities. Economics and human geography are the disciplines that have most addressed the production of social images related to food, by connecting the consumption of ‘equitable’ products to ideas of morality and ethical behaviour (Buller, 2010; Teyssier et al., 2015). Other studies have shown how celebrity chefs and entertainment personalities use food and the media to position themselves as “moral entrepreneurs” (Becker, 1985) around diverse topics such as health, obesity, hunting and fishing bans, organic farming, and socio-economic inequalities (Johnston & Goodman, 2015; Rousseau, 2012;

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Giousmpasoglou et al., 2020). At the institutional level, social image construction concerns the narratives representing groups and territories. Cultural diplomacy and nation-branding campaigns, both devoted to improving countries’ reputations and fostering business overseas, have made food cultures one of their pillars (Rockower, 2012; Zhang, 2015). Gastro-political ventures, by making strategic use of self-representation and self-presentation, indirectly communicate the hopes, fears, values, and ethics of nations, groups, and individuals. Belonging refers to the participation of individuals in something collective, in the knowledge that this participation is both the result and the producer of multiple socialisations (see again Avanza & Laferté, 2005). Belonging involves understanding how groups and individuals organise themselves around the identifications and the social images which have been ascribed to them or that they have claimed for themselves. This includes processes of acceptance, (re)appropriation, and rejection. In a world in which existence is defined by difference (Deleuze, 1994) and in which responsibilisation is a major ethical principle (Rose, 1999), food has become a trope around which a growing number of individuals and actors gather and present themselves as ‘communities’—even if in reality they are more often networks of food production, distribution and consumption (see, for instance, Parasecoli, 2022). Such collectivities are diverse in their scopes, interests, structures, and memberships. Exploring the European Union’s integration efforts, Michaela DeSoucey coined the term gastronationalism to refer to “the use of food production, distribution, and consumption to demarcate and sustain the emotive power of national attachment, as well as the use of nationalist sentiments to produce and market food” (DeSoucey, 2010: 443). This concept involves the merging of identity-building processes into the arena of cultural heritage, initially intended to push back against pressures or standardisation resulting from economic competition and international trade policies. At a more modest level, other ventures built upon cultural communities or like-minded individuals fit more or less into the dominant patterns of food production and consumption, as shown by research on ‘Alternative Food Networks’ (Goodman et al., 2012; Guthman, 2008). Others, still, identify as more progressive or anti-capitalist, distinguishing themselves by coordinating

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their actions around particular geographic locations, strong ethical and environmental frameworks, and the relationships linking nature, human, and non-human worlds (Angé, 2018; Amo, 2023; Graddy, 2014; Nazarea et al., 2013; PRATEC, 2000; Turner et al., 2016; Wilson, 2017). Peru’s gastronomic boom relies on diverse processes of identification, social image construction, and belonging. This book interrogates the intersection of institutionalisation and legitimation efforts, and highlights the challenges brought about by these forces. I aim to offer a critical reading in which the motivations of actors, the institutional supports which construct food cultures, and the real and potential consequences of these initiatives, are elucidated. The success of Peruvian cuisine has prompted ideas of change and a “value-generating apparatus” (Fan, 2013: 35) which seeks to bring development and progress across the country, while fashioning a social image for Peru as a business-savvy, thriving, but also more equal and just nation. Likewise, promoted by the lobby APEGA (the Peruvian Society of Gastronomy) and supported by government and global governance agencies such as the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of International Trade and Tourism, and the Inter-American Development Bank, a series of initiatives have aimed at narrowing the persistent gap between urban and rural areas. At the centre of this rationale are the promotion of short food supply chains and the development of pathways for bringing chefs and consumers closer to farmers, in order to increase Peruvians’ appreciation for local produce and to open up export markets for ‘exotic’ foods. These endeavours consist of identifying native foods with strong potential for added value, due to their rarity and inherent qualities, be they nutritive or novel. At restaurants, food fairs, and festivals, these foods are no longer perceived as ‘unknown’ or ‘forgotten’, but as premium and specialty foods, therefore promoting a new image and increasing worth. This identification extends to indigenous farmers, who are encouraged, through economic incentives and media coverage of their work, to ensure their produce is of superior quality, according to principles of sustainable development and organic agriculture. They are furthermore prompted to personalise their production not only by distinguishing it from that of others, but even by distinguishing

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themselves from one another as producers. The results of these interventions are mixed. A positive impact has been observed in terms of the social image of farmers, most of them indigenous people. Historically excluded from the imaginary associated with national progress, they are now entrusted with the important role as stewards of the country’s edible biodiversity (see Chap. 5). Rewarded at food festivals and celebrated by the media as the silent heroes of Peruvian cuisine, farmers have for the first time become visible to urban populations, because of their contribution to the ‘common good’ which Peruvian cuisine has come to represent. Yet, their new position is always subaltern within a context dominated by white, male and upper-class chefs and the powerful lobby APEGA: In the Mistura festival, acclaimed as the biggest culinary fair in Latin America during the years of its existence (2009–2017), indigenous people “are producers, not chefs; street vendors, never celebrities” (García in Dölz, 2014: 61). They are always and solely defined by the actions of the ‘other’ group—the chefs in power—and their performances are scrutinised with suspicion.3 Furthermore, the perceived symbolic gains of farmers are less pronounced in the economic realm. Only a small number of them benefit from short food supply chains linked to high-end restaurants and agri-food fairs, as most restaurants privilege economies of scale (Kollenda, 2019). The identification of ‘traditional’ products is also problematic: the terms and conditions for obtaining GIs, labels and other certifications are often not adapted to what is really possible for small farmers, who often lack the technical and financial means to obtain these qualifiers, despite occasional support from the state. Moreover, the reputation acquired by certain successful products represents a potential source of collateral effects. For instance, quinoa, which was almost unknown outside the Andean region two decades ago, has become a superfood much sought-after by middle classes in the North (McDonell, 2021). As a consequence, its price has tripled in a short span of time and become prohibitive for local populations, who have therefore seen an excellent source of  See García (2021) for a compelling discussion of the racial and “sanitizing” politics at play at the Mistura food festival.

3

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protein vanish from their tables (Bellemare et al., 2016). Quinoa and other products such as maca, chia, or açaí in Brazil now rely on trends subject to market volatility, thus resulting in potential uncertainty for cultivators whose livelihoods may rely on the continued success of these products. If the gastronomic boom and its entrepreneurial achievements have become a point of national pride for urban Peruvians, it also makes visible the challenges to the continuity and functioning of rural societies. Its effects add to the wider context of decline of traditional practices and customs (see Chap. 7) and harm the foundations of group belonging, destabilised by competing economic or social motivations. In opposition to a gastro-­politics based on aligning local food cultures with the needs of globalised economic and cultural elites, indigenous communities, together with NGOs, are developing initiatives which specifically tackle the issues they consider most pressing. Informed by a politics of cultural affirmation, they increasingly herald food and culinary knowledge as combative tools to preserve indigenous and other endangered local cultures and livelihoods. Through festivals of indigenous cuisine, the revitalisation of rituality, exercises in food remembrance, the recovery of ancient seeds, and eco-tourism projects in which food and local agriculture occupy a central place, these groups organise and voice their concerns in terms of community development and self-determination via local and international platforms. The second part of this book, ‘…to Gastro-Politics’ covers the themes and occurrences mentioned above in depth. It displays ethnographic work conducted between 2011 and 2016 among the protagonists behind attempts to re-found the nation through food, and their critics. It also discusses the most relevant and recent scholarship on Peru’s gastro-­politics. As individual actors involved in gastro-politics differ widely and often have divergent views, I remain aware of the contingent character of the locus from where they speak and try to be as empathetic as possible to their points of view. By engaging with the ideas and discourses which prophetically proclaim social change and Peru’s renaissance ‘from the kitchen’, I offer a nuanced reading of the so-called gastronomic revolution and its impact in society.

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Chapter 5 begins by exploring the formulation of Peruvian cuisine as a development engine loaded with attractive cultural diversity. It shows this was possible thanks to the capacity of culinary elites to (a) translate local food features into competitive culinary concepts in ways viewed as beneficial to them and supposedly also to the country as a whole, and (b) refigure the role of indigenous peasants by recognising them as partners and protagonists in the narrative of progress—albeit contingent on certain conditions. The chapter continues by depicting crucial examples that illustrate the (re)founding of the (culinary) nation through the exaltation of entrepreneurship and the proposal of a false symmetry between all the cultures and ethnic groups that make up Peruvian society. With the craze for Peruvian cuisine at its highest within and beyond the country’s borders, culinary elites sought the ultimate consecration: the listing of Peruvian foodways as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage. Chapter 6 engages productively with this bureaucratic process by “studying up” (Nader, 1969). It investigates circles of power and among individuals vested with the responsibility of producing nomination files throughout three consecutive attempts (in 2010, 2012, and 2023). The analysis of the explicit and implicit discourses contained in these documents show that, from an initial willingness to recognise Peruvian foodways as elements with strong ties to indigenous populations, and for which Peruvians could be proud of, the candidatures for intangible cultural heritage status eventually veer away from their initially intended directions to instead support development programmes based on economic and cultural competition. Chapter 7 takes up an opposite path. It explores perspectives indigenous people hold about their own food cultures, views which thus far have received little recognition in heritage declarations or in programmes which develop markets for ‘ethnic’ foods under proclamations of preserving biological and cultural diversity. This chapter describes how indigenous communities of the Peruvian Andes and Amazon, where I conducted fieldwork, build grassroots gastro-politics to make food compatible with cultural and land-management concerns that address their needs, and do not necessarily comply with mechanisms wrought to bring prestige and revenues to the state and other powerful cultural entrepreneurs. By

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developing activities such as workshops, barter gatherings, and smallscale culinary festivals, these actors propose alternative views on gastropolitics and food heritage, aiming at decolonising the diet, re-attaching stories and memories to particular foods and, more broadly, revitalising indigenous food systems and ways of living. In the concluding section, presented both as an epilogue and a ‘reality check’, I address the ways in which Peru’s narrative as a culinary nation has been played out and discuss its actual and potential effects in society.

References Amo, E. (2023). The Slow Food Movement and the Terra-Madre project: Food sovereignty and translocal assemblages. Globalizations, 20(4), 644–660. Amnesty International. (2023). Peru: Racist repression and slow investigations continue 100 days after protests began. Amnesty International. Retrieved May 18, 2023, from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/03/peru-­racist-­ repression-­slow-­investigations-­100-­days/ Angé, O. (2018). Interspecies respect and potato conservation in the Peruvian cradle of domestication. Conservation and Society, 16(1), 30–41. Appadurai, A. (1981). Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia. American Ethnologist, 8(3), 494–511. Arce, M. (2005). Market reform in society: Post-crisis politics and economic change in authoritarian Peru. Pennsylvania State University Press. Argumedo, A. (2013). Collective trademarks and biocultural heritage: Towards new indications of distinction for indigenous peoples in the Potato Park, Peru. IIED. Avanza, M., & Laferté, G. (2005). Dépasser la “construction des identités” ? Identification, image sociale, appartenance. Genèses, 61(4), 134–152. Barth, F. (1969). Introduction. In F. Barth (Ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Bergen Universitetsforlaget. Bazo, F. (2017). Desborde subterráneo (1983-1992). Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. Becker, H. (1985). Outsiders. Métailié. Bellemare, M., Fajardo-Gonzalez, J., & Gitter, S. (2016). Foods and fads - The welfare impacts of rising quinoa prices in Peru. Towson University, Department of Economics Working Papers Series, 2016-06. http://webapps.towson.edu/ cbe/economics/workingpapers/2016-­06.pdf

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Bérard, L., & Marchenay, P. (2004). Les produits de terroir. Entre culture et règlements. Buller, H. (2010). Palatable ethics. Environment and Planning A, 42, 1875–1880. Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (2009). Ethnicity Inc. Chicago University Press. Coronel, O. (2019). ¿Por qué el malestar social en Perú no estalla como en otros países sudamericanos? The Conversation. Retrieved March 30, 2023, from https://theconversation.com/por-­que-­el-­malestar-­social-­en-­peruno-­estalla-­ como-­en-­otros-­paises-­sudamericanos-­128096 Cotler, J. (1967). The mechanics of internal domination and social change in Peru. Studies in Comparative International Development, 12, 229–246. CVR. (2004). Hatun Willakuy: Versión abreviada del informe final de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, Perú. Corporación Gráfica. Degregori, C. I. (1986). Del mito del Inkarry al mito del progreso. Socialismo y participación, 36, 49–56. Degregori, C.I., Blondet, C., & Lynch, N. (1986). Conquistadores de un Nuevo mundo. De invasores a ciudadanos en San Martín de Porres. Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition. Columbia University Press. DeSoucey, M. (2010). Gastronationalism: Food traditions and authenticity politics in the European Union. American Journal of Sociology, 75, 432–455. Dölz, M. (2014). Perú sabe. PAT, 61, 16–22. Fan, J. (2013). Can ideas about food inspire real social change? The case of Peruvian gastronomy. Gastronomica, 13, 29–40. Franco, C. (1991). La otra modernidad. CEDEP. García, M. E. (2021). Gastropolitics and the specter of race. University of California Press. Giousmpasoglou, C., Brown, L., & Cooper, J. (2020). The role of the celebrity chef. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 85, 102358. Goffmann, E. (1973). La mise en scène de la vie quotidienne. Minuit. Goodman, D., DuPuis, M., & Goodman, M. (Eds.). (2012). Alternative food networks. Knowledge, practice, and politics. Routledge. Graddy, T. G. (2014). Situating in situ: A critical geography of agricultural biodiversity Conservation in the Peruvian Andes and beyond. Antipode, 46(2), 426–454. Graeber, D. (2015). The utopia of rules. On technology, stupidity, and the secret joys of bureaucracy. Melville House. Greene, S. (2016). Punk and revolution. Seven more interpretations of Peruvian reality. Duke University Press.

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Guthman, J. (2008). Neoliberalism and the making of food politics in California. Geoforum, 39, 1171–1183. Ichijo, A., & Ranta, R. (2016). Food, national identity and nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan. Johnston, J., & Goodman, M. (2015). Spectacular foodscapes. Food, Culture & Society, 18(2), 205–222. Kollenda, H. (2019). From farm to the table: Productive alliances as a pathway to inclusive development in Peru. Anthropology of Food, 14. https://journals. openedition.org/aof/9992 Lauer, M., & Lauer, V. (2006). La revolución gastronómica peruana. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Lipovetsky, G. (1994). The empire of fashion. Princeton University Press. Matta, R. (2009). Enjeux sociaux d’une consommation ‘haut de gamme.’ Étude sur les logiques marchandes et sociales au cœur de deux expressions culturelles dans la ville de Lima : l’expérience gastronomique et les fêtes de musique électronique. PhD Dissertation. Sorbonne Nouvelle University. Matta, R. (2012). Déclinaisons de l’imaginaire urbain de l’upper-middle class de Lima (Pérou). Un aperçu depuis les pratiques culturelles. Problèmes d’Amérique Latine, 86, 77–92. Matta, R. (2014). República gastronómica y país de cocineros: comida, política, medios y una nueva idea de nación para el Perú. Revista Colombiana de Antropología, 40(2), 15–40. Matta, R., & García, M. E. (2019). The gastro-political turn in Peru. Anthropology of Food, 14. https://journals.openedition.org/aof/10061 McDonell. (2021). Commercializing the ‘Lost Crop of the Inca’: Quinoa and the politics of agrobiodiversity in ‘traditional’ crop commercialization. In J. Staller (Ed.), Andean Foodways. Springer Nature. Nader, L. (1969). Up the anthropologist: Perspectives gained from ‘studying up’. In D. Hyms (Ed.), Reinventing Anthropology. Random House. Nazarea, V., Rhodes, R., & Andrews-Swann, J. (Eds.). (2013). Seeds of resistance, seeds of hope. University of Arizona Press. Noiriel, G. (1993). L’identification des citoyens: naissance de l’état-civil républicain. Genèses, 13, 3–28. Parasecoli, F. (2017). Knowing Where It Comes From: Labeling Traditional Foods to Compete in a Global Market. Iowa University Press. Parasecoli, F. (2022). Gastronativism. Food, identity, politics. Columbia University Press.

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Pastor, M., & Wise, C. (1992). Peruvian economic policy in the 1980s: From orthodoxy to heterodoxy and back. Latin American Research Review, 27(2), 83–117. Poole, D., & Rénique, G. (2012). Peru: Humala takes off his gloves. NACLA Report on the Americas, 45, 4–5. PRATEC. (2000). Comida y biodiversidad en el mundo andino. PRATEC. Rockower, P. (2012). Recipes for Gastrodiplomacy. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 8(3), 235–246. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom. Cambridge University Press. Rousseau, S. (2012). Food media: Celebrity chefs and the politics of everyday interference. Bloomsbury. Ruiz Torres, G. (2005). Neoliberalism under crossfire in Peru: Implementing the Washington consensus. In S. Soedeberg, G. Menz & P. Cerny (Eds.), Internalizing Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan. Teyssier, S., Etilé, F., & Combris, P. (2015). Social- and self-image concerns in fair-trade consumption. European Review of Agricultural Economics, 42(4), 579–606. Turner, K. L., Davidson-Hunt, I. J., Desmarais, A. A., & Hudson, I. (2016). Creole hens and ranga-ranga: Campesino foodways and biocultural resource-­ based development in the Central Valley of Tarija, Bolivia. Agriculture, 6(3), 41–74. Wilson, M. (Ed.). (2017). Postcolonialism, indigeneity and struggles for food sovereignty. Routledge. Zhang, J. (2015). The food of the worlds: Mapping and comparing contemporary gastrodiplomacy campaigns. International Journal of Communication, 9. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/2847

2 On the Formation of Peruvian Gastronomy

To understand the gastronomic boom, one has to go back in time and trace the formation of cuisine and eating practices in Peru, with an emphasis on Lima, the country’s culinary laboratory. Like all cuisines of nations formed under the gun and the spectre of colonial rule, that of Peru is the result of histories of violence and segregation, but also of political and identity struggles for survival. This chapter does not aim for an exhaustive historical account of Peruvian cuisine. Instead, it highlights the depth and variety of conditions and events that have shaped Peruvian foodways throughout time and permitted the rise of gastronomy, a cultural field which ultimately has turned into a phenomenon with societal and political implications.

Peruvian Foodways In the culinary culture of the Americas, the European conquest is the event that has left the deepest and most lasting imprint; that is, the marked preference for foods and cuisines from Europe. Historical evidence has shown that in food matters, there was no Columbian Exchange, but, rather, “a largely one-way culinary transfer” (Laudan, 2013: 202). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Matta, From the Plate to Gastro-Politics, Food and Identity in a Globalising World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46657-1_2

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Humoral medical theories prevented the Spanish settlers from consuming the food of the locals according to the belief that, if they did so, they would transform into Amerindians. The diet, therefore, played a role in the construction of the Spanish body, considered to be dominated by the choleric humour—that of the force of will and accurate thinking—in opposition to the Indian body, which was believed to be dominated by the phlegmatic humour—that of apathy and a lack of will (Earle, 2010). Such a belief has accompanied the evolution of relationships with food until contemporary times (Bak-Geller, 2019; Bak-Geller & Matta, 2020; Camacho, 2014). In colonial Peru, the Spanish and their descendants realised their dream of living in opulence, and could afford to take care of their bodies by imitating the diet of their ancestors (Olivas Weston, 1993). Not only could they import foods from overseas, but they were also able to obtain them from local soils thanks to the development of conventional agriculture in the seventeenth century. The ruling class no longer ate the meat of local camelids, chili peppers, wild herbs, corn, cassava, and dehydrated potatoes and tubers,1 foods which the first settlers dismissed as savage and dangerous, but which they, nevertheless, had to consume to survive. The novel agricultural system was provided with livestock and European and native crops.2 Historiographic accounts of this period present Amerindian and European foods as coexisting in the cellars and kitchens of seigneurial homes, but mostly living parallel, yet separate, lives (Hinostroza, 2006; Olivas Weston, 1998, 1999). Such a division did not survive the actual coexistence of two cultures in the same territory, and the resulting mestizo, or mixed-race, cultural features. Cuisines, like cultures, are always changing and evolving. Along the way, they receive contributions from other cultures as well as lose part of their own components (Benavides de Rivero, 2001). The culinary practices of settlers and natives have influenced each other across time through a series of processes which have resulted in hybridised creations  Such as mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum) and olluco (Ullucus tuberosus).  The animals introduced by the Spaniards include: goats, pigs, rabbits, chickens, geese, sheep, pigeons, and cows. Other European ingredients that became important in the development of Peruvian cuisine include: rice, olives, wheat, onions, sugar cane, dates, apricots, and peaches, lemons, oranges, and grapes. 1 2

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(Hinostroza, 2006). Substituting a scarce ingredient for a similar one has been one such process, for instance, replacing corn with wheat, or rice with semolina. Applying a technique to an ingredient which is usually applied to another has also rendered original outcomes. For instance, the stuffing made of minced meat, which in Europe served to fill poultry, was used in Peru to fill potato and red capsicum peppers, resulting respectively in papa rellena and rocoto relleno. Adding ingredients to dishes which do not usually contain them was, likewise, a common practice. Adding eggs and milk to the pre-Hispanic river prawn soup (prawns, potatoes, chili, and wild herbs) gave birth to the chupe de camarones. The integration of new seasonings into established dishes also contributed to culinary hybridisation. For instance, by adding sweet potato, chilli paste, and huacatay herb to cocido madrileño (steamed meats and vegetables), one can obtain its Peruvian equivalent, sancochado. These explorations were conducted over centuries on an extensive variety of products existing in the colonised lands, and ultimately contributed to the emergence, in the nineteenth century, of the mixed cocina criolla (creole cuisine). The notion of criollo refers to the attempts of mestizo populations to construct and affirm their cultural identity in changing and increasingly demanding urban environments. It is therefore characterised by attributes that would help them to address new challenges, such as astuteness (viveza), ingenuity (ingenio), and roguishness (picardía) (Simmons, 1955). Criollismo finds expression in all manifestations of social life, and provided mestizos with criteria for differentiating themselves from indigenous people and determining relative status in the hierarchy of the mestizo group itself. Indeed, whereas the possession of the chief attributes of criollismo conveys prestige within the lower and petty middle classes of Lima, it confers any kind of legitimacy in the eyes of elites (Simmons, 1955). Developed in Lima and cities of the coastal zone, the ‘whitest’ and more industrialised, cocina criolla emerged as a happy union of inventive prowess and intercultural exploration, aggregating culinary features of most of the populations present in Peru since colonial times (see Cánepa et  al., 2011; Matta, 2010). Criollo sweets, such as alfeñique and alfajor, and specialties filled with minced meat and dried fruits, such as papa rellena, rocoto relleno, and caigua rellena, are indebted to the knowledge of Arab cooks who came with the Spanish in

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the sixteenth century (Vega, 1993). Contemporary specialties made of offal, such as anticuchos, rachi, and choncholí are adaptations of the diet of African slaves who the Spanish brought to America in the seventeenth century and had to sustain themselves from the animal parts discarded by their masters (Olivas Weston, 1999; Romero, 1993). Highly praised criollo dishes such as lomo saltado and arroz chaufa would have not existed without the stir fry technique of the Chinese agricultural labourers, who came to Peru in the nineteenth century and made rice ubiquitous in the Peruvian diet (Balbi, 1999; Lausent-Herrera, 1986). Criollo classics such as tallarines verdes and menestrón are versions of Genovese spaghetti al pesto and minestrone, dishes which the Italian merchants, who arrived in the nineteenth century, tried to replicate in their new home (Bonfiglio, 1993). Yet, although integrative and eclectic, cocina criolla has captured these diverse influences through the preferences and mindset of urban Peruvians from all social classes. Proof of this is that the majority of ingredients used in criollo dishes are not native but came from overseas (Zapata & Zapata, 2019). Cocina criolla stems from a set of values which, throughout time, have produced complex and contrasting processes of identity and rejection. On one hand, it has garnered appreciation among a broad range of Peruvians who identify themselves in some way with the (urban) culture it symbolises (Benavides de Rivero, 2001; Cánepa et al., 2011). On the other hand, the expansion of its repertoire throughout the twentieth century has made cocina criolla “defined by what it was not: Indian or Amazonian, who were then still the great majority of the population in the national territory” (Tsukayama, 2019: 140). This does not imply that regional cuisines have been absent in the formation of cocina criolla and, to a larger extent, of what is known today as Peruvian cuisine. Regional cuisines have influenced criollo dishes and ways of cooking in the capital. Furthermore, they are appreciated by Limeños, who often report restaurants serving regional food among their favourites. However, the extreme centralism that characterises the country also manifests in the domain of food: The most widespread representations of Peruvian cuisine actually show cocina criolla. Despite the racial- and class-crossing impulse of cocina criolla, the economic and cultural elites of Lima continued looking at native and

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creolised cultural foods with scepticism, if not disdain. This should come as no surprise given the profoundly racist and exclusionary everyday politics established in Peru by the colonial rule (O’Toole, 2012) and, later, by nation-builders (De la Cadena, 2001). Indians and their ‘backward’ customs were preferably ignored. Contrarily, French cuisine epitomised the cultural aspirations of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century elites, as France represented, for them, the most refined example of culture and civility. This attitude informed the initial development of the dining industry in Lima, with elegant restaurants firmly sticking to the principles of the bourgeois French cuisine (Lauer & Lauer, 2006; Lauer, 2017). These restaurants catered to a privileged minority, mostly white, male, well-travelled, and aware of the trends in international gastronomy. These places were crucial for wealthy Limeños to assert their dominance in a public space modelled on that of Western liberal democracies; that is, a space apt equally to decision-making and masculine leisure or lounging (Neuman & Fjellström, 2014; Ray, 2018). Yet, the food on offer in these restaurants was just as conservative as their patrons. If food reviewers delivered accolades to venues who succeeded in imitating the menus of their counterparts in France, they also warned, especially during the late 1970s and early 1980s, about inertia and fatigue across the small and incipient gastronomic scene of Lima (Del Pozo & Miranda, 2022). We will see later in this book that it was not until recent changes in Peru’s society that gastronomy became a proper cultural field with its own specialised discourse. Things were more thrilling in the space of everyday cooking and eating, which anthropologist Steffan Igor Ayora Diaz (2012) termed the culinary field. This includes the domestic sphere and food business which are less exclusive, less restrictive, and not governed by explicit rules. Cafés, tea houses, and American-style diners (fuentes de soda) proliferated in Lima during the first decades of the twentieth century. They became central to the sociability of the wealthy and the aspirational middle-class, which frequented these places to perform cosmopolitanism and ‘decency’, a measure of social respectability encompassing economic solvency and a display of good taste (Parker, 1998). The first half of the last century was also the time when cocina criolla established itself in restaurants for the

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middle-class and white-collar workers. Yet, the most dramatic changes in Lima’s foodways occurred outside the world of privileged tables. Between 1940 and 1981, massive migration from the Andes made Lima’s population grow from half a million to nearly six million. Peruvian sociologist José Matos Mar (1984) termed this phenomenon as “popular overflow” (desborde popular); an unstoppable wave of social change deemed to overwhelm and bypass the country’s oligarchical political and economic structures. Andean migrants were immediately and enduringly seen as a threat to urban civility and decency. Stigmatisation and overt discrimination, along with the incapacity of the state to respond to people’s expectations, encouraged the multiplication and spread of migrant settlements characterised by precariousness (they began as uninhabited land invasions) with limited to no connection to the formal structures and networks of urban governance. Migrants formed a new culture throughout time, a mestizo culture with Andean roots and a new sense of politics and morality, which the elites and non-migrants referred to with the derogatory term cholo. Cholo is a racially motivated designation which defines “the Andean migrant who suffers in an urban milieu from a strong cultural clash and develops new strategies for survival, generally adopting ‘creole’ attitudes but assimilated in a peculiar way” (Romero, 1987: 131). Although commonly used to stress the inferiority of Andean people in urban contexts, the term also provided a framework to appraise acculturation and cultural change (Nugent, 1992; Quijano, 1980). Lima entered, then, a process that Anibal Quijano (1980) called cholificación, with a cholo culture developing in peripheral urban conglomerates called conos, which today contain two-thirds of the city’s population. Despite their increasing levels of infrastructure and income, conos still evoke unsafety, chaos, and informality among the middle and upper classes that inhabit “Lima Centro” (González Cueva, 1995; Vásquez Larraín, 2022). In such a changing context, migrant and low-income groups fashioned foodways as central to their survival. The centrality of food for life and an ever-expanding urban fabric offered myriad opportunities. Street food vending and small family-run eateries have become, throughout the last five decades, not only one of the most visible faces of Lima’s economy but

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also sites of culinary innovation. Cooks have had to adapt their work to economic constraints and to the rapid urban pace, popularising dishes and even full menus for people working long days with barely time for lunch (Cánepa et al., 2011). Similarly, migrant domestic workers, whose numbers have skyrocketed since the middle of the twentieth century, have had to adapt their culinary knowledge to the palatable expectations of their employers. Human subsistence is not only an economic concern. It is also a process in which people, culture, and values come together and align themselves towards rootedness and belonging. Migration implies the transit of a set of cultural references which adapt to a new context. Food has been central to initiatives aimed at fostering community ties and solidarity among new Limeños, often discriminated in the city for their skin colour and traditions, including culinary (Ccopa, 2018). In the fiestas hosted in clubes provinciales/departamentales3 (Greene, 2010; Jongkind, 1974) as well as in the neighborhood polladas4 (Béjar & Alvarez, 2010), regional cuisines functioned and still function as identity markers and an affective glue, while leaving indelible traces on the urban fabric (Arellano & Burgos, 2004; Tsukayama, 2022). In migrant households and broader kinship networks, new Limeños began to consume and appreciate foods that were absent from their previous dietary patterns. They substituted lamb, mutton, and guinea pig meats for beef, pork, and, principally, chicken by reasons of availability and affordability. Younger generations born in Lima embraced foods of foreign origin as a way to enter ‘modernity’. Fast-food specialties from North America were adapted to the preferences of the locals and to their economic means. Among them, pollo a la brasa (Peruvian-style braised chicken), salchipapas (sliced, pan-fried beef sausages and French fries), and hamburgers, all served with mayonnaise, ketchup, and ají (chili sauce), are the most praised. More recently, in the 1980s, fish and seafood have taken the lead in carrying forward the impetus for modernity of Limeños with higher purchase power. Nikkei cuisine, a sophisticated blending of Peruvian and Japanese food, played a major role in this  “Associations formed by migrants on the basis of common regional origin” (Jongkind, 1974: 471).  Raffle ‘chicken parties’ to raise funds for family members or acquaintances in need.

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evolution (Morimoto, 1993; Takenaka, 2017). Notably, it has left what is, perhaps, the ultimate cultural imprint on contemporary Peruvian cuisine: The speedy marinating time of cebiche. Serving the fish raw, almost sushi-like, granted the dish an aura of elegance and sophistication, which, as will see in the next chapters, prevails and is dominant in the gastro-­ political discourse fashioned by culinary elites. The processes outlined above have traversed boundaries of class and race, to the extent some commentators suggest that, in Lima, everybody eats more or less the same but in different settings (Lauer, 2019). Food, indeed, has the potential to encourage cross-cultural understanding. Yet it also can maintain or, even, exacerbate ethno-cultural difference. The latter becomes salient in the realm of the gastronomic field, particularly differences or discrepancies of knowledge, leisure, and pleasure. For instance, the dwellers of the conos face restricted opportunities to relate to food in ways that would increase their cultural capital. The remarks by restaurant consultant Pedro Córdova (in Lauer, 2012) offer an example of this. When asked where are the most profitable areas to open restaurants, he answers with certitude they are in the conos. He goes on to say that to be successful there, the food on offer must be of good quality but, regarding the type of food, he says that it could be whatever the owner of the business wishes it to be, because people of the conos are aspirational individuals. I find his explanation both informative and dismissive. In everyday language, the term aspiracional may either refer to people aspiring to a prosperous future or to the unappreciated practice of social climbing. Córdova’s account tends towards the latter. While he supports the conclusions of studies which describe conos as a central and driving force of Lima’s economy (Arellano & Burgos, 2004), he also complies with elite representations that position people of migrant descent as unlikely to be truly acquainted with a ‘high’ or more sophisticated culture. By describing the inhabitants of the conos as aspiracionales, and by suggesting that they would be attracted by any kind of food, Córdova situates these people and their preferences outside the gastronomic field, therefore excluding them from the prospect of becoming gastronomes or foodies. The late chef Toshiro Konishi shared similar thoughts. Konishi was a Japanese citizen who spent more than 30 years catering Japanese and Nikkei cuisine to wealthy Limeños. During a 2007 conversation in his elegant restaurant, he described Lima as an enormous market with

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different cultural and economic realities to which one has to adapt. For him, conos are not marginal and poor areas, but instead areas with increasing wealth. He mentioned, as an example, that of the five Ferrari cars being driven in Lima at that time, three were owned by people living in these areas. Yet, he considered that a restaurant like his would not enjoy the same success in conos as it would in central, more traditional neighbourhoods.5 Konishi justified his view by saying that his customers are used to and appreciate eating raw fish, whereas inhabitants of the conos are not and even disapprove of it. He elaborated further by giving me business advice: “Look, if you want to make money, go to the conos and open some crêpe shops. They would be very successful. That would give them a break from always eating hamburgers, sandwiches, and chicken. It’s different, but crêpes have almost the same ingredients”.6 The chef ’s business guidance relies on multiple layers of cultural interpretation. One of them posits people living in the conos as economically thriving and attracted to expensive and ostentatious consumption, therefore aligning themselves with the figure of the aspirational, social climber. Another layer essentialises the Andean origin of these individuals. This becomes clear when he suggests that eating raw fish is not part of their (Andean) cultural repertoire, despite the fact that we were not talking about people living in the mountains, but in Lima for many decades. A third layer evokes the pejorative image of cholo, the migrant who may cross social boundaries by means of economic improvement, but whose inclusion to the city of civility is compromised by their ethnicity and cultural background (Golash-Boza, 2010). To put it short, Konishi used cultural racism to draw a demarcation between the culinary and the gastronomic fields. Despite being shaped by contextual factors and specific realities, gastronomic and culinary fields are not hermetic to one another. Food and eating in the public space accommodate more social diversity than most other activities and lifestyles that erect physical and symbolic barriers between Limeños (see Matta, 2007, 2012; Plöger, 2007; Sasaki & Calderón, 1999; Tsukayama, 2022). Except money and availability, nothing impedes people from eating in restaurants and becoming

 ‘Traditional’ in the sense of referring to a pre-migration past.  For all Spanish and French texts and transcriptions in this book, the translations are my own.

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familiar with the world of gastronomy. Booking a table by phone or on the Internet short-circuits possibilities to face racist and discriminatory practices against non-white Peruvians, which still persist in other realms of Lima’s public sphere (see Avilés, 2021). Similarly, but also in different ways, privileged foodies proudly cross over the boundaries of their familiar or immediate neighbourhoods to eat criollo and regional specialties at market stalls and huariques located in more humble areas (Lauer, 2019) (Figs.  2.1 and 2.2). The term huarique describes small, low-key, yet respected eateries whose reputations are related to the skills of the cooks and their auras of secrecy. Although not particularly cheap, huariques gather eaters from different social milieus who share the quality of being in the know. At the intersection of culinary excellence and tacit and formal knowledge, restaurants, huariques, and food stalls blur the country’s class and social divides temporarily, at least for the duration of a meal,

Fig. 2.1  El Rincón del Bigote, a celebrated seafood huarique in Lima. Photo courtesy of Maurice Rafael, 2011

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Fig. 2.2  Lunch at San Blas Market, Cusco. Photo courtesy of Jenny Herman, 2022

while contributing to a shared understanding (if not identical, at least compatible) about what Peruvian cuisine is. The idea of a Peruvian cuisine resulting from a complex combination of knowledge and ingredients from different cultural traditions was crafted in Lima. Yet, today, it resonates all across the country. Peruvians embrace ‘their’ cuisine as a signifier of national identity, community, and belonging (see Tsukayama, 2022). Described as rich, diverse, flexible, and abundant, Peruvian cuisine has also become an invitation to explore, engage with, and make the most of it. Under these conditions, the development of gastronomy as a cultural practice could take place.

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F oodscapes and the Ludic Approach to Cooking In order to set the stage for the rest of this book, it is important to briefly define gastronomy. Since its invention in the nineteenth century, gastronomy has encompassed the developments oriented towards ideas of good eating and cooking. These include culinary and food/produce knowledge, enjoyment and leisure, customs, and manners, but also all kinds of information about food and beverages (Gillespie & Cousins, 2001; Scarpato, 2002). Spreading to almost all areas of life, gastronomy has become a major industry, a driver of identity, a body of professional knowledge, and, more recently, a “topic for the masses” (Barrère et al., 2014: 1409). The development gastronomic markets is the result of global forces and local conditions that converge in different ways and depths but with a common characteristic: The quest for a superior taste experience. This quest follows the pattern of narratives that position gastronomy as one expression of the supposed superiority of Western culture (Janer, 2023). Gastronomy, therefore, has always been a matter of refinement in taste. Over the last two decades, gastronomy has garnered even more attention across the world. It seems, moreover, that it is the only realm of ‘high culture’ that has seen its consumption increase rather than decrease (Walsh, 2023). If it is true that, today, the metropoles of most countries are provided with a broad range of exciting upscale dining possibilities, it is not everywhere that gastronomy goes beyond the epicurean domain to deeply permeate the political and social fabric of the nation. Here, I want to shed light on some social dynamics that have shaped the conditions for the development of gastronomy in Peru and its embeddedness in everyday life and politics. Priscilla Ferguson has argued that the emergence of gastronomy follows a particular template. It needs, “[F]irst, abundant, various, and readily available foodstuffs; second, a cadre of experienced producers (chefs) in a culturally specific site (the restaurant), both of which are supported by knowledgeable, affluent consumers (diners); and third, a secular cultural (culinary) tradition” (Ferguson, 1998: 603). Researchers, chefs, and commentators of Peruvian cuisine have coincided with her considerations

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(see Acurio, 2006; Lauer & Lauer, 2006; Valderrama, 2009). They mention a sophisticated cuisine with ancient roots, a culinary history characterised by cultural mixing, significant food biodiversity, and social elites engaged in symbolic struggles for social distinction as conditions that have predated and supported the formation of Peruvian gastronomy. In what follows I will focus on the latter, which in my opinion is both the more crucial and, yet, less explored aspect in accounts of Peruvian cuisine and gastronomy. Food diversity and the cultural and historical depth of Peruvian foodways are certainly fundamental to provide Peruvian cuisine with a valuable identity. Yet, the common understandings that allow people to communicate and coordinate in terms of gastronomy originate from practices oriented to a display of taste in the public and private spheres. These practices consist of interactions, relationships, and representations with and of food which hardly relate to nourishment and nutrition, but instead locate foods and their meanings along Peru’s sharply differentiated social hierarchy. Examining these practices yields insight on the construction of a gastronomic sensibility which, by bringing into play foods, individuals, techniques, and places, has laid the foundations for Peruvian gastronomy and ultimately its local and international success. Gastronomic sensibility owes much to what I call the ‘ludic approach to cooking’, which consists of playfully thinking about, cooking, and consuming food, removed from contexts and representations of need and survival—or in other words, cooking that is “freed of its moral and medical constraints” (Appadurai, 1988: 5). The ludic approach to cooking requires a curious disposition which projects individuals into an exploration of and engagement with food, with their own experiences, culinary knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Yet, its leisure-driven nature is not only directed at diverting but also at creating social cohesion, participation, and distinction. This approach therefore is an invitation to momentarily deviate from accustomed habits as much as it is a social positioning device. Indeed, recreation and leisure are activities through which people can share experiences, interests, and affects with others, but also accumulate social capital and engage with forms of association, belonging, and social distinction (Bourdieu, 1979). Indeed, far from representing the trivial aspects of life, leisure is a significant arena of identity work: “[O]ur

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participation in leisure activity is a way of demonstrating to others who we are and what we believe in” (Rojek, 2000: 37). Playfulness and enjoyment through cooking and eating are, therefore, not without social consequences, as they involve a staging of the self (Goffmann, 1973) where the crowning point is a pleasant configuration in which an individual’s pleasure is dependent on the joy of others. In the ludic approach to cooking, nutritional issues lose importance, whereas the symbolic power of food gains ground, thus emphasising the crucial role social identity plays in such configurations. Food becomes, then, a system of communication (Barthes, 1961) as well as a means of self-expression. When cooking for enjoyment turns towards social obligation, cooking becomes a “semi-leisure” (Dumazedier, 1974: 96). This occurs when the cook feels themselves more vulnerable to the communicative potential of food, for instance in situations in which judgment from guests or commensals could compromise the intent of the cook or host and, perhaps, the entire convivial and pleasant atmosphere that has been sought after (see Simmel, 1997). The ludic approach to cooking, therefore, always relies on a gradation of social pressure. If, in some occasions, the pressure is weak and playfulness prevails, pressure nonetheless makes itself felt. This is because coordinated food sociability mostly occurs between social peers. In the ludic mise en scène, the stage is the space where the meal occurs. The back stage comprises not only the space of the kitchen (or the space where the meal is prepared) but also foodscapes. The term foodscape has generally been used to define the physical, social, and institutional environments that encompass all opportunities to obtain food and to support the preservation and development of culinary knowledge within a given location (Ayora-Diaz, 2012; Mielwald & McCann 2014; Mikkelsen, 2011). Markets, supermarkets, specialised and delicatessen stores, cookbooks, restaurants, fishing ports, small and organic agricultural producers, culinary schools, and food regulatory institutions may all be components of foodscapes. The economic, social, cultural, and political forces of globalisation shape contemporary foodscapes and determine the possibilities for people to engage with food (Ayora-Diaz, 2022). Although this understanding is operationally useful, I favour a definition informed by dialectical and

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relational perspectives (Dolphijn, 2004; Dolphijn & Amilien, 2020; Goodman, 2016; Johnston & Goodman, 2015) which describes foodscapes as the physical, social, and symbolic environments wherein food-related practices, values, meanings, and representations intersect with the material realities that sustain the availability of food. Foodscapes are therefore “perspectival constructs” (Appadurai, 1996: 33) inflected by the historical, cultural, socio-economic, and political realities of individuals, which in turn contribute to situating the lives and experiences of individuals and groups in the world, both in tangible and intangible ways. Below I describe three examples in which foodscapes and the ludic approach to cooking intersect. They show how gender, ethnicity, and social class influence recreational cooking and eating, and how this likewise results in particular engagements with foodscapes. The examples demonstrate that if the ludic approach to cooking relies, in principle, on uses of foodscapes which reflect the social stratification and hierarchies existing in Peru, it can also encourage uses that challenge those same hierarchies, for example, by reducing distance between groups, at least temporarily. Each of these examples is indicative of the pragmatic need, among people in privileged positions, to relate to food in terms of escaping the routine, learning specific knowledge, coming together, prestige, and sensory appeal. That is, the desire and willingness to acquire a gastronomic sensibility.

The Private Chef Class The first example refers to the cooking classes an esteemed chef imparted onto wealthy women from Lima. When we met in 2007, chef Sebastián Cavenecia was 27 years old and ran the restaurant Los Cavenecia, Taller de Cocina. He was, at that time, considered one of the rising stars of Peruvian gastronomy. He was also a media personality, with frequent appearances in the written press as well as on television. Besides his work in the kitchen and his media appointments, Cavenecia found time to become a cooking teacher. He explained he was solicited for the job by his eventual students, who were patrons at his restaurant. His group of students was

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composed of women aged between 45 and 50, most of them housewives. As well as teaching food practices, the lessons made particular use of foodscapes. I prefer to go to my students’ houses to impart the classes, rather than forming a larger group which would come to the restaurant. I would be obliged to close the restaurant for them, or to only teach on days when we are closed. It’s nicer for them, this way they get together in groups of three or four and I teach them to make tiradito7 or a coconut juice tiradito, or any other dish. In the morning, we go to Wong [one of the most expensive supermarkets in Lima]. I teach them to do the shopping, they don’t know how to do it, and I show them the different qualities of produce and how to select them. Then we go to the house of one of them to cook, and I divide up the various tasks between all of them. So they cut open the fish, they cut and prepare the sauces, that way they see how the whole dish is prepared. […] I teach them relatively simple dishes, that way they can do it again later at home. None of the dishes have too many or ingredients or overly complicated techniques […] I don’t charge them a lot of money, although I could since it’s them who call me, but if I charge them fifty dollars an hour they’ll never call me back. For me it’s also a bit of fun, I’m happy to do it. Apart from that, it’s always the customers who come to eat here [in his restaurant].8

During the classes, Cavenecia undertakes the selection and preparation of food in a relaxed way, following a trend of food sociability which has become very fashionable in big cities, that of the private chef/cooking teacher. Not only are the students satisfied by getting together for the class; the chef also mingles with the people he teaches. By the end of class, Cavenecia’s students do not just know how to master simple cooking and choose good-quality produce; they are also able to show off the knowledge they have gained in front of family and friends at the receptions or meals they may make for them. Thus, on the one hand, these women are participating in the diffusion of culinary knowledge within a particular social milieu. On the other hand, they are acquiring the tools for playing  Dish of raw fish similar to carpaccio, in a spicy sauce.  Interview, May 16, 2007.

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an increasing role in the household by becoming occasional cooks or hosts. But before putting their new knowledge to the test, these women must fetch the produce and ingredients according to the chef ’s teachings. It is interesting to note that Cavenecia, who often does the purchases for his restaurant at the market or by placing orders with small producers, only ever takes his students shopping at the supermarket. The chef justifies this choice by saying that his students have never set foot in a market, or would never have the motivation to do so. At the time of our interview, open-air and covered markets in Lima had not yet undergone the qualitative and aesthetic changes that, in recent years, have made them attractive to locals and tourists alike (Fig. 2.3). Food markets are generally located in working-class neighbourhoods, or in the humblest sections of middle-class neighbourhoods, with limited options for parking. Anchored representations of food markets present them as of most use to people looking for better prices and value for

Fig. 2.3  Surquillo food market, where locals and tourists buy fresh produce and enjoy fish and seafood meals. Photo courtesy of Jenny Herman, 2023

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money, and with low standards of hygiene and produce conservation. Perhaps because of social-class proximity—Cavenecia’s background is upper-middle class—the chef projected his own social perceptions of urban foodscapes onto those of his clients, and established them as fundamentals for his lessons. For him, the market fits the needs of his restaurant but not necessarily those of his pupils, who might feel out of their comfort zone in these places. Conversely, the produce on offer at Wong and other high-end supermarkets, which are good looking, well-packaged, and asepticised, perfectly suit the kind of preparations he teaches in class, simple dishes with high-quality ingredients.

Orchestrating the Kitchen In her piece Food Fit for the Gods, published in the magazine Saveur (2002),9 Peruvian-born writer and curator Gabriella de Ferrari illustrates a particular approach to foodscapes and playful cooking, which is informed by her privileged upbringing in a small town in the region of Tacna (Southern Peru). The following passages describe kitchen scenes of the mid-twentieth century in which the author’s mother, an Italian national, plays the central role. My favorite time of day, when I was growing up, was noon, an hour or so before lunch was served, when the kitchen became the center of household activity. I loved watching my mother create, as if by magic, one of her extraordinary meals. The menu had been discussed with the three kitchen maids early in the morning, at an elaborate planning meeting in the dispensa, the food storage room. By the time my mother arrived in the kitchen to cook, everything had been washed, chopped, and carefully positioned on the countertops. She moved around like a well-rehearsed dancer, and we stood by silently as she mixed, stirred, and sniffed; she never tasted the food as she worked, relying instead on color, texture, and scent to create our sumptuous midday meal. Mother was equally creative at the market, where she always sought the “perfect ingredients”. She’d scan the piles of vegetables and fruits, choosing the best limes, tomatoes, and peppers, the finest potatoes and corn, the most luscious papayas and cherimoyas.  Available at http://www.saveur.com/article/Travels/Food-Fit-for-the-Gods, Accessed May 4, 2023.

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In the above excerpt, the foodscape is a site of material and sensory engagement which allows the cook to produce sophisticated meals. It comprises the food market, the kitchen, individual creativity, and three knowledgeable helpers. The cook finds herself in a very privileged position, as she has time and financial and human resources to develop a theatrical and playful persona, with the kitchen being the main stage and the helpers the supporting actors. De Ferrari elaborates further: The women of the town taught her how to tell when a pineapple was ready to eat or if a potato had been stored for too long, and she pinched, sniffed, and shook the produce with the rest of them before making her choices. These exotic crops were a challenge to her—a challenge she relished as much as she relished her new country … Merging the influences of her adopted country with the traditions of her homeland and the refined cuisine of her many French cookbooks, she created an eclectic and personal style of her own. She seldom followed a recipe, preferring to improvise as she cooked. She had little choice: When my mother came to Peru, no Peruvian cookbook of any significance existed. Instead, recipes were passed from mother to daughter—or, like beauty secrets, were exchanged cautiously by word of mouth, as symbols of friendship. I remember that one of my classmates got into trouble because she revealed to me her mother’s special method of preparing mazamorra, a dessert made of fruit and purple corn.

The second excerpt suggests an expanded foodscape which now includes culinary traditions of Italy and elements of French cuisine found in cookbooks. This knowledge provides the cook with the ability to innovate. It allows for smoother processes of culinary experimentation, in which ingredients and techniques from different geographical and social origins are combined into new creations. The ludic approach is present here, in an almost artistic way in which the owner of the house ensures that their kitchen is set up (almost like the conductor of an orchestra) and in the ‘relishable’ challenge that combining the refinement of European cuisines with the ‘exotic’ local produce seems to imply for the cook. It is important to note, though, that here innovation and culinary experimentation gives an unequal treatment to the elements at play depending on their provenance. Local elements are mentioned as ‘influences’, Italian as

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‘traditions’, and French as ‘refined’. This, in turn, reflects the highly stratified context of the culinary staging; that of a rich, white housemaster cooking with the support of three housemaids, ‘women of the town’.

Urban Excursions When I met John, he was in his late thirties, married and with two children. His preferred hobby is cooking for his family and friends on weekends. A frequent companion during my fieldwork, I learned much from him about the possibilities offered by the city’s foodscapes and how individual experiences also bring specific foodscapes into existence. John’s foodscape was characterised by the search for fresh protein, as it is central to his cooking preference and style. The son of a Peruvian entrepreneur of Scottish origin and a French-­ Peruvian housewife, John had a privileged upbringing: He attended a British school in Lima and then a private university, where he obtained his professional certificate as a dentist. He declared he had always been self-aware of his luck. His interest in cooking has been nurtured by his father, who he presents as a gourmet, an excellent cook, and an expert in barbecues. From his childhood, he has garnered interest in cooking not only through meals with family and friends, but also through regular forays into working-class neighbourhoods, where he and his father search for seafood delicacies prepared in huariques. He said that, thanks to these moments of father-and-son connivance, he got to know the city in a different way, ‘freeing’ himself from his quotidian, privileged urban surroundings. Through these escapades, he also learned about the importance of cooking with the freshest produce. Indeed, John and his father avoided eating seafood and fish in restaurants as much as possible, and would rather visit celebrated huariques or the seafood stalls located around the fishing port of the district of Chorrillos. For John, it is out of the question to buy fish for preparing cebiche (his signature dish) in the supermarket. If the fish he buys in the morning does not come from the market, the port, or the only independent shopkeeper in his neighbourhood who he trusts, he prefers to change the menu. John also eats beef frequently and takes pleasure in grilling it—he

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keeps repeating that his barbecue is the second best in Lima, after his father’s—but in this case, he does not get it from the market. Where beef is concerned, he believes that the cold chain is of central importance. In food markets, fish is generally displayed whole, protected by its skin and scales, while beef is cut without any equivalent protection.10 Flies, which are numerous at the butcher’s stall, can discourage certain customers who are concerned about hygiene. Furthermore, for a gourmet like John, the beef from Peru does not equal in quality the beef from Argentina, Paraguay, or Brazil. He therefore prefers to go to the supermarket to be sure to obtain imported meat. Yet, he does not visit just any supermarkets, only the most reputable and expensive, such as Wong and Vivanda. Mid-range supermarkets, in his eyes, do not offer a convincing diversity of imported meat. While shopping, John carefully observes and compares the meat cuts, which are already packaged, weighed, and priced. When it comes to buying vegetables, he also prefers the supermarket. This decision is not out of quality concerns, but for reasons of convenience and proximity to his house. Since fruits and vegetables are not central to his culinary repertoire, he places much less interest when he purchases them. John’s use of foodscapes comes down to merely gastronomic impetuses, as they strategically serve the purpose of showcasing his culinary skills to impress his guests. Some of his skills find roots in his family history, such as the quasi-scientific understanding of combustion he says he acquired from grilling with his father. Yet, what he puts more emphasis on is the capacity to source his cooking with the freshest produce, which is something that results from his excursions throughout Lima’s urban fabric and the relationships he has developed with market vendors and shopkeepers.

Ludic Foodscapes In these three cases, the ludic approach to cooking has one central objective: To highlight food’s symbolic potential, and the prestige attached to  In the fish market at the port of Chorrillos, fish are generally sold whole. Cutting is a service which the trader offers the customer. 10

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it, to momentarily claim it for one’s self during a reception or meal with guests. These examples also underline the central role privileged groups have in the development of a culinary culture which gears itself more towards symbolism than nutrition. Yet, at the same time, this approach can be the source of new forms of knowledge and learning. It allows individuals to temporarily free themselves of the robotic thinking and actions of their daily routine. Of course, these liberating processes, when they occur, can only really be liberating if afforded certain degrees of freedom, since leisure “is only practised and conceived by users in a dialectic of everyday life, where all the elements rely upon and react to one another” (Dumazedier, 1962: 25). Indeed, the cooking classes imparted by chef Cavenecia can lead to a foodscape practice which is strongly influenced by the social position of the individuals concerned—in this case, upper-class, middle-aged women. In this context, the playful component is not sufficient to overcome the strong barriers which remain between the upper end of the social ladder and those below. As Cavenecia indicated, most of his students will probably never visit traditional food markets. However, their new practice of spending more time at the supermarket in order to select the ‘right’ ingredients opens up the possibility to break with a common situation observed in Lima’s high-end supermarkets: The maid, in her work uniform, chooses the produce and fills the shopping trolley, while the employer restrains her involvement to getting out her bank card at the register. De Ferrari’s childhood account shows how approaching food and cooking in a playful manner contributes to the creation of sophisticated cuisines which borrow elements from local, quotidian, and more humble cuisines. On one hand, we see how De Ferrari’s mother juxtaposes the knowledge and skills acquired through her inherited traditions and her many French cookbooks with the possibilities offered by the foodscape and the skills of her domestic employees and other women in the village. On the other hand, we can see how that knowledge is also constrained or immobilised by reasons linked to both social prestige and belonging, as is demonstrated by the fact that certain preparations are undertaken in secret and are only divulged to people to whom one wishes to show closeness or affection.

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John’s experience allows us to reflect on the temporary erasure of social distance through a ludic approach to cooking. Of course, it is necessary to understand John’s practices in the context of his personal history. Certainly, he is younger than Cavenecia’s clients, and more familiar with the issues involved in buying food. Even so, when he goes seeking good produce, he breaks with his every-day, urban, life and builds transactional relationships of trust with shopkeepers, which is practically impossible in the impersonal context of supermarkets. This relationship of trust proves important when looking for delicate produce, such as sea urchins, which must be eaten fresh to avoid food poisoning. While seeking freshness, John temporarily engages with social realities which are distinct from those of his own family and his occupation as a dentist for affluent Limeños. The ludic approach to cooking, thus, offers possibilities for social and cultural permeability. However, it is important to emphasise that, most of the time, this permeability is unidirectional, from the top of the social ladder towards the bottom, since structural inequalities prevent movement in the opposite direction. In fact, the playful, and sometimes experimental, dimension of our relationships with food is only possible when the cook has a wide enough margin for manoeuvre to allow themselves to fail in their endeavours, sacrificing time and perhaps non-negligible sums of money. Conversely, it is more difficult for an individual situated low on the social ladder to access the knowledge, foods, and spaces of food sociability as groups with higher economic, social, and cultural capital. As Jack Goody (1982: 105) argues: “In terms of class and cuisine, the higher in the hierarchy, the wider the contacts, the broader the view”. Of course, the above examples do not mean that well-off groups have a monopoly on thinking of cooking as leisure or as form of entertainment. These examples simply seek to show that, due to the resources at their disposal and the type of sociability that characterises their milieus, privileged people are most often led to develop culinary creativity and innovation beyond their most intimate sphere. This translates to individuals overtly performing their knowledge and cooking skills, giving sophisticated speeches about food, heralding new culinary trends, keeping and sharing recipes, or voicing their mastery of the foodscape. In short, it translates to the practice of gastronomy.

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 ulinary Writing, the Elite, and the Making C of Taste In Accounting for Taste, Priscilla Ferguson wrote, “cuisine cannot exist without food; nor can it survive without words” (2004: 19). This statement, which she made to affirm that the rise of French cuisine was in conjunction with that of print media, has proven valid for all cuisines that have developed since the nineteenth century. Yet, examples of the interest in recording food culture date from ancient and late medieval times, with cuneiform recipes inscribed more than 4000 years ago in Mesopotamia (Pilcher, 2016) and the first cookbook ever printed, published circa 1475 in Rome. Over time, cookbooks have become the favourite repositories of knowledge regarding cooking and food consumption. After long considering them as sources of limited value due to their overtly didactic purpose, scholars have realised that the contents of cookbooks were much more than detailed prescriptions of how to cook. They progressively acknowledged that cookbooks provide precious information about the availability of foodstuffs, health and nutrition, kitchen technologies, theories of cooking, table manners, and food habits (Notaker, 2012). Today historians and anthropologists, in particular, use cookbooks to explore culture beyond the kitchen and dining rooms (Appadurai, 1988; Bak-Geller, 2008, 2019; Cusack, 2000, 2003; Passidomo, 2017). The writings and images these volumes contain have become a source for discourse analysis which capture moral attitudes and mindsets, social and cultural identities, nation-building projects, gender roles, ideologies, and the contexts in which they operate. The written food culture associated with the invention of gastronomy has been described by Stephen Mennell (1996) as “gastronomic literature”, for which he has identified a series of characteristics. The first of these is male dominance, which opposes the preponderance of female authorship in cookbooks. Second is the emphasis on the “correct” composition of meals and service. Third is a concern with dietetics, consisting of selecting foods that are good for the body. Fourth are nostalgic evocations of pleasurable moments. Fifth “is a brew of history, myth and history serving as myth” (Mennell, 1996: 271). The overall goal is, therefore,

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to situate food as an activity of superior order (Hollows & Jones, 2010). Recently, gastronomic literature has expanded its repertoire, with books showcasing foods and cuisines to support the construction of positive images of their respective countries, regions, and people, and with scholarly publications resulting from the establishment of food studies and history in academia. Cookbooks and gastronomic literature form, then, a textual corpus that ensures the development and permanence of cuisines, while codifying the more elitist field of culture called gastronomy. Literature on Peruvian cuisine was, until recently, very brief and patchy. Estimations count the number of books published until the 1990s as up to 100, and only a handful of these volumes focus on the country’s food history and nutrition (Hinostroza, 2006; Lauer & Lauer, 2006). Since then, the production has grown exponentially in number and thematic diversity, both in print and online. This has enabled an updating of the knowledge on this area and the definition of a rhetoric of taste which, although tied to the hierarchical structure of society, does not preclude possibilities of contact and interchange. The social elites have played a decisive role in building up the landscape of knowledge on food by expanding, restricting, and speculating about ideas, from the more theoretical to the more practical. The mid-1990s marked the surge of scholarly publications on Peruvian foodways. The first volumes were dedicated to the history of crops, dishes, techniques, and food habits (Guardia, 2004; Hinostroza, 1999; Olivas Weston, 1993, 1999). An exception was La Academia en la Olla (Spaey, 1998),11 the first attempt to formalise the study of food from a multi-­ sectorial and multidisciplinary perspective. As the acclaim for Peruvian cuisine increased nationally and internationally, so did the academic interest on the country’s foodways. The range of topics covered by scholars broadened substantially, with publications on regional cuisines (Alvarez, 2005, 2016, 2022), food and migration (Ccopa, 2018), nutrition and dietetics (Léon & Chávez, 2019), as well as encyclopaedic endeavours (Zapata, 2009) and commentary on gastronomy and contemporary urban foodways (Lauer & Lauer, 2006; Lauer, 2012, 2019). The press of the University of San Martín de Porres has played a key role 11

 Which loosely translates as The Academia in the Pot.

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in the diffusion of this knowledge. Its impact has been immense since, although being produced under academic standards, many of these publications also target non-specialised audiences, as their sometimes celebratory tone and Gourmand Awards indicate. Writings by restaurant critics and food journalists figure prominently in gastronomic literature, as they convey the specialised knowledge upon which ideas of taste and appreciation are based. Among them, restaurant guides are those which shape more significantly the aesthetic experience of consumers and the practice of producers (Lane, 2013), warranting both competition and the continuity of the field. In Peru, the Summum guide is the only publication serving these purposes. Created in 2007, Summum selects the best restaurants in Peru every year, within about 30 different categories. Besides assisting consumers in judging the value of gastronomic experiences, the guide establishes and makes public a culinary hierarchy through rankings. The latter rely on a questionnaire survey among hundreds of “people recognised as lovers of the pleasures of fine dining, and others who, due to the nature of their professions, are regular diners at the country’s leading restaurants” (IPSOS-Apoyo, 2007: 10). Although the list of people in the survey is kept anonymous, the guide provides sufficient information on the process of taste making. For instance, the introductory section in the first issue of the guide features short interviews with three participants in the poll who are asked to elaborate on their choices. These individuals are: Fernando de Szyszlo, a prominent figure of abstract art in Latin America; Sitka Semsch, an internationally recognised fashion designer; and Luis Peirano, a scholar in the arts and former Minister of Culture. Although not working in the food industry, these individuals were selected for possessing the aesthetic experience and knowledge which allow for making informed judgment on cultural objects. This does not mean that their views are objective; critics might not select the most exquisite restaurants, but, instead, those who correspond with their own concerns. Yet, the featuring of important personalities from the art world reveals the hopes and anxieties associated with a cultural field in its formative stage. Consumers that are unsure of their aptitudes or choices can rely on the ‘superior taste’ of these opinion leaders to make their own decisions.

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Gastronomic literature also comprises coffee-table books. These are hardcover, oversized books to be placed on a coffee-table or a similar surface, usually in a room where guests are received. Conceived for light reading, they are visually oriented. Their contents combine short historical documentation about food and cuisine, photographs, artwork, and in some cases recipes, such as Gastón Acurio’s Perú: una aventura culinaria (2002),12 a celebration of the country’s culinary diversity and multicultural roots or Rodolfo Hinostroza’s Primicias de cocina peruana (2006), an ambitious historiographic project by one of Peru’s most acclaimed poets. Coffee-table books are often expensive, used not only to decorate a room, but also as proof of a host’s cultural capital. Mirko Lauer’s Bodegón de bodegones (2010), an attempt to bring together Peruvian visual arts and cuisine, is a good example of this. Cookbooks by celebrated chefs and enthusiast gastronomes are the writings that have generated the most interest in recent times, and they deserve a closer look. Although varied in form, length, and composition, modern cookbooks are, in general, visually oriented artefacts. Conceived as premium products, they make great gifts due to their sophistication, expensive price, and association with pleasant experiences. Peruvian cuisine cookbooks currently adorn the shelves of the country’s airport shops and, in some cases, are bestsellers outside national borders. One of the first, and also more successful, cases is The Art of Peruvian Cuisine (2000), published by Tony Custer, a Peruvian businessman and philanthropist. The first volume on Peruvian food that has been translated into English, it has paved the way for subsequent endeavours that have paralleled cuisine and the fine arts, such as Acurio’s Peru: The Cookbook (2015) and Virgilio Martínez’s Central (2016). The Art of Peruvian Cuisine portrays dishes in minimalist settings, treating them as if they were paintings. Just as in fine arts books which indicate museums and collections where pieces are displayed, this book indicates the name of the chefs and the restaurants where each recipe originates. Cookbooks such as this have promoted, and more recently have confirmed, the country’s current appeal as a gastronomic destination. 12

 Peru, a culinary adventure.

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In spite of what their price and fancy appearance may suggest, cookbooks do not always feature sophisticated recipes which are out of reach of the majority of Peruvians. Readers will find recipes of everyday dishes next to preparations which involve additional skills and, depending on the ingredients used, additional economic means. Yet, the tendency is, nonetheless, to elevate culinary creations to the rank of high culture through a strong aesthetic presentation. This socially situates both readers and the cookbooks’ content within a foodscape marked by class belonging. Such a correspondence has a long history: “Cookbooks appear in literate civilizations where the display of class hierarchies is essential to their maintenance, and where cooking is seen as a communicable variety of expert knowledge” (Appadurai, 1988: 4). As observed across the world, the writings proven to be instrumental to the creation of national cuisines have appeared within particular social groups and contexts. In India, cookbooks produced by an emerging urban middle class have shaped, since the mid-twentieth century, a new Indian cuisine characterised by cosmopolitanism and modernity (Appadurai, 1988). In Mexico, cookbooks influenced by the French culinary culture helped nineteenth-­century elites to fashion a national cuisine which reflects their society’s ideals, which symbolises the triumph of Western culture over indigenous cultures (Bak-Geller, 2008). In Peru, one cookbook in particular reveals the fundamental role social elites have played and still play in developing ideas of superior taste. Considered as one of the most captivating volumes ever written on Peruvian cuisine, El Perú y sus manjares: Crisol de culturas13 (1994) by Josie Sison Porras de la Guerra, features hundreds of recipes which have been zealously kept in the kitchens of high-status families. I accessed a copy through the Peruvian National Library, since the volume is long out of print and the few items available for purchase can only be found in specialised, online bookshops at exorbitant prices. El Perú y sus manjares is a sumptuous self-published cookbook with the clear intent to elucidate the relationship between high-status families and the most refined forms of Peruvian cuisine.  Peru and Its Delicacies: A Melting Pot of Cultures.

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Sison Porras de la Guerra, known in elite circles as “the grande dame of Peruvian cuisine”, is a true aristocrat. Her filiation goes back to Spanish nobles as well as to important figures of Peru’s national history, such as the Marshall Andrés Avelino Cáceres—three-time president of the country in the nineteenth century and a renowned national war hero—of whom she was the great-granddaughter. El Perú y sus manjares is reportedly the result of the more than three decades she spent investigating Peruvian cuisine and collecting recipes. The author organised the recipes by family name, and described them with a zest of family history and anecdotes, since she personally knew the members of the families featured in the book. She recounted that, when they found out about the editorial project, the contributors tried to surpass each other by giving her their very best recipes (De Ferrari, 2002). This account demonstrates the centrality of cuisine both as a source for serious recreation and social affirmation among elites. The index of family names listed in the final pages of the book informs a similar interpretation as it brings to mind the idea of a ‘copyright’ which consecrates social elites as stewards of an invaluable heritage (Lauer & Lauer, 2006). The intentional correlation between elite values and attitudes and an elevated cuisine becomes even more evident when, together with culinary excellence, the book foregrounds the individual qualities of the recipe owners, which are associated with refinement, good taste, and mastery of good manners. For instance, in the recipe for arroz con pollo (chicken with rice) by the Ayulo family—a family of bankers—the author uses some lines to first stress the respectability and character of her informant and friend. The [Ayulo family’s] recipe book is very beautiful, made of a very soft leather, with the owner’s name engraved in golden letters. The handwriting inside is refined, careful and regular, which tells us much about the owner’s personality. Doña Rosita Ayulo de Ferreyros, a true Limeña mother, is constantly surrounded by her four generations of descendants, who love and admire her. (Sison Porras de la Guerra, 1994: 80)

To introduce the ensalada de cangrejo y camarones (crab and langoustine salad) by the Benavides family—a family of politicians and

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miners—the compiler delves back into the family tree of the contributor of the recipe to proclaim her illustrious ancestry. Luisa Benavides de Porras is the daughter of Augusto Benavides Diez-­ Canseco, mayor of Lima, an architect with exquisite taste, and a great artist and researcher in his field … An invitation from her is always accepted with enthusiasm, not only because she is a beautiful, refined, and pleasant woman, but also because her cooking is original and delicious. (Ibid.: 90)

The author operates in a similar way when it comes to preparations coming from her own family. To provide the context of tacu tacu de pallares (rice and butterbean patty), she delves even further back into the past to Peru’s independence movement. The General Antonio de la Guerra y Espinoza de los Monteros, born in the Americas to a Spanish mother and father, arrived in Peru with the Numancia battalion of the royal army … Don Antonio de la Guerra was made a general at the age of 24, and rose through the ranks on the battlefield. He married Doña Josefa Gorostegui de Seminario, and had a son, from whom are descended all those who bear his name, and several daughters, who married notable public figures of Peruvian society. Josilu de la Guerra Sison affectionately welcomes her friends, who often praise her recipes, some of which come from the family’s culinary archives. Josilu is married to the lawyer and politician Francisco Diez-Canseco Tavara. (Ibid.: 96)

The display of the aristocratic lineage and temperament of the contributors establishes, deliberately or not, an accurate and virtuous correspondence between taste and the elites. Such a connection precedes and enables the formation of a gastronomic field in Peru: Refined taste and manners are just as important for gastronomy as they are for constituting, indicating, and reinforcing class affiliation. If El Perú y sus manjares circumscribes culinary excellence to the kitchens of rich households, it is important to note that the knowledge it collects has also been generated outside the world of privilege. This is not often clear both in the book and in public display, since family heads are those who sign the recipes and embody culinary skills before

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commensals. The author gives, however, an interesting hint about social permeability in culinary practice: The Peruvian woman, charming and skilled in social events, is also a magnificent mistress of the house who, for centuries, has been used to directing armies of servants. Many such women, like their grandmothers, have never cut an onion nor laid their distinguished hands on a saucepan. They are all like generals, who never pull a trigger, but who win battles nevertheless. (Sison Porras de la Guerra, 1994: 15–16)

The reference to kitchen helpers, the actual purpose of which is to reinforce social status by maintaining distinguished women at a distance from labour, suggests that the cuisine of the wealthy integrates knowledges from different and contrasting social realities. In the text mentioned previously, De Ferrari (2002) delivers a related account when she describes her mother’s fascination with the indigenous foods manipulated by her cooking staff. It therefore seems that, in high-status conservative families, cooking was never really a physical challenge, even less a chore, but rather an activity of orchestration and direction. Masculine cooking provides a more nuanced view. Physical engagement is required either when one cooks as a hobby, as seen before in the case of John, or when one does it as professional practice, as shown in El Perú y sus manjares (pages 61 and 146) through the recipes for langosta Costa Verde (Costa Verde lobster) and cocktail de erizos (sea urchin cocktail), authored respectively by chefs and restaurateurs Raúl Modenesi (restaurant Costa Verde) and Alfredo Aramburú (restaurant Alfresco). Some recipes in that same book are further evidence of interclass assimilation. The picadillo de asado (page 355) is a stuffing made from meat leftovers and offal, while the guiso de mollejas (page 363) is a poultry gizzard stew. As discussed in the opening of this chapter, these kind of preparations carry the imprint of violence, domination, and poverty. The book also features charqui moderno de vaca (page 84) a version of charqui (llama jerky consumed by Andean peasants) that uses beef instead of camelid meat. Although it is difficult to measure the influence of domestic workers in these recipes, their mere inclusion in the book indicates the

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cross-class and cross-cultural nature of Peruvian cuisine, even in what is perceived as its more refined version. Custer’s The Art of Peruvian Cuisine provides an example in the same vein, although not directly related to dishes and recipes. On page 39, a large picture of the chefs contributing to the volume, all dressed in whites, shows them standing in three rows like a photograph of a sports team.14 Chefs of European, mestizo, and Asian descent pose next to each other. The picture, which has clearly been composed to highlight the multi-­ ethnic nature of Peru’s cuisine, sheds light on how the elites use elements of identity in ways that have provided the foundations for a melting pot narrative in which the contributions of the different cultures to the national cuisine are treated as equal. We will see in the forthcoming chapters how this culturally inclusive narrative has deeply ingrained into the fabric of how Peruvian society understands and engages with ‘their’ cuisine. But before we go any further, let us keep in mind that the praise for Peruvian cuisine and the subsequent gastronomic boom would have not been possible without diverse and abundant foodstuff, a cultural diversity that expands culinary imagination and innovation, people inclined to engage with foodways and foodscapes beyond purely alimentary terms, and a discourse made of rhetoric as much as statements of fact, which gives cuisine an intellectual form and makes it exist far from the immediate sphere of culinary production. These conditions and developments have allowed the role of gastronomy in Peru by the end of the twentieth century to be redefined. On the one hand, gastronomy has become a means for a social group in ascendance to affirm its new social position. On the other hand, it started to profile itself as a thriving cultural industry, which eventually has nurtured, in many people, hopes for a better future, and helped to project the image of Peru as a trustful global player. At that stage, all these expectations and aspirations merged into one single figure, that of the restaurant chef.

 The image is available at: https://journals.openedition.org/aof/docannexe/image/7361/img-3.jpg

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References Acurio, G. (2002). Perú, una aventura culinaria. Quebecor. Acurio, G. (2006). Discurso de orden de Gastón Acurio en la ceremonia de apertura del año académico de la Universidad del Pacífico. Retrieved May 19, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=knsSxwFTnF8&ab_channel=TuRestauranteNet Acurio, G. (2015). Peru: The cookbook. Phaidon Press. Alvarez, I. (Ed.). (2005). Desde los andes al mundo, sabor y saber. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Alvarez, I. (2016). Picanterías y Chicherias del Perú. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Alvarez, I. (2022). Tacna, sabor de la patria. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Appadurai, A. (1988). How to make a national cuisine: Cookbooks in contemporary India. Comparative studies in society and history, 30(1), 3–24. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. University of Minnesota Press. Arellano, R., & Burgos, D. (2004). Ciudad de los Reyes, de los Chávez, los Quispe. AIM. Avilés, M. (2021). Lo bueno, lo malo y lo cholo: Postales sobre el racismo desde el Perú (2017-2019). Nueva sociedad, 292, 107–122. Ayora Diaz, S. I. (2012). Foodscapes, Foodfields, and Identities in Yucatán. Berg. Ayora-Diaz, S.I. (2022). Translocal foodscapes: Gastronomic creativity in Mérida, Mexico, and Seville, Spain. In Atsushi Nobayashi (Ed.), Making food in local and global contexts. Springer. Bak-Geller Corona, S. (2008). Les livres de recettes «francisés» au Mexique au XIXe siècle. La construction de la nation et d’un modèle culinaire national. Anthropology of food, S4. https://journals.openedition.org/aof/2992 Bak-Geller, S. (2019). The cookbook in Mexico. A founding document of the modern nation. In A. Ichijo, V. Johannes, & R. Ranta (Eds.), The emergence of national food: The dynamics of food and nationalism. Bloomsbury. Bak-Geller, S., & Matta, R. (2020). Las cocinas mestizas en México y Perú. Claves para interpretar el multiculturalismo en América Latina. Antípoda, 39, 69–93. Bak-Geller, S., Matta, R., & Suremain, Ch-É. (Eds.). 2019 Patrimonios alimentarios. Entre consensos y tensiones. El Colegio de San Luis & IRD Éditions. Balbi, M. (1999). Los chifas en el Perú. Historia y recetas. Universidad San Martín de Porres.

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Barrère, C., Bonnard, Q., & Chossat, V. (2014). Are we at a turning point in the evolution of gastronomy? Paris: An exemplary case. Applied Economics, 46(12), 1409–1419. Barthes, R. (1961). Pour une psycho-sociologie de l'alimentation contemporaine. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 16(5), 977–986. Béjar, H., & Alvarez, M. A. (2010). Las polladas: Una estrategia de sobrevivencia en época de crisis económica y política. Lima 1980–2003. Investigaciones Sociales, 14(24), 259–283. Benavides de Rivero, G. (2001). De la construcción del patrimonio gastronómico. Turismo y patrimonio, 3, 27–48. Bonfiglio, G. (1993). La influencia italiana en la cultura culinaria peruana. In R. Olivas Weston (Ed.), Cultura, identidad y cocina en el Perú. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Bourdieu, P. (1979). La distinction. Minuit. Camacho, J. (2014). Una cocina exprés. Cómo se cocina una política pública de patrimonio culinario. In M.  Chaves, M.  Montenegro, & M.  Zambrano (Eds.), Mercado, consumo y patrimonialización. Agentes sociales y expansión de las industrias culturales. ICANH. Cánepa, G., Hernández, M., Biffi, V., & Zuleta, M. (2011). Cocina e identidad. La culinaria peruana como patrimonio cultural inmaterial. Ministerio de Cultura. Ccopa, P. P. (2018). La cocina de acogida. Migrantes andinos en Lima: memorias, sabores y sentidos. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Cusack, I. (2000). African cuisines: Recipes for nationbuilding? Journal of African Cultural Studies, 13(2), 207–225. Cusack, I. (2003). Pots, pens and ‘eating out the body’: Cuisine and the gendering of African nations. Nations and Nationalism, 9(2), 277–296. Custer, T. (2000). The art of Peruvian cuisine. Ganesha. De Ferrari, G. (2002). Food fit for the Gods. Saveur. Retrieved May 4, 2023, from http://www.saveur.com/article/Travels/Food-­Fit-­for-­the-­Gods De la Cadena, M. (2001). The racial politics of culture and silent racism in Peru. Paper prepared for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Conference on Racism and Public Policy Durban, South Africa, August 31 – September 7. Del Pozo, C., & Miranda, E. (2022). How to define gastronomic identity from Cultural Studies: The Peruvian case. International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, 27, Article 100476.

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Dolphijn, R. (2004). Foodscapes: Towards a Deleuzian ethics of consumption. Eburon. Dolphijn, R., & Amilien, V. (2020). FOOD2GATHER negotiating foodscapes: An introduction. SIFO Project Note 2-2020. 37 p. Dumazedier, J. (1962). Vers une civilisation du loisir. Seuil. Dumazedier, J. (1974). Sociologie empirique du loisir. Seuil. Earle, R. (2010). “If you eat their food …”: Diets and bodies in early colonial Spanish America. American Historical Review, 115(3), 688–713. Ferguson, P.  P. (1998). A cultural field in the making: Gastronomy in 19th-­ century France. American Journal of Sociology, 104(3), 597–641. Gillespie, C., & Cousins, J. (2001). European Gastronomy into the 21st Century. Routledge. Goffmann, E. (1973). La mise en scène de la vie quotidienne. Minuit. Golash-Boza, T. (2010). ‘Had they been polite and civilized, none of this would have happened’: Discourses of race and racism in multicultural Lima. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 5(3), 317–330. González, C. E. (1995). Ciudades paralelas: Una investigación sobre el imaginario urbano. In E.  González Cueva, R.  Mendoza García, & M.  Santos Anaya (Eds.), Ciudad de jóvenes: Imágenes y cultura. PUCP. Goody, J. (1982). Cooking, cuisine and class. Cambridge University Press. Goodman, M. (2016). Food geographies I: Relational foodscapes and the busy-­ ness of being more-than-food. Progress in Human Geography, 40(2), 257–266. Greene, S. (2010). Entre lo indio, lo negro y lo incaico: la jerarquía espacial de la diferencia en el Perú multicultural. Tabula Rasa, 13, 111–146. Guardia, S. B. (2004). La flor morada de los Andes. Planeta. Hinostroza, G. (1999). Cocina limeña. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Hinostroza, R. (2006). Primicias de cocina peruana. Everest. Hollows, J., & Jones, S. (2010). Please don’t try this at home: Heston Blumenthal, cookery TV and the culinary field. Food, Culture & Society, 13(4), 521–537. IPSOS-Apoyo. (2007). Summum. Ranking de los restaurantes del Perú. IPSOS-Apoyo. Janer, Z. (2023). The coloniality of modern taste: A critique of gastronomic thought. Routledge. Johnston, J., & Goodman, M. (2015). Spectacular foodscapes. Food, Culture & Society, 18(2), 205–222. Jongkind, F. (1974). A reappraisal of the role of the regional associations in Lima, Peru. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16(4), 471–482.

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Lane, C. (2013). Taste makers in the “fine-dining” restaurant industry: The attribution of aesthetic and economic value by gastronomic guides. Poetics, 41(4), 342–365. Laudan, R. (2013). Cuisine and Empire. University of California Press. Lauer, M. (2010). Bodegón de bodegones. Universidad de San Martín de Porres. Lauer, M. (2012). La olla de cristal. Mirando el futuro de la cocina peruana. Universidad de San Martín de Porres. Lauer, M. (2017). La cocina francesa y el Perú. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Lauer, M. (2019). Comer en los mercados peruanos. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Lauer, M., & Lauer, V. (2006). La revolución gastronómica peruana. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Lausent-Herrera, I. (1986). Los inmigrantes chinos en la Amazonia Peruana. Bulletin de l’Institut français d’études andines, XV(3–4), 49–60. León, E., & Chávez, N. (2019). Alimentos del Perú. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Martínez, V. (2016). Central. Phaidon Press. Matos Mar, J. (1984). Desborde popular y crisis del Estado. Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Matta, R. (2007). ‘Asia’ (Lima, Perú), barrios cerrados para vacaciones de lujo. L’Ordinaire des Amériques, 207, 139–156. Matta, R. (2010). La construction sociale de la cuisine péruvienne: une histoire de migrations et d’échanges culinaires. Hommes et Migrations, 1283, 96–107. Matta, R. (2012). Déclinaisons de l’imaginaire urbain de l’upper-middle class de Lima (Pérou). Un aperçu depuis les pratiques culturelles. Problèmes d’Amérique Latine, 86, 77–92. Mennell, S. (1996). All manners of food: Eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present. University of Illinois Press. Mielwald, C., & McCann, E. (2014). Foodscapes and the geographies of poverty: Sustenance, strategy, and politics in an urban neighborhood. Antipode, 46(2), 537–556. Mikkelsen, B. E. (2011). Images of foodscapes: Introduction to foodscape studies and their application in the study of healthy eating out-of-home environments. Perspectives in Public Health, 131(5), 209–216. Morimoto, A. (1993). Presencia nikkei en la cocina peruana. In R.  Olivas Weston (Ed.), Cultura, identidad y cocina en el Perú. Universidad San Martín de Porres.

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Neuman, N., & Fjellström, C. (2014). Gendered and gendering practices of food and cooking: An inquiry into authorisation, legitimisation and androcentric dividends in three social fields. NORMA, 9(4), 269–285. Notaker, H. (2012). Printed cookbooks: Food history, book history, and literature. Food and History, 10(2), 131–159. Nugent, G. (1992). El laberinto de la choledad: formas peruanas del conocimiento social. Fundación Friedrich Ebert. Olivas Weston, R. (Ed.). (1993). Cultura, identidad y cocina en el Perú. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Olivas Weston, R. (1998). La cocina en el virreinato del Perú. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Olivas Weston, R. (1999). La cocina cotidiana y festiva de los limeños en el siglo XIX. Universidad San Martín de Porres. O’Toole, R. S. (2012). Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru. University of Pittsburgh Press. Parker, D.  S. (1998). The Idea of the Middle Class. White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society, 1900-1950. Pennsylvania State University Press. Passidomo, C. (2017). “Our” culinary heritage: Obscuring inequality by celebrating diversity in Peru and the US South. Humanity & Society, 41(4), 427–445. Pilcher, J. M. (2016). Culinary infrastructure: How facilities and technologies create value and meaning around food. Global Food History, 2(2), 105–131. Plöger, J. (2007). The emergence of a “City of Cages” in Lima: Neighbourhood appropriation in the context of rising insecurities. Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography. http://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/6785 Quijano, A. (1980). Dominación y cultura. Lo cholo y el conflicto cultural en el Perú. Mosca Azul. Ray, K. (2018). Street-food, class, and memories of masculinity: An exploratory essay in three acts. Food, Culture & Society, 21(1), 89–100. Rojek, C. (2000). Leisure and culture. Palgrave Macmillan. Romero, F. (1993). Afronegrismos en la cocina peruana. In R. Olivas Weston (Ed.), Cultura, identidad y cocina en el Perú. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Romero, R. (1987). Review of den Otter, Elisabeth. Music and Dance of Indians and Mestizos in an Andean Peru. Delft: Eburon, 1985. Yearbook of Traditional Music, 19, 130–132. Sasaki, N., & Calderón, G. (1999). Pitucos y pacharacos. Una aproximación a la exclusión social en las discotecas de Lima. Anthropologica, 17, 301–353.

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Scarpato, R. (2002). Gastronomy studies in search of hospitality. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 9(2), 1–12. Simmel, G. (1997). Sociology of the meal. In D.  Frisby & M.  Featherstone (Eds.), Simmel on culture. Sage. Simmons, O. (1955). The criollo outlook in the mestizo culture of coastal Peru. American Anthropologist, 57(1), 107–117. Sison Porras de la Guerra, J. (1994). El Perú y sus manjares: Un crisol de culturas. Josie Sison Porras de la Guerra. Spaey, A. (1998). La academia en la olla: reflexiones sobre la comida criolla. Universidad de San Martín de Porres. Takenaka, A. (2017). Immigrant integration through food: Nikkei cuisine in Peru. Contemporary Japan, 29(2), 117–131. Tsukayama, L. (2019). Eating with the heart: The emergence of imagined commonality through food in Lima, Peru. PhD. Dissertation. The New School. Tsukayama, L. (2022). Comer con el corazón. Cómo la comida abre (o no) espacios de integración en la ciudad de Lima. PUCP. Valderrama, M. (2009). Gastronomía, desarrollo e identidad cultural. El caso peruano. Retrieved May 19, 2023, from https://cyberletras.files.wordpress. com/2012/08/gastronomc3ada-­desarrollo-­e-­identidad-­cultural.pdf Vásquez Larraín, E. (2022). Imaginarios urbanos. Los mapas de Lima: Construcción de representaciones de la ciudad a través de sus planos (1977-2021). Master thesis, PUCP. Vega, J.  J. (1993). La influencia morisca y mora: tres casos específicos. In R. Olivas Weston (Ed.), Cultura, identidad y cocina en el Perú. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Walsh, B. (2023). Noma’s closing exposes the contradictions of fine dining. Vox. Retrieved May 19, 2023, from https://www.vox.com/ future-­perfect/2023/1/14/23553765/noma-­rene-­redzepi-­fine-­dining-­artrestaurants-­cuisine Zapata, S. (2009). Diccionario de gastronomía peruana. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Zapata, S., & Zapata, J. (2019). Principios y redes del sabor en la cocina criolla peruana. In S. Bak-Geller, R. Matta, & C.-É. de Suremain (Eds.), Patrimonios alimentarios. Entre consensos y tensiones. El Colegio de San Luis & IRD Éditions.

3 The Professional Chef and the Establishment of Gastronomic Conventions

Chefs’ Achievement of Status Cooking for others outside the domestic sphere is an activity which can have varied and even conflicting social meanings. Cooking can take place in a context of servitude, coercion, and hard labour, where the cook is in the service of a master who exploits their workforce as they wish. At the other extreme, cooking can be experienced as a leisure activity and a source of pleasure, while also functioning as a mark of distinction which benefits the individual behind the stove. Between these two ends of the spectrum, there are numerous intermediary situations, in which work, constraint, pleasure, and distinction blend in varying measures. In these situations, cooking is an activity which offers a range of possibilities for those who engage with it to achieve social recognition and a degree of autonomy in their skill or trade. Previous to the gastronomic boom, Peruvian chefs could only achieve renown in Lima, within a small circle of connoisseurs. It was difficult for things to be otherwise as Peru was a very impoverished country at that time. In the 1970s and 1980s, skilful chefs with no formal professional training, such as Humberto Sato, Rosa Yimura, Pedro Solari, Marisa

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Matta, From the Plate to Gastro-Politics, Food and Identity in a Globalising World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46657-1_3

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Guiulfo, Javier Wong, and Eladio Espinoza, gained favour among a small circle of insiders through a varied offer of cuisines which included migrant influences such as Japanese and Italian (Hinostroza, 2006). Due to the limited size of the gastronomic scene at the time, and to its equally limited access to judgement and evaluation, stories about the excellence of these chefs spread mainly via word of mouth. This conferred upon them a sort of mythical aura, rather than a professional recognition founded on respect for gastronomic codes and conventions. Around the same time, the global influence of French nouvelle cuisine began to play a central role in the way chefs were viewed by the media and diners. Chefs were no longer seen as employees, but as entrepreneurs; they became owners of their own restaurants, took charge of developing their signature styles, and formed gastronomic discourses tailored to their individual talent (Rao et al., 2003; Ferguson, 2004). Lightness, refinement, and close attention to the quality and freshness of produce (Poulain & Neirinck, 2004; Rambourg, 2005) were the pillars of this trend, which overturned the culinary orthodoxy represented by bourgeois French cuisine. In sum, nouvelle cuisine brought gastronomy into step with its times; that is, with a modernity characterised by the dominance of publicity, experiential rather than material consumption, and the pursuit of a thin body (Belk, 1986; Ory, 1998). These values were endorsed and adopted by young urban professionals, who appointed themselves authorities on taste. This led French historian Jean-Paul Aron (1997) to consider nouvelle cuisine as emblematic of a superficial, “sham civilisation”, and to warn against the risk of over-valuing gastronomic discourse. Peru’s restaurant sector gradually came to echo certain precepts of nouvelle cuisine and of the other gastronomic expressions that nouvelle cuisine had engendered across the world (see Chap. 4). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, chefs such as Gloria Hinostroza, Isabel Alvarez, and Bernardo Roca Rey began placing local ingredients and culinary traditions at the heart of their work, and achieved great recognition (although still within a limited customer base). Isabel Alvarez, a restaurant owner trained as a sociologist, chose to revitalise forgotten traditions and dishes, researching historical preparation methods and reintroducing the resulting dishes to her clientele (Lasater-Wille, 2015). Gloria Hinostroza and Bernardo Roca Rey each applied nouvelle cuisine techniques to Peruvian ingredients and

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recipes through trial and error. Here it is important to recall that, like their predecessors, none of these three cooks had formal training in cooking. Alvarez and Hinostroza have said in interviews that their fundamental culinary knowledge is indebted to the recipes of their female ancestors, while Roca Rey has depicted himself more as a self-taught gastronomic innovator. In any case, new creations, new ingredients, and carefullypresented dishes were made available to the few customers who had the means to pay for them. Subsequently, the idea of ‘signature cuisine’ made its appearance in Lima’s restaurants. On the one hand, this idea allowed more creative freedom. On the other, it kindled competitive relationships, as culinary identities became crucial for restaurants to survive (Rao et al., 2003). In this context, chefs had to re-evaluate every element of their work in light of the new demands of their profession. Not only did they have to ensure their technical skills were up to date, but they also had to actively maintain their reputations and public personas, just as their French counterparts had had to do two decades earlier. The ensuing media coverage of their activities contributed to a growing focus on the figure of the chef as an accomplished and creative professional. The valorisation of the figure of the chef took a very distinctive form in Peru. Although being a restaurant chef today is viewed as a serious vocational choice for large segments of Peruvian youth, this has not always been so—in fact, it was quite the contrary. Cooking as an occupation was long perceived as a risky career with strenuous hours and a lack of a social life, and, furthermore, was long associated with subordinated tasks and low social rank. In the private sphere, cooking could be experienced as a hobby or, even better, as a mark of social distinction (see Chap. 2). The end of the last millennium brought a drastic change in meaning and significance. The celebrated chefs who have led the rise of gastronomy in Lima are white and mestizo male from socially privileged backgrounds who trained in world-class culinary schools and restaurants. They are the offspring of well-to-do families, politicians, businessmen, and successful liberal professionals. The prominence they have gained, first in the cultural life of Lima’s upper classes and, then, during the gastronomic boom, throughout the entire range of society, speaks volumes about how sources of social prestige in Peru have diversified. Yet, the multiplication of

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culinary vocations within a rather conservative social group was at the time nothing short of astonishing. Poet and gastronomic writer Rodolfo Hinostroza (2006) argues that the long-lasting confinement of the talent of cooks from upper classes to the private sphere results from a sort of demonisation of the occupation of cooking. If a young man openly expressed an interest in becoming a chef, he risked not only being criticised for a lack of ambition, but also having his masculinity questioned by those around him. For Lima’s upper classes, a man could be a restaurant owner or manager, but the cooking itself was strictly for women or cholos. Hinostroza recounts an anecdote exemplifying this contempt, taken from his own experience as a food journalist in the 1980s: I had come from Paris, where the chef Paul Bocuse competed with President Mitterrand for the front cover of Vogue, where thousands of cookbooks were published in all formats and at all prices. French cuisine was an incontestably admired and respected national institution; yet I had just discovered that, in my country, cooking was considered a servile, subaltern task, ‘for cholos and negros’, as someone said to me one day. When I asked to interview the chef, the restaurant owner answered, ‘Who? My cholo? You want to interview him?’ And he brought the cholo cook, looking worried, in a sauce-stained apron, thinking that he had made a serious error; and he was trembling, of course. When César ‘Patipo’ Alcorta, owner of the restaurant Brujas de Cachiche, arrived in Paris at the invitation of the French government to host the Festival de Comidas del Señor de Sipan in the famous George V Hotel, he was given a small room in the hotel, while the tenured chef, a robust cholo from Corongo [a province in the Peruvian Andes], had an exclusive suite. ‘Patipo’ tried to convince the employees at the reception desk that there must have been an error, because he was the boss and his chef was his subordinate; but his explanations were no use. In Paris a chef is a chef, not a simple kitchen boy, and everybody owes him respect, from the boss down to the last kitchen porter. It was a totally different world. (Hinostroza, 2006: 102)

The subordinate position of chefs explains why upper-class, male individuals encountered obstacles within their own families when they expressed their desire to enrol in culinary training. If today the difficulties

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experienced by young people willing to become chefs are mostly financial (the occupation is fashionable, and the best schools charge high fees) their heroes experienced difficulties of a different nature decades ago. These originated in the heads of the family seniors, who were feared their progeny would lose social rank, which could in turn lead to a drop in status for the family as a whole. Cooking was socially acceptable only in contexts in which hosts offered their guests meals whose quality they had taken special care over, as a means of showing off social status and good taste. Cooking was primarily connected to social obligation, motivating hosts to ‘represent themselves’ in their dishes. In turn, guests were expected to confirm the householder’s worthiness by judging the dishes presented at the table. However, under no circumstances was cooking to be perceived as work, or disassociated from pleasure. This situation somehow echoes what Thorstein Veblen describes in his classic sociological study on the North American wealthy, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899 [2005]). He shows that, in the mentality of the upper class, working denoted weakness and submission to a master, and was consequently regarded as a mark of inferiority. From this point of view, serving a meal to guests could only be a conspicuous leisure activity, through which an individual or a family could affirm their social position in a context of open competition with their peers. Important efforts were therefore necessary to construct a perfect scenery and create an ideal atmosphere around the host, and to remove all references to dishonourable situations or activities, including working. The reluctance among heads of families to see their offspring go into the culinary profession stems from their parental goal of social reproduction, which aims to maintain the status of the family over several generations. Chef Gastón Acurio, the son of a lawyer, former social-democrat senator, and Prime Minister of Peru, has opened up about his personal experience, which epitomises these tensions. In many press interviews he has explained in detail that his passion for cooking made him face a number of uncomfortable situations in his youth, which he spent in the most upscale district of Lima, San Isidro. The quote below reflects the highly gendered connotation cooking had in that particular social environment and the pressure that had placed on individuals.

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At the age of nine or ten, I would buy ingredients with my pocket money. I would go to the market and buy calamari. As you might imagine, my family thought it was weird, and so did my friends, everybody did; they thought I was very gay [in the sense of homosexual]. And yet my friends benefited from it because I cooked for them. For example, at the age of twelve or thirteen, we would go surfing and then we would go back to my place and I would make them pancakes with dulce de leche. My friends approved, they loved it, but they still thought I was weird.1

As the only boy of five children, the young Acurio was predestined to become a lawyer and then a politician, just like his father. The culinary profession was not even an option to consider. It was perceived by his family and social circle as less virile and therefore as evidence of moral decline. Just a teenager, Acurio found himself at a crossroads. Two ideas crossed my mind: Either I would devote myself to politics, or I would devote myself to cooking—one of the two, because these were the things I loved most. My father was a politician, and at home we only ever talked about politics; when I was a kid people made me read lot. So I did have a passion for politics, but in reality I wanted to cook.2

Acurio also elaborated on how Lima’s traditional elite kept a close eye, and even expressed hostility, when a member of the group deviated from the norm. As an adolescent, I was fighting against the sort of society we had in Lima at that time, against an upbringing and a social space where every detail was under scrutiny—things like the brand of your clothes—since they were important in making others believe that you were a better person. Everything was against me and against the fact that I wanted to cook. Not only my family, but everyone around me, was against it. Fortunately, I went to Europe to study law. I discovered a new world, and I gave myself the space I needed to rediscover the child who had always wanted to cook.3  Quote taken from the article “El emprendedor: Gastón Acurio”, in the magazine Lidera, December 2006, p. 15–18. 2  Ibid. 3  Interview with Gaston Acurio published in Pura Letra [online], uploaded January 2, 2007. URL: http://blogs.periodistadigital.com/puraletra.php/2007/01/02/p65051. Accessed September 1

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In the mid-1980s, Acurio was sent to Spain to study law. Unbeknownst to his family, he dropped out of university after the first year to enrol in a hospitality school in Madrid, where he trained for two years. His decision was the result not only of an introspection which led Acurio to overhaul his life plan but also of the developments in the culinary profession occurring at that time, to which he was exposed as a resident in Europe. I got in to Complutense [University], Madrid’s law school. I studied very hard for two semesters, but when I went to enrol for the third, I realised that I couldn’t continue. That same day I went to enrol at Madrid’s Escuela de Hostelería to study cookery. It was 1989. What happened? At that time, for my family, cooking was not an option. I had no reference points, no role models, no heroes; restaurants were known by name, but chefs weren’t. So I too believed that what I wanted to do wasn’t a profession, but a pastime. But when I arrived in Europe, chefs were beginning to have a higher profile; so I started to have models to follow and I realised that this was what I really wanted to do. At that moment I made a break and I chose cooking.4

Acurio’s decision to break with his family and social class patterns was informed by the phenomenon of chefs who were gaining autonomy and visibility, and becoming the heads of their own restaurants, a worldwide phenomenon which has only accelerated since the emergence of nouvelle cuisine (Drouard, 2004). When he arrived in Europe, the dynamics that bring chefs from kitchens to stardom were well and truly underway. Rafael Osterling, another renowned chef, had a similar career path. Son of a former prominent senator, he obtained a degree in law and was expected to pursue a career in diplomacy. However, after President Fujimori closed down the Congress and the Diplomatic School in 1992, he decided to put the culinary knowledge he had inherited from his family to the test. Despite parental worries about his choice, Osterling received financial support from his family and enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu, first in London and then in Paris (Robles, 2019). Typically averse to change, but always aware of trends in conspicuous consumption, Lima’s upper class—primarily of European descent and 26, 2008. 4  Interview in Lidera magazine, op. cit.

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cultivating European middle and upper-class patterns of socialisation— understood that in the modern world status and prestige could be more easily reached by economic success and that, ultimately, it is not important in which field the money is made. Consequently, culinary skills were acknowledged as accomplishing important social and economic functions. For writer and scholar Mirko Lauer, the rise of the figure of the head chef in Europe and the United States marked the end of the demonisation of cooking as a profession and partly explains the shift in mentality towards creative occupations in the service sector among Lima’s upper class, as they give the opportunity to assert individual professional autonomy and, above all, to run profitable businesses. I think that it’s economic success which brings social success—I’m talking about the economic success of some restaurants. My friend Oscar Velarde de La Piedra has a restaurant, La Gloria, which must make 40,000 to 45,000 dollars a month. So being a chef and dedicating yourself to your restaurant can’t be viewed badly.5

The end of this stigma helped young people from upper-class backgrounds to emerge as the first beneficiaries: it made it possible for them to pursue a career which corresponded to their interests and, in some cases, circumvented paths traced by others. Class habits remained in one area: Education and training. By the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, and due to the lack of training opportunities in Lima, the cohort of apprentice cooks who ultimately boosted the internationalisation and acclaim of Peruvian cuisine moved to Europe and North America to acquire knowledge in prestigious culinary schools and in the fine-­ dining restaurants where they conducted internships. For instance, Acurio, after some years in Spain, moved to France and graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Pedro Miguel Schiaffino, chef and owner of the restaurant Malabar, studied at the American Culinary Institute in New  York and the Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners. Rafael Piqueras, who heads up the Maras restaurant at the Westin Hotel in Lima, trained at the Cordon Bleu franchise in Lima and at the Italian  Interview, September 18, 2007.

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Culinary Institute for Foreigners. Jorge Ossio, who owns several restaurants and cafés in Lima, graduated from the Culinary Institute of America. Marilú Madueño, one of the few female representatives of the gastronomic boom, studied hospitality in Peru and the United States before obtaining culinary certification from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Other initiators of the gastronomic boom with well-off family background and European surnames include James Berckemeyer, Ivan Kisic, Paola Marsano, and Jann Van Oordt. The entry of these young people into formal professional training reveals a historical transformation in the relationship between the upper classes and the culinary domain, as cooking shifted away from the private sphere, delineated by networks of sociability and socialisation, into the public sphere where it was shaped by the tastes of the potential clientele. Whereas in the past culinary knowledge was considered part of the heritage of a family and sometimes kept secret (see Chap. 2), the subsequent and current situation is that of a reversal of such a dynamic, which corresponds to the commercial context to which this knowledge now belongs. This current context is marked by the quest for status initiated by French chefs decades ago, and nurtured by the circulation and diffusion of images which show the culmination of this process. The return of these chefs to Lima proved decisive for the development of the city’s gastronomic offerings over the last 30 years. Having witnessed the culinary transformations which had spread from France all over Europe and beyond, these chefs felt entitled to become the leading protagonists in the updating of the Peruvian gastronomic scene, for which there was a considerable amount of work to be done. They realised the importance of mastering the basics, developed experimental and individual(istic) approaches to cooking, and paid special attention to the presentation of their dishes, considerably reducing the sizes of the portions. They also understood that concerns about nutrition and health would help to establish their acquired knowledge and techniques long term. This would mark a break with previously dominant ideas of Peruvian cuisine as one which was varied and flavourful, but often heavy, filling, and indigestible for those who were not used to it (Hinostroza, 2006; Lauer & Lauer, 2006).

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Thanks to their time abroad, the returning chefs brought not only new knowledge to Lima, but also a new approach regarding the gastronomic domain as a whole. They firmly believed that they had elevated gastronomy to the same rank as other contemporary cultural expressions. Conscious of the economic potential of such an undertaking, they quickly found themselves leading their own businesses, all of which shared a concern for high-quality cooking while also giving particular attention to questions of atmosphere, service, and décor. For these chefs, placing themselves in subordinate positions, by becoming staff in Lima’s then prestigious restaurants, was not an option, except for short periods of time to complete their training or to get acquainted with the taste and expectations of Peruvian gastronomes. Indeed, these venues would not have been able to offer a salary corresponding to their ambitions and the living standards of the social milieu from which they came. In any case, these opportunities were extremely limited—such restaurants could have been counted on the fingers of one hand. If they did not want to have to build their careers abroad, it was vital for them to eventually open their own restaurants. Their social background certainly facilitated their ventures; it encouraged them to invest their own capital, allowed them access to substantial loans, either from banks or family members, or to be able to share business risks with investors. Acurio recalled how that support was crucial for him and his wife when opening their restaurant Astrid & Gastón upon their return from Paris: [W]e arrived in Lima one morning in October 1993 with the firm decision to make [the restaurant] happen, only there were several small details to take into account: My family was not waiting for us with flowers or music bands. It made sense; their son had been deceiving them for years. He had made them believe that he would be a prominent politician and Europe returned it to them as a humble cook… Within a few months everything was aligned. We found the location in Cantuarias 175, in Miraflores. We managed to convince family and friends to lend us the $45,000 we needed to make it happen.6

 From Acurio’s retirement letter from his position as chef of Astrid & Gastón, available at https:// elcomercio.pe/lima/gaston-acurio-despide-emblematico-local-cantuarias-emotiva-carta-­283110noticia/?ref=ecr, Accessed May 4, 2023. 6

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The Gastronomic Field The gastronomic industry plays a central role in the cultural economy of metropoles across the world (Zukin, 1991), with the professional chef today being the unquestionable leader. The chef is the only individual with the necessary skills and perspective to develop a comprehensive view of the issues affecting the restaurant industry, and is much better-placed to do so than economic investors or restaurant owners. Their unprecedented status is the result of the evolving pattern of eating habits observable in the developed world, which themselves mirror broader social and economic changes. It is well known that food embodies values, morals, attitudes, goals, and intentions that have long served other purposes than the satisfaction of hunger, and recent developments suggest that food is acquiring even greater social significance. In present times, food increasingly relates to individual tastes and lifestyles, which range from the sophisticated, experience-driven, cosmopolitan, and conspicuous to the simple, the domestic, the local, and the socially committed. In this wider and more competitive environment structured by, and torn between, elitism and democracy, leisure and politics, chefs must define strategies to attain favourable positions and maintain them (Matta, 2019a). Considering that Peru is a country with an income level below the average of developed countries and a fine-dining sector highly dependent on international tourism—as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown—it is fair to say that the work of Peruvian chefs has developed within an extremely competitive market. Yet, gastronomy is much more than just a market: It is a cultural field of continuous creation in which some specific actors can exert power over others. A cultural field can be defined as a spectrum of institutions, rules, rituals, conventions, categories, and regulations which produce, transform, and authorise attitudes, discourses, and practices within a set of cultural activities; that is, following Pierre Bourdieu (1985: 24) a “system specifically designed to fulfil a consecration function as well as a system for reproducing producers of a determinate type of cultural goods, and the consumers capable of consuming them”. In other words, a cultural field is a model of cultural participation made up by dynamic and, often, conflicting interactions between

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institutions, agents, rules, practices, and ideas, which determine what constitutes capital (the accumulated potential capacity to produce profit) within that field, and how that capital is to be distributed (Matta, 2019a). Gastronomy, as a cultural field, emerged in nineteenth-century France (Ferguson, 2004). In those times, the confluence of people’s enthusiasm towards cuisine, the bourgeoning of restaurants, and the development of forums for both critical debate and legitimation indicates that a structured and codified French gastronomic field was born. Since then, gastronomic fields have emerged worldwide, principally in countries with strong and developing urban centres. The particular configuration of each gastronomic field, the increasing complexity of their means of cultural (re)production, and their mutual connections as incorporated into global production networks trigger the reconfiguration and the re-­ dimensioning of the linkages of sites, texts, images, ideas, and agents, among which the rules of the field are produced. These transformations create a context of uncertainty that calls for chefs to engage in self-­ reflection, self-actualising, and making educated decisions about one’s life and one’s activity. In such changing circumstances, chefs are confronted with the necessity to adapt their skills as well as acquire novel ones to successfully navigate new and inescapable professional sociabilities (Ferguson & Zukin, 1998; Leschziner, 2015; Ray, 2016). To understand the emergence of a gastronomic field in Peru, the display of the necessary competencies to succeed in the culinary profession has to be addressed in light of the differences of access to them across socioeconomic groups. Below we will see how creativity, entrepreneurship, and celebrity, the core set of values in contemporary gastronomy, is permeated by social considerations that shape its production and the apparent creative freedom claimed by the most celebrated chefs. Indeed, gastronomy is based on conventions established by the most renowned chefs, and an individual’s chances of mastering these conventions are not unrelated to their social position. In a country with long-standing class and racialised hierarchies such as Peru, the gastronomic boom entails both causes and consequences which stem from structural inequalities. Behind the discourse of creativity and freedom by successful Peruvian chefs exist certain factors which have historically organised society in

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Lima: Economic status, education and culture, social capital, and the symbolic power of the family name.

 hefs, Media, and Art: Establishing C Gastronomic Conventions The work of chefs, as we have seen, extends well beyond tastes and flavours, and calls on artistic, entrepreneurial, and interpersonal skills. Lima’s chefs have realised that in order to achieve celebrity status they must master public relations, discourses, and image-creation strategies; competency areas that ensure the mediation of gastronomy through various audiences, publics, and actors in the field. The accomplishment of these strategies has placed them in an advantaged position to voice assertions about their field of activity. The emphasis put on reforming and modernising aspects has persuaded the media to present them as the new cultural icons. The ‘poster boys’ of the gastronomic scene were in their majority young white and mestizo male aged between 30 and 45, cultivating care for their physical image—rather slim and always fashionable—and a certain refinement in their media appearances. Pretty much to the taste of Peru’s wealthy. The best-known and most telegenic among them took part in all sorts of society events—such as exhibitions, receptions, or private viewings—alongside artists, entertainment professionals, and other public personalities. The journalistic attention extended to television, magazines and newspapers, with some of them having their own television programmes on cable channels. Old images of sweaty, grumpy, and overwhelmed restaurant cooks vanished: The modern head chef became a stage personality who must master the codes specific to the media world, as expressed by Rafael Osterling, “Being a chef today demands that you master every social aspect [in the sense of media sociability and public relations]; and of course, this must be done in a very natural way, otherwise you should think about doing something else [changing your profession]”. (Lauer & Lauer, 2006: 179)

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Only a few decades ago, chefs had to prove their legitimacy solely before prominent customers and restaurant critics. Today they also have to deal with the new actors that mediate the relations between cuisine and the public sphere, such as foodies, food writers, food and beverage companies, tourism and hospitality investors, self-proclaimed gastronomic experts, nutritionists, researchers, and activists. Chef Cavenecia elaborated on this during an interview on a commercial partnership that was rendering his work more complex: Being the subject of media coverage, doing publicity, it’s good, generally it goes well. I have a contract with Cusqueña [a Peruvian beer brand] and, well, it’s like being the face of the brand, in the hope that people will start to drink beer, so that they’ll learn to pair beer with meals[…] It’s a one-year contract, but it’s very good because it means enormous publicity, which is pretty useful in a career.7

Besides his contract with the beer brand, which he told me he was complying with meticulously, attending social and brand events now makes up part of his new obligations: Most of my marketing is done by word of mouth, through my acquaintances. Apart from that there are the articles, the TV shows I take part in, and things that are regularly published in the newspapers. Before, when I was invited to a wine tasting, I wasn’t interested because I found it boring. Today I have to go to all the tastings, I give out business cards, all that. Once you’re part of the circle you don’t have a choice, you have to be there. And if I don’t really feel like working, I still drop in for a while and then I leave.8

As expressed by Cavenecia, maintaining a media presence is an unavoidable task in the gastronomic profession. Chefs can use the media to showcase their particular talents, and thus build up an image or a story of their own professional life. This mirrors the strategies used by contemporary artists who, compared to classical and modern artists, explore in higher degrees the range of possible mediations between the  Interview, May 16, 2007.  Ibid.

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artist and viewer (Heinich, 1999), with the aim of building the reputation of their work and, above all, making a name for themselves. As a matter of fact, the chefs of the boom have never hesitated to call themselves artists, constructing a gratifying image of themselves and their activity. The artistic qualities these chefs boast of are not limited to ‘culinary art’, nor to gastronomic inventiveness, nor even to their talent for food presentation. The increased prominence of the economic, social, and cultural dimension of cooking, and the subsequent media coverage thereof, has enabled chefs not only to occupy the social and discursive space of art, but also that of capitalist production. In short, they belong to the cream of the worlds of arts, culture, and entertainment. For Lauer, the creations of these chefs contain the necessary features to be considered art, and for the chefs themselves to be considered artists who know how to charge for it: Art needs to be associated with a name, whether individual or collective; it needs spaces constructed for the purpose of sharing it which, from the eighteenth century onwards, were the museum and the gallery; and it needs a means of accumulating of value and profit which has become dissociated from the work itself and is instead based on fame. These three characteristics roughly define the artist. […] Restaurants serving haute cuisine function somewhat like art. They have their own names; they are specifically conceived and designed spaces; and work is valued in such a way that [chef Humberto] Sato can make a cebiche that costs US$209 and other things of that nature.10

Chefs, therefore, can only achieve a status close to that of artists if they position themselves in a context where their name and their individual talent can be appreciated by their target clientele. If the clientele responds favourably to the chef ’s work, it is likely that the chef will receive support from those who profess an interest in gastronomy. In turn, this support will reverberate through all sectors related to gastronomy, notably through  As of 2022, the average price of cebiche in a mid-range restaurant is US$10. In budget restaurants and markets, it rarely costs beyond as US$5. Street vendors in working-class sell cebiche for US$2 or US$3, depending on the size of the portion. 10  Interview, op.cit. 9

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that of production, thus establishing relationships of recognition and competition among chefs and restaurant owners. The remarks by Lauer and their implications resonate with my fieldwork experience. From my meetings with Cavenecia, I remember him speaking about and cultivating a relationship with his dishes which parallels that of artists with their creations. After I had had lunch in his restaurant, he came to my table and explained to me how he conceived the dishes I ordered, putting emphasis on the innovative and creative aspects of his work, just like an artist or a gallery guide would talk about an artwork. I saw him doing the same with other clients that day. In an interview for the business magazine Gestión,11 Cavenecia explained that he always created his menus from scratch, combining cuisines from different parts from the world, drawing inspiration from personal stories, and including the preferences of customers in the creative process. The close relationship between art and gastronomy is certainly nothing new. The world of gastronomy and that of the arts have always resembled each other and intermingled their codes, actors, and conventions (Ascher, 2005; Gualtieri, 2022). Here, I use the term conventions as defined by sociologist Howard Becker to refer to the agreed or arbitrary expectations, rules, and mechanisms which “provide the basis on which art world participants can act together efficiently to produce works characteristic of those worlds” (Becker, 2008: 420). Moreover, since gastronomy accords crucial importance to textures, colours, forms, and volumes, there is currently little contention against the idea of chefs as artists. The process of borrowing from artistic discourse and techniques makes the work of chefs more multifaceted and demanding of skill. Chef Osterling explains this as follows, “I think that a chef today must be cultured [preparado]; it’s not enough to just know your trade. The more cultured you are, the further you’ll go; and if you’re interested in literature and the arts, you’ll have more creative potential, more opportunities to progress and to handle the pressure” (Lauer & Lauer, 2006: 179). According to Osterling, chefs with a broad cultural knowledge, and who are exposed to various forms of artistic production, can attain  Available at http://blogs.gestion.pe/el-vino-de-la-semana/2021/11/maravilla-de-chef.html, Accessed November 22, 2022. 11

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positional advantages in the market if they are adequately able to apply that knowledge and aesthetic appreciation in their creative process. Supremacy in gastronomy is therefore not only a matter of exposure to valuable flavours that only those who have travelled can appreciate and engage with; it is also a matter of embracing the values and manipulating the codes of a cosmopolitan, cultivated citizen. Such an approach was crucial for the initial development of the restaurant scene in Peru, when chefs had to craft their attitudes and their cultural capital to distinguish themselves from one another, and especially from Acurio.12 Let us not forget that, for reasons explained previously, the chefs of the gastronomic boom possess higher cultural capital than the majority of the Peruvian population. This liberates them from the space of the kitchen, offering them opportunities to get involved in other areas of gastronomic production, such as those dealing with ideas, concepts, and thoughts. Chefs not only run the kitchens of their restaurants, increasingly they also enact the role of designers, by taking an active role in the creation of the atmosphere of their venues. Osterling, a self-professed art enthusiast, has designed his eponymous restaurant Rafael in a way that expresses his appreciation of and search for aesthetics. This has been noticed by the luxury travel operator Humboldt & Cook, which provides a glimpse of the ambience in its online magazine: Entering the Art Deco townhouse, visitors are greeted by a library of art, design, and culture magazines (such as Kinfolk and The Monocle) that the chef himself subscribes to and devours; art pieces of his personal collection decorate the walls, and continue on rotation with his other restaurants each year so as not to seem stale (one of Rafael’s greatest fears); meanwhile, a playlist of music that ranges from Miles Davis to the Talking Heads sets the tone and urges guests to ‘relax and open the senses to what is going happen’.13

 A move Osterling admitted being crucial for him: “There is a central question in my life. I don’t wanna be Gastón Acurio, that was more than clear. I mean, more clear than water, do you understand?” (Robles, 2019: 151). 13  https://humboldtcook.com/magazine/not-not-collecting-art-with-chef-rafael-osterling/, Accessed April 26, 2023. 12

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Osterling chooses the decor, the furniture, the art on the walls, and even the music to match his personality, a blend of charisma, snobby arrogance, and sensuality (see Robles, 2019), which he has cultivated during his years in London within his artsy and sophisticated circle of friends, of whom he says: “Their openness, the enriching conversations— these new friendships became my inspiration to recreate myself and develop my own style of food”.14 Osterling has placed the high esteem he has of himself at the core of his “culinary persona” (Johnston et al., 2014). Cavenecia, for his part, opted for running a restaurant a puerta cerrada (closed door restaurant), that is, without any sort of signage indicating that the premise is a restaurant. Los Cavenecia—Taller de Cocina was not an illegal restaurant, nor functioned as a secret club or anything of that sort. It was a venue well-respected by connoisseurs who enjoyed refined dishes in a private, home-like, and intimate atmosphere. The chef explained that the closed door concept confers the eating experience an aura of exclusivity, in the sense that the restaurant does not catch the eye of passers-by and therefore, unlike restaurants which welcome walk-in customers, avoids unwelcome intrusions. Another example is that of Acurio, who reinvented the concept of cebichería when he opened La Mar—today an international franchise present in leading cities—for a cosmopolitan clientele.15 Cebicherías were usually rustic, unpretentious, and family-owned eateries which are the most common places to eat cebiche and seafood. Yet, today they can also be trendy and fashionable. Acurio, a master in developing Peruvian-based gastronomic concepts to attract cosmopolitan customers in search of comfort, pleasure and novelty, operated an aesthetic re-reading of cebicherías based on minimalistic design and oceanic décor, which ended up expanding their rather popular connotation. Exit plastic furniture, formica tables, and amateur service. Enter clear and open minimalistic spaces, carefully placed bamboo plants, relaxed but chic furniture, and waiters trained to sustain a cheerful atmosphere that evokes the experience of eating by the seaside.  Ibid.  See https://www.lamarcebicheria.com/, Accessed May 10, 2023.

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The combination of economic, cultural, and social capitals provided chefs with various tools to establish control and dominance over the cultural field. As we will see below, the elite chefs have distinguished themselves from younger culinary school graduates and gastronomic entrepreneurs with no formal culinary training by arguing that, although they may be technically competent, their understanding of gastronomy is predominantly profit-driven and remains largely ignorant of the artistic requirements of haute cuisine. In this particular framework, culture with a capital C is stressed as an asset that only the best-trained and most established chefs can incorporate into their work. It therefore seems clear that the competition for recognition brings into play not only individual skills, but also the social backgrounds of chefs and their initial opportunities in life. The gastronomic scene in Lima was predominantly elitist; their proponents consciously distanced themselves from those who, in their view, were cooking mainly for profit or mere survival, since this constituted, again in their view, an affront to artistry. Of course, this does not mean that chefs were not pursuing economic benefits or that the financial aspects of the profession did not play a role in their ventures. It means that narratives of gastronomy as an artistic and aesthetic endeavour were the strategy through which elite chefs sought to institutionalise the new ways of knowing and doing in the profession and establish the then incipient world of haute cuisine in Peru.

A Field of Unequal Opportunities Chefs were cognisant that the artistic aptitudes they proclaimed to master are not distributed equally among all those who participate in the development of the gastronomic market. Based on that acknowledgement, they have developed discursive capacities to leverage these aptitudes into a competitive advantage in a changing context. The growing possibilities of eating out among large sections of the urban population since the mid-­1990s and the renewed attention upon Peruvian cuisine were clear signs of the imminent development of their trade as part of a broader industry. Most importantly, the new status of chefs sparked a proliferation of culinary vocations, from eat-in dining to catering services. A

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growing number of young people, from all social backgrounds, started to perceive the figure of the chef as a reference point to imitate. Although some see it simply as a new form of occupation, the majority of those enrolled see the gastronomic sector as an opportunity to achieve improved livelihoods (see Chap. 5). Entrepreneurs have therefore opened culinary schools all across the country, but in particular in Lima. Today one can find an enormous offer of these schools in the Peruvian capital alone, ranging to suit nearly every budget. The training on offer differs in course duration (from 12 months to 5 years), certification (university degree or technical certificate), price, and, of course, prestige. Yet the promise is always appealing: Even in more humble schools, students from unprivileged background hear from their instructors that they might be as recognised as celebrity chefs if they apply themselves and work hard (see Lasater-Wille, 2018). New cooks, new money, new ideas, and hopes were just around the corner, ready to make room for themselves. Elite chefs therefore had to develop modes to legitimise and accentuate their knowledge and their status in this newly forming field. As Krishnendu Ray argues, this is usually done “at the expense of others, usually people not already constituted in a bounded, policed, and networked ‘world’” (Ray, 2016: 182). As mentioned earlier, these chefs have capitalised their cultural advantage, comprised of race, international travels, private schooling, and privileged socialisation, by identifying their work with the definition of art. Through this shared sense, they granted themselves the authority to mark a distinction between chefs who privilege a lucrative vision of gastronomy and those who, like themselves, declare that they are first and foremost motivated by passion and artistic vision and not by remuneration. Their similar upbringings, age, and education ensured the necessary mutual knowledge and interaction that brought forth the common perception of the merit of what they collectively produce: “Their mutual appreciation of the conventions they share, and the support they mutually afford one another, convince them that what they are doing is worth doing” (Becker, 2008: 39). Elite chefs were always aware that the way they think about the culinary profession owes massively to their personal histories. Several of them have acknowledged that they have had privileged lives, that only few people in Peru can relate to (Lauer & Lauer, 2006: 179). Their family

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origins—their ‘luck’—partly explains their conception of gastronomy. Having had the opportunity to train abroad, they lay claim to the pedagogical approach of the prestigious centres where they trained, and emphasise the appreciation for ‘the art of cooking’ and the passion the profession requires, as the following excerpt from a conversation moderated by Mirko Lauer in 2005 demonstrates. Pedro Schiaffino: For those who have been lucky enough to study abroad, they’ve given us passion for the art of cooking, while in Lima the people at the [culinary] schools are more there for business. Gastón Acurio: That’s the cost of any revolution… Rafael Piqueras: Well, it’s that the schools offer them a ‘career as a chef ’ and the parents say, “There you go, I’ve paid so much, you’re a chef ”. And then they go into their work placements and they’re paid cents […] Gastón Acurio: It’s not normal that there are so many cooking schools, and so many students […] Pedro Schiaffino: But what is the quality of teaching in these schools? Rafael Piqueras: I’d echo what Pedro said: it’s about passion. We were trained elsewhere, we chose this profession, and we were 100% sure that we loved it; then we came back and we tried to make quality cuisine. But these young people haven’t travelled and 80% of them don’t even know what they’ve set out upon. They should have studied management… (Lauer & Lauer, 2006: 180)

This dialogue shows, firstly, how chefs cast their cosmopolitanism as the origin of the openness of spirit and creativity to which they lay claim, placing particular emphasis on having travelled to, lived, and trained in the meccas of gastronomy. Passion, comprehension of ‘the art of cooking’, and making a virtue of distancing themselves from ‘mere business’, are the main values they have learned from their individual journeys. Secondly, it shows how they cast doubts on the quality of teaching in the culinary schools opened across the country, whose recent creation,

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mushrooming, and incipient prestige, if any, made elite chefs suspicious of their commitment to culinary artistry. Indeed, their remarks indirectly suggest that most of the newly created culinary schools have little or no connection with haute cuisine; that they do not exist to attract potential artists, but rather to train artisans whose activity pertains to second-rank positions in the industry. At best, they expect these skilled artisans of cooking to work collectively, and anonymously, almost like an army, to achieve a world-class position for Peruvian cuisine (see Lasater-Wille, 2018). It seems that as members of emergent and unstable professions align with some specific actors to secure their own positions, they are also “typically more virulent towards their unbounded, unconsecrated others” (Ray, 2016: 182). This resonates with Lima’s elite chefs expressing disdain for the competencies of young people from lower social classes who have embraced the culinary vocation after them. Such a positioning has created high entry barriers for anybody wishing to pursue the career of haute cuisine chef. Basically, they would have only two options, both of them out of the reach of many: One is embarking on a journey abroad to emulate the paths of the admired predecessors, and the other is, enrolling at prestigious culinary schools in Lima. Some of these schools have university status and secured agreements with important culinary schools abroad where students can do internships. Yet, they often charge significant tuition fees, which in some cases can be as high as US$1000 per month. Typically, the students who attend Lima’s reputed centres such as Le Cordon Bleu Lima, Instituto Los Andes, and Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola, among others, have less pressure to find well-paid jobs straight after the culmination of their studies, unlike graduates from less prestigious training centres. Like their successful role models, they can count on the financial support and social capital of their families for starting their own businesses, finishing their training abroad, or obtaining executive positions in hospitality firms, where the best-paid jobs are generally found. That was the case of chef Cavenecia, a graduate from the Instituto Los Andes: His elegant closed door restaurant was a business he ran with his father. On the other end of the spectrum, vocational schools, although charging more affordable fees, offer moderate or no prestige. This uneven situation raises questions about the implications for social mobility of

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undertaking the career of a chef. Certainly, it might be difficult for early career chefs to earn a monthly salary which is lower than the monthly fee they have to pay for tuition. Similarly, it is not even certain that a graduate from a humble school will catch an employer’s attention any more than someone who has learned the trade only by apprenticeship, eventually rising up the ranks. This is further the case because, some decades ago, cooking was not even a trade that could be learned in the classroom. For instance, of the 15 cooks who in 2007 worked at Oscar Velarde’s La Gloria restaurant, none of them had received higher education with the exception of the executive chef, an Argentinian citizen with a degree in chemistry. During my fieldwork, I have witnessed a trend that further complicates the prospects of local graduates. It consists of restaurants hiring foreign cooks as interns who work against little to no pay. In the kitchen of Malabar, for instance, I have met young cooks from Colombia and Spain. Also, a foreign fellow researcher investigating the gastronomic boom told me that she was sharing flat with foreign restaurants interns who came to Lima attracted by the appeal of Peruvian cuisine. A recent ethnography in two of Lima’s middle-ranking schools shows in the same vein that restaurants tend to hire both educated alumni and self-taught chefs to create a balance between ‘street smart’ cooks and the more formal culinary graduates (Lasater-Wille, 2018). Such a tendency has led chef Paola Marsano, a graduate from Le Cordon Bleu Paris, to suggest that rather than training new people, efforts should be put in the professional development of those who are already working (Lauer & Lauer, 2006). Of course, not all the students from pricey and reputable schools will have a successful career as chefs. Cavenecia confided to me that most of his classmates who entered the profession have never been on television or appeared in the press, and were working in more restrictive conditions than him. Even more, several other of his classmates have had to retrain in other professions. He told me about one of them who is selling insurances, another who is working for a telecommunications company, and another working in a bank. When I asked him why they decided to abandon the profession, he replied that the kitchen work can be very frustrating when one does not work for one’s self or occupies a subordinate position. Cavenecia elaborated that although working at fast pace under

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someone else’s orders is formative, not everybody (he was speaking of his classmates and social peers) can endure the pressure or has the willingness to do the dirty work of a kitchen. These accounts of professional dilemmas marked by privilege bring me back to an anecdote chef Marc Dallard told me from the time he was an instructor at Le Cordon Bleu Lima. He recounted that he was summoned one afternoon by the grand uncle of one of his students who turned out to be one of the most prominent journalists of Peru and a respected food writer and critic. The latter complained to Dallard for making his niece wash heavy pots and pans after a cooking class. The chef explained that the student was one among others who were doing a task that is a part of their training; apprentices are expected to learn every aspect of the trade. The renowned journalist threatened Dallard that he would talk to his supervisors if it happened again. We can see that, although the path to become a successful chef is not written in stone, candidates will have more chances to reach this status if they were born ‘in the right place’, had attended the ‘right’ schools, travelled to and lived in global cities, and had been acquainted with the flavours and tastes of the cosmopolitan elite, as expressed by the conventions established by the chefs of the boom. This system of formal education reproduces and reinforces class privilege as it is private, and therefore excellence is something that is afforded to only a few people. Prestigious schools can certainly facilitate entry into the job market. Yet, they cannot be provided with values that can solely be acquired through upper-class socialisation. For graduates of middle-ranking schools and below, the situation is particularly problematic, as they will likely occupy subordinate positions for long periods of time, if they are even able to find a job.16 This is because their training centres cannot give them the credentials that others which impart a holistic training comprising of theoretical, practical, and managerial knowledge can. Therefore, the question of their competencies and employability—rather than of their potential consecration—revolves  The gastronomic boom has created inflated expectations in the job market. In 2014, 15,000 students graduated from culinary schools for an estimated number of job openings that did not exceed 1000 (Dölz, 2014). 16

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primarily around the acquisition of technical skills, their ambitions, and how disciplined, and at the same time creative, they can be (Lasater-­ Wille, 2018). A topic that deserves further attention in the context of Peru’s professional kitchens is gender hierarchies. Perhaps things in the field have changed since then but, when I visited Malabar’s kitchen in 2011, I noticed that the cooking section was only composed of male cooks, while the desserts section was female only. The patissiers with whom I spoke told me that these were the posts in which they were regularly placed, that the division seemed natural to them, and that it did not bother them much. When I discussed with them that being confined to prepare desserts might hinder chances to train skills that would allow them to get hired in cooking sections, where the best and majority of job opportunities are, they appeared to be somehow uncomfortable, like I have poked their egos. One of them said, with a certain nonchalance, that her salary was correct and that she did not mind not to earn much more than what her parents paid for her monthly tuition fees. Despite obstacles and limitations, culinary students have put high hopes on the expansion of the restaurant industry in Peru and, furthermore, on the internationalisation of Peruvian cuisine, which would lead to the opening of more Peruvian restaurants around the world where they could, perhaps, work one day and follow the paths of their cherished champions. In addition to their greater access to opportunities, elite chefs have also benefited from the fact that being identified as cultured—and also the capacity to consider oneself to be so—is embedded in Peru’s historical complex of social hierarchisation. Being granted this positive identification depends much more on the race and social class of an individual than on any process of sustained learning (Parker, 1998). Still today, white individuals are automatically seen as cultured individuals (personas cultas) of high socioeconomic status; poor white people are seen as an anomaly. The ‘natural’ advantage of the chefs of the boom was reinforced by factual evidence since all of them possess good educational credentials and the ‘right socialisation’ to navigate the most sophisticated and rigorous social milieus. The latter was of crucial importance to them since, unlike in current times when the success of Peruvian chefs depends more on the number of tourists they are able to attract, by the end of the 1990s, local gourmets dictated the verdict and paid the bills.

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This also suggests that that the consecration of these chefs should not be understood as merely deriving from the excellence of their training and the professional conventions they ended up establishing. As Lauer argues, a relationship exists between the lustre of their family names and their success at the upper end of the market: There is a strong relationship, quite strong, since Peru still has pre-capitalist markets. This can also be clearly seen in the field of art. It’s more and more evident that those who succeed often have a well-known family name, or come from a family with lots of money. This is not only because they have more resources to devote to their studies, but also because it’s easier for them to establish themselves at the beginning of their career, and because it’s their work which people buy most often in galleries. So, when you look at paintings, you will notice that the artist’s surnames are often the same as those you see in the senior management of banks and big businesses. In the case of restaurants, something similar happens because, ultimately, people with money like to frequent places where they can feel at home. And if the chef comes from a well-known family, that’s even better, that counts for a lot. Of course, if the restaurant is bad, they won’t come back; but when the individual also has talent, it helps a lot. For example, Cucho La Rosa is an idiot. But he’s a great chef, a marvellous chef.17

The remarks of this experienced gastronome are indicative of the extent to which family names contributed to the professional success of the chefs of the boom. Excellent skills were of course always necessary for chefs, yet perhaps of equal importance was being recognised by customers as a valid interlocutor, as a social peer. This process of capitalising on the prestige of one’s family name might be seen as the result of a dynamic of mutual aid functioning within this elite group, so as to support an intentional community. Lauer’s notion of a “pre-capitalist market” supports this idea, while shedding light on the diffusion of haute cuisine, where commercial relationships are not anonymous. Wealthy people buy works of art from other rich people just as ‘people from good families’ go to eat in restaurants where the chefs come, like them, from advantaged social milieus. This demonstrates how business, race, and social class were  Interview, op. cit.

17

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mutually influential at the beginnings of the gastronomic boom in Peru. It is as though the family name contains an ‘imagined CV’ for consumers—‘imagined’, because the customers do not all know the chefs personally. This imagined CV serves to counter the scepticism of the clientele, legitimated and justified around certain transactions in an emerging cultural field. This symbolic operation also contributes to a certain social cohesion within the cultural field, and to its reproduction. Although Lauer’s words about Cucho La Rosa, a mestizo chef who is well-known among popular classes, surprised me because I knew they knew and appreciated one another, they started to make sense to me from this perspective. When I asked him why he said La Rosa was an idiot, he replied: Because when he speaks, he gives the impression that he’s dumb, that he’s just blabbing on, doesn’t he? That’s what I mean by that. But he’s a first-rate chef; he’s the man who, with Roca Rey, created Novo-Andina cuisine. But the guy’s never managed to open a fine-dining restaurant which lasted long, never. First he opened El Comensal, which I talk about in my book, then he had a share in Pantagruel, and finally he opened another smaller restaurant in Miraflores. They were all excellent, but none of them really worked. It’s because people don’t want to go out to eat and be seen alongside Cucho La Rosa, who they see as an unwelcome social climber, do they? That doesn’t interest them, that’s how it is. […] Behind all that is a great deal of self-fashioning, and a very subtle social positioning—which is actually quite disgusting—in terms of who’s included and who’s excluded.18

The example of La Rosa demonstrates that, at least at the beginning of the gastronomic boom, excellent technical skills did not suffice to maintain a position in Peru’s high-end gastronomy. Although a high-skilled chef, the way he talks, looks, and the image of popular chef he fashioned in his television programme were at odds with the expectations of Lima’s fine diners, who were seeking not only cuisine of the highest standards, but also a worthy host; that is, a host who resembles them. This means that highly trained professionals with low amounts of social capital have to make additional efforts to create a positive self-image in order to compete against their whiter, more cultured and ‘respectable’ colleagues. In 18

 Interview, op. cit.

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Peru, racial identities are flexible to a point, “and income, education, occupation, family name, and social connections could turn a mestizo into a white or an Indian into a mestizo (or vice versa)” (Parker, 2005: 374). La Rosa has found better luck since the mid-2000s with the opening of La Casa de Don Cucho, a family-oriented restaurant in the countryside of Lima, where he offers a culinary experience which evokes a nostalgic past (see Cox Hall, 2019). His success on the margins of fine dining validates the analysis provided by Lauer. In this chapter, we have seen how elite chefs have shaped the conventions through which they established their domination in the emerging gastronomic field. These conventions are out of reach for the majority of Peruvians as they build on experiences, values, and attitudes pertaining to the fortunate and separate world of the upper class. Combinations of race, social status, professional identity, and, perhaps, luck determine to a great extent who succeeds in the field and who does not. Money and technical skills, although helpful to start a career, do not eclipse the need for social capital, culture, and artistic sensitivity to maintain a position— which are advantages that money cannot ‘buy’ within less than one or two generations. This means that the gastronomic field offers limited possibilities for people to become respected chefs, and therefore few opportunities of upper social mobility through engagement with the career exist. Yet, the gastronomic field offers opportunities for people willing to improve their quality of life by occupying subordinate positions as cooks. By proclaiming themselves as artists and their work as art, elite chefs have put themselves in a position in which their work is judged and assessed through criteria that exceeds expectations of flavours and fragrances. In a small and emergent market, chefs were in an uncertain place, as evaluation was concentrated in the hands of a small number of individuals. The favourable context in which the country’s economy has been developing since the mid-1990s brought up possibilities to broaden the clientele capable of bearing judgement within the established artistic and professional conventions. The social homogeneity across the field provided a terrain with no cultural barriers in which chefs and customers could interact and learn from each other. Chefs could learn the culinary preferences, expectations, phobias, and prejudices of their customers, while the latter could learn the latest gastronomic trends and appreciate

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the creations of the chefs’ minds. The rise of the figure of chef worldwide and the increasing influx of tourists and corporate expatriate executives to Peru expanded the panorama further. The table was therefore set to consolidate gastronomy as a relevant sector of activity in Peru, the profession of chef, and reshape Peruvian cuisine so as to become the catalyst of this process.

References Jean-Paul, A. (1997). De la glaciation dans la culture en général et dans la cuisine en particulier. L’internationale de l’imaginaire, 7, 14–47. Ascher, F. (2005). Le mangeur hypermoderne. Odile Jacob. Becker, H.  S. (2008). Art worlds: Updated and expanded. University of California Press. Belk, R.  W. (1986). Yuppies as arbiters of the emerging consumption style. Advances in Consumer Research, 13, 514–519. Bourdieu, P. (1985). The market of symbolic goods. Poetics, 14(1-2), 13–44. Cox Hall, A. (2019). Savoring nostalgia: Food and the past in Peru’s “La Casa de Don Cucho”. Anthropology of food, 14. https://journals.openedition. org/aof/10106 Dölz, M. (2014). Perú sabe. PAT, 61, 16–22. Drouard, A. (2004). Histoire des cuisiniers en France XIXe  – XXe siècle. CNRS Éditions. Ferguson, P.  P. (2004). Accounting for taste: The triumph of French cuisine. University of Chicago Press. Ferguson, P. P., & Zukin, S. (1998). The careers of chefs. In R. Scapp & B. Seitz (Eds.), Eating culture. State of New York University Press. Gualtieri, G. (2022). Is cuisine art? Considering art and craft as conceptual categories in American fine dining. Poetics, 95, 101705. Heinich, N. (1999). Pour en finir avec la querelle de l’art contemporain. Le Débat, 2, 106–115. Hinostroza, R. (2006). Primicias de cocina peruana. Everest. Johnston, J., Rodney, A., & Chong, P. (2014). Making change in the kitchen? A study of celebrity cookbooks, culinary personas, and inequality. Poetics, 47, 1–22.

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Lasater-Wille, A. (2015). The taste of distinction: Culinary education and the production of social difference in Lima, Peru. PhD dissertation, New  York University. Lasater-Wille, A. (2018). The presentation of the chef in everyday life: Socializing chefs in Lima, Peru. Revista de Administração de Empresas, 58, 233–243. Lauer, M., & Lauer, V. (2006). La revolución gastronómica peruana. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Leschziner, V. (2015). At the chef ’s table: Culinary creativity in elite restaurants. Stanford University Press. Matta, R. (2019a). Celebrity chefs and the limits of playing politics from the kitchen. In J.  Dürrschmidt & Y.  Kautt (Eds.), Globalized eating cultures: Mediation and mediatization. Palgrave Macmillan. Ory, P. (1998). Le discours gastronomique français. Gallimard. Parker, D.  S. (1998). The Idea of the Middle Class. White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society, 1900-1950. Pennsylvania State University Press. Parker, D. S. (2005). Middle-class mobilization and the language of orders in urban Latin America: From caste to category in early twentieth-century Lima. Journal of Urban History, 31(3), 367–381. Poulain, J.-P., & Neirinck, E. (2004). Histoire de la cuisine et des cuisiniers. Jacques Lanote. Rambourg, P. (2005). De la cuisine à la gastronomie. Louis Aubert. Rao, H., Monin, P., & Durand, R. (2003). Institutional change in Toque Ville: Nouvelle cuisine as an identity movement in French gastronomy. American Journal of Sociology, 108(4), 795–843. Ray, K. (2016). The ethnic restaurateur. Bloomsbury. Robles, J.  M. (2019). Lima Freak. Vidas insólitas en una ciudad perturbada. Seix Barral. Zukin, S. (1991). Landscapes of power. University of California Press.

4 Cooking up a Global Cuisine

 he Gentrification of Peruvian Cuisine: T Contextual and Theoretical Underpinnings The social construction of upper-class taste has historically relied on the possession and administration of scarce goods. Yet the accelerated transnational flows of capital, people, and ideas that characterise our modern era have made scarce consumer goods increasingly available to more people, therefore clearing the path for new developments encompassing their usage, consumption, creation, and valuation. Food and cuisine bring forth relevant examples of such dynamics as they are particularly sensitive to successive waves of globalisation, with the latter understood from a longue durée perspective (Braudel, 1985). The shortening of distances, the emergence of conflicting values (e.g. tradition vs. modern) in food consumption, and cultural diffusion have conveyed noticeable changes in ways of experiencing food, sometimes to the extent of reconsidering paradigms. For instance, the contemporary adoption of elements from cuisines outside of non-Western traditions has eroded the centuries-long hegemony of European culinary taste, and particularly that of French haute cuisine, which reigned since the nineteenth century. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Matta, From the Plate to Gastro-Politics, Food and Identity in a Globalising World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46657-1_4

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Paradoxically, the most systematic attempt to ‘desacralise’ French haute cuisine was initiated in France. The early 1970s was the period during which professionals chefs, in collaboration with food writers, introduced decisive transformations in the country’s gastronomic field. Theorisations consisting of articles and editorials by culinary journalists destabilised the pillars of the meat and sauce-centred bourgeois cuisine by championing innovation and transgression. Nouvelle cuisine promoted the use of long-­ established cooking techniques with new ingredients in ways then seen as illegitimate, and a rhetoric that referred to imagination and poetry rather than place names or names of the nobility (Rao et al., 2003). The discourse of nouvelle cuisine, as formalised by gastronomic critics Henri Gault and Christian Millau in the 1960s, was one of superiority compared with the old-fashioned, bourgeois cuisine. Nouvelle cuisine was deemed as more creative, aesthetically appealing, open to external influences, built on nutritional science, and even more honest, as its objective was no longer “the metamorphosis of the food product, but the revelation of its essential truth” (Fischler cited in Rao et al., 2003: 807). Fruits, vegetables, potatoes, aromatic herbs, exotic ingredients, and sea fish were the most favoured products. Although proponents of nouvelle cuisine continued to apply French-based culinary knowledge and their inclination towards opulence remained, they ceased regarding peasant and non-­ Western traditions as uncivilised and, instead, started to consider them as sources of inspiration, with the influences of Japan and France’s former colonies and immigrants being the more noticeable (Beaugé, 1999; Poulain, 2012). Thoroughly associated with individual creativity and in consonance with a society that disdained the old, nouvelle cuisine contributed to raising the social status of chefs, as their names began to become even more prominent than those of the prestigious restaurants for which they worked. From France, the precepts of nouvelle cuisine travelled to major Western cities with considerable success. Crucial to this was their arrival in the United States, where they were rapidly emulated by chefs of California (Levy, 1985). These chefs translated the emphasis their French peers put on terroir into commitment to the use of fresh ingredients from local producers and suppliers, while accomplishing a similar movement of openness to the world by incorporating elements from the cuisines of the

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groups who migrated to the United States in the twentieth century. These developments established what, since the 1980s, has been known worldwide as fusion cuisine, a trend characterised by the acceptance and praise of so-called ethnic foods. The higher degrees of openness and inclusion in the gastronomic field has led to what sociologist Richard Peterson and colleagues have termed cultural omnivorousness (Peterson & Simkus, 1992; Peterson & Kern, 1996) to refer to the penchant some people have to “do and like more activities and things than others” (Warde et al., 2007: 145). The implications of cultural omnivorousness in dining out are twofold, and may appear as being contradictory. First, omnivore patterns result from attempts to update and revamp the gastronomic field in its intangible aspects (such as knowledge and narratives) as well as in its material aspects (such as ingredients and presentation). These endeavours have eroded the consensual discriminatory standards that sustain the barrier between high and popular cuisines. Second, although seemingly more democratic, omnivorousness brings about new distinctions related to social status, as the adoption and display of elements of popular culture requires cultural capital to command forms on both sides of the high and popular divide (Johnston & Baumann, 2007; Warde, 2018). Eating in ethnic restaurants, unlike in the past, can be more than exotic entertainment, as it may play a role in status-seeking strategies (Wilk, 2009). The elite today can satisfy their hunger for distinction through the consumption of peasant, indigenous, and allegedly authentic food cultures. Historian Jeffrey Pilcher called the “gentrification of working-­class dishes” to the process that, in the 1980s, permitted Mexican cuisine to become upscale in the United States and among Mexican cosmopolitan elites. Gentrification began with the commodification of peasant foods from the interior of the country in cookbooks, cooking schools, and restaurants, and resulted in professionally trained chefs selling “blue-­ corn-­and-lobster tamales at twenty dollars a plate” (Pilcher, 2008: 538). The acceptance of popular and ethnic foods on high-end tables have contributed to an updating within gastronomic fields, in which former markers and understandings of taste have been replaced by others that involve “biological, but also and more fundamentally, social, cultural, ecological, and political contexts that contribute to shape the human

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experience of food intake and preference” (Ayora-Diaz, 2019: 1). This view of taste as a “social sense” (Højlund, 2015), that is, as an activity related to sociocultural contexts rather than as an individual matter of palatable assessment has reshaped cultural meanings and prompted new business opportunities in the dining-out industry (Matta & Panchapakesan, 2021). Peruvian cuisine has taken advantage of such a context by facilitating an opening to the Otherness which is similar to the processes described above, in which chefs draw on ingredients and produce seen as foreign or remote by the elites, while displaying discourse and technical resources for satisfying the elites’ new preferences and ‘adventurous’ gastronomic endeavours. It is indeed possible to affirm that, like with Mexican cuisine, culinary gentrification occurred in Peru. The gentrification of Peruvian cuisine involves narratives of ‘rescue’ or ‘rediscovery’ of foods from Andean and Amazonian locations, which have remained obscured by national historiographies. As we will see in the next sections, the relocation of these foods in upscale global settings is due to the interplay of several factors, ranging from contemporary aspects of cultural economy, such as the rampant commodification of identities, to more established and situated social dynamics, such as the ability of elites to reconstitute their privileges in changing contexts. To better comprehend the gentrification of Peruvian cuisine as both a cross-cultural and cultural specific phenomenon, I combine approaches and insights from the history of science, anthropology, and cultural geography. The concept of the circulation of knowledge has been used by historians to counter the assumption that scientific and other forms of knowledge spread beyond national boundaries through one-way processes of diffusion from nodes of production of ideas towards other latitudes that would passively receive these ideas (Raj, 2007; Cohen, 2010). Theorists of the circulation of knowledge contend that knowledge transfer involves an interplay of variables which lead to mutations within the existing circulating knowledge. Therefore, the process of circulation is itself a site of knowledge-making, as it introduces changes not only in ideas and social practices moving through time and space but also in the localities intersected by flows of knowledge. The role of circulation in knowledge-making “puts in question not only traditional notions of

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scientific ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’ but the notion of the ‘local’ as a fixed unchanging site” (Solomon, 2008: 13). The idea of imagination, which has been at the core of current anthropological developments, is constitutive of the generative dynamics within the flows of people, capital, ideas, and images found in media, which fashion contemporary societies (Appadurai, 2001; García Canclini, 2014). Imagination is a socially constituted process which involves thinking about ordinary life in interconnected ways, as well as considering options and making decisions in forms of collaborations which are no longer restricted to local communities but span across national borders. Media, migration, and commodification, processes which we can consider as sources of knowledge themselves, are crucial in shaping contemporary cultural economy as “a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing center-periphery models” (Appadurai, 1996: 32), and in introducing a positive instability in the formation of selves and identities. The ideas of the circulation of knowledge and imagination lend themselves well to the analysis of the constant adaptations and translations of disseminated culinary knowledge within specific localities. By underlining the importance of slowly-evolving dynamics and the diversity of resources that such processes engage, these ideas call for the adoption of a long-term perspective in which circulating foods and culinary techniques need to be constantly observed in their more immediate social and spatial contexts. Such a perspective allows for breaking out of other contexts which see the creative reworking of ‘foreign’ ingredients or ‘imported’ cuisines merely as mechanisms of adaptation to fit in with the culinary expectations in their new settings. In return, what is invited is an adoption of a cultural geography lens and think of foods as constituted through processes of “displacement”, which refer to cultural and economic phenomena as “characterized not only by the points in space where they take and make place, but also by the movements to, from and between those points” (Cook & Crang, 1996: 138). The figure of displacement suggests an understanding whereby processes of food production and consumption—in this case, cuisines—can be presented as contextually local, but where those contexts are recognised as opened up and constituted through the connections and interrelations of all the actors involved in the

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production, circulation, and consumption of foods and foods’ meanings. These interrelations imply a variety of representational processes, such as the voicing of food expertise, knowledge translations, interest constructions, and surplus extractions (Cook & Crang, 1996). The interdisciplinary corpus outlined above seems suitable to analyse how, within a network of flows and forces, the developments in Peruvian cuisine are communicated; how, by whom, and with what intentions food and culinary knowledge in provenance from within and outside the country is apprehended, articulated, and (re)shaped; how particular knowledges gain pre-eminence in strategies of market differentiation and value addition; and how all these undertakings affect the institutional and political landscapes of those who articulate food and culinary knowledge for their own interests as well as for other’s.

Ethnic Updating: Novo-Andina and Its Legacy Current developments in the gastronomic industry and press have enticed foodies from around the globe to try out new restaurants and search for new cuisines and flavours. Notions of terroir, heritage, cultural identity, and authenticity at play in the food and tourism industries, coupled with advances in kitchen technology, have further stimulated the latest transformations in restaurant cookery. New markets for food products and culinary skills and discourses have emerged. Trends such as Spain’s nueva nouvelle cuisine (Lubow, 2003; Svejenova et  al., 2007), Nuevo Latino (Fonseca, 2005), Nordic Food (Tholstrup Hermansen, 2012), and First Nations cuisine (Schellhaas, 2020), together with the rise of local food activism, such as by Slow Food (Siniscalchi, 2023), have paved the way for highly trained cooks to perform cultural work resulting in a corpora of dishes that can be local and cosmopolitan at the same time. Clare Sammells (2014) has termed them “haute traditional cuisines”. These cuisines move between local foodways, composed of locally produced foods associated with knowledge from the ancestral past, and cosmopolitan foodways, which comprise technical, professional skills, and upper-­ end impetuses. Peruvian cuisine has benefited both from a tremendous ecological biodiversity and from a complex culinary history that

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encompasses crops and practices resulting from the meeting of precolonial heritage with the legacy of centuries of immigration from various parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. Within this configuration, Peruvian chefs and restaurateurs have moved rapidly into available niches characterised by the use of foreign influences and so-called ethnic foods from the interior of the country. In fact, Peru is a country whose population of European migrant origin views its indigenous population as ‘ethnic’. This trend disrupted the small fine-dining scene which existed in Lima in the 1980s and early 1990s. With only a couple of exceptions which focused on Peruvian cuisine, the scene was composed of a dozen of restaurants whose offers were largely concerned with classical French and Mediterranean cuisines, and whose kitchens were, in some cases, run by foreign European chefs (Lauer & Lauer, 2006). The food on offer reflected well the characteristics of the gastronome and, by extension, of the elite of that time: Scarce in number, looking to Europe rather than to Peru, and conservative in preferences. Peruvian dishes had a marginal presence on the menus of upscale restaurants, or were confined to a buffet service, which emphasised diversity and quantity rather than quality. As these venues tried to conform to European cuisine canons, the gastronomic reviews of that time often compared them to their peers in France, Spain or England. It is for this reason as well as the difficulty restaurants have obtaining high-quality resources for reproducing European cuisine, that by the end of the 1980s critics described the gastronomic scene of Lima as stagnant and lacking in creativity (Del Pozo & Miranda, 2022). Yet, these were also the times when Peruvian cuisine was preparing its entry into a more cosmopolitan culture with Novo-Andina, a style which combines modern techniques with ingredients from the Andean region. Novo-Andina’s main initiator was Bernardo Roca Rey (1944–2022), a member of the elite Miró-Quesada family, who owns, among several other media companies, Peru’s most influential newspaper, El Comercio. Much of Roca Rey’s education occurred overseas, first in boarding schools in Switzerland and later at the universities of Lausanne and Seville, where he studied chemistry and physics. He explained in interviews that his many trips within Europe and the experience of sharing a flat with students of the Lausanne Hospitality School nurtured in him an interest in gastronomy, techniques he learned outside educational circuits (Matta,

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2010). Back in Peru in the late 1970s, he worked for El Comercio and other outlets of the family conglomerate as a food journalist and critic, a field of activity in which he was one of the pioneers in Peru. Yet, rather than a critic, Roca Rey positioned himself as a food researcher. His writings, he explained, were intended to call into question old-fashioned, “bourgeois customs”, which he considered prescriptive and narrow; limiting rather than encouraging culinary creativity and exploration.1 In a 2013 interview for the newspaper Correo, he recalled, “When I started, many people complained to me: Why are you promoting comida serrana? Are you crazy? Chickens eat quinoa! That’s what they told me... And now look how things have changed. No one thinks of saying such nonsense anymore”.2 By the mid-1980s, after hosting a long series of culinary experimentations with fellow gourmets, Roca Rey and his friend chef Cucho La Rosa coined the term Novo-Andina to refer to the resulting pattern of their searches. Novo-Andina’s rationale was to revalorise native foods and ingredients by accommodating them to the in vogue precepts in gastronomic restaurants across the world. In Roca Rey’s words, Novo-­ Andina was, “created to motivate Peruvians to believe that contemporary cuisine had something to say in our Creole dishes”.3 The Novo-Andina restaurants El Comensal (1993–1996) and Pantagruel (1996–2000) were the first to serve Andean foods, such as kiwicha,4 quinoa or alpaca meat, fashioned under modern techniques from international gastronomy. La Rosa and Roca Rey ran these places in tandem with the aim of Peruvian cuisine being perceived in a better light by the local and international gourmets of those times who appreciated Peruvian cuisine’s flavours and diversity, but despised its heaviness and unpolished presentation (Lauer & Lauer, 2006). The relatively short span of Novo-Andina venues nevertheless offered some dishes which are currently considered classics of modern Peruvian cuisine, such as  Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu-OBb-vPc8&t=363s, Accessed October 6, 2022. 2  See https://diariocorreo.pe/peru/senor-mistura-bernardo-roca-rey-revoluciona-80808/, Accessed October 6, 2022. 3  See https://elcomercio.pe/luces/vida-social/bernardo-roca-rey-destacado-periodista-e-impulsor-­ de-­la-gastronomia-fallecio-a-los-77-anos-noticia/, Accessed October 6, 2022. 4  Amaranthus caudatus L., high protein content grain. 1

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quinotto—a variant of risotto in which rice is replaced by quinoa—or grilled alpaca meat in aguaymanto5 sauce. It is possible to identify in the Novo-­Andina enterprise efforts of theorisation which somehow parallel those undertaken by the advocates of nouvelle cuisine in France: There were food writers, a group of enthusiasts with an appetite for novelty, and a volition to subvert the gastronomic establishment. However, at that time, Peru lacked both an institutional basis and a market of sufficient size to support sophisticated gastronomic ventures in a sustained manner. Therefore, while bringing visibility to foods associated with rurality and poverty, Novo-Andina could not transcend the small circle of Lima’s open-minded elite: It existed as a movement of culinary exploration by gastronomes for gastronomes. Yet, it left behind a relevant and lasting footprint in the field. By the early 2000s, in a context of economic growth and increased political stability, native and indigenous foods started to feature prominently in the restaurants opened by the first cohort of chefs who had returned to Lima from their training journeys in Europe and the United States (Acurio, Osterling, Schiaffino, Piqueras, Ossio, Berckemeyer, among others). In addition to foods from the Andes, these chefs also included elements from the Amazonian region. Although the filiation of their creations with Novo-Andina was easily recognisable, they opted not to cast their works under that category as it was (and continues to be) strongly linked to the names of Roca Rey and La Rosa. More importantly this allowed them to enjoy greater degrees of creative freedom in an increasingly competitive market. For some chefs, this meant having to radically modify the way they had been working until then. For Gastón Acurio, this implied giving away recipes and knowledge he had gained during his formative period. After training in France for several years, Acurio came back to Lima to open Astrid & Gastón in 1994. For its inauguration, he offered a typical French menu, with lobster, salmon, duck and sole fish as the main ingredients (Del Pozo & Miranda, 2022). This was not very surprising for someone who, as he admitted, had received French training, had a 100-percent-French culinary mindset, and had never previously cooked professionally in Peru (Lauer & Lauer,  Physalis peruviana L., small bittersweet flavored fruit.

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2006). In subsequent years, Astrid & Gastón included Mediterranean dishes as options, thus becoming less French and more international. Then the progression veered towards Peru. For instance, in 1996, the menu featured picarón—a sweet fried doughnut—in the “Duck liver beignet, juicy and wrapped in a light and crunchy picarón donut dough” (Del Pozo & Miranda, 2022). Acurio explained that this evolution occurred in a gradual, natural way, liking it to a process of self-finding and identity formation. He mentioned that although none of the chefs who have trained in Europe and North America have ever claimed that they were cooking traditional Peruvian cuisine, or have ever identified themselves as Peruvian cooks, they have all increasingly included in their menus versions of typical Peruvian dishes such as lomo saltado, cebiche, tiradito or ingredients such as manioc, because “you cannot deny who you are” (Acurio in Lauer & Lauer, 2006, 166–172). Unlike Novo-Andina, which aimed for a reinvention of Peruvian cuisine with a strong anchoring in existing culinary knowledge, the gastronomic undertakings from the early 2000s made use of native foods to foster individual creativity and the fashioning of chefs’ culinary personas. These developments were less an effort to frame or theorise national cuisine than an attempt to conform the incipient Peruvian gastronomic field to international standards—although, as we will see later, some chefs have articulated ideas in terms of social responsibility, speaking about missions or shared goals. As chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino put it, he and his peers were fixing their gaze abroad to learn what the leading actors of the international restaurant industry were doing, not to copy from them but to become inspired and try something different with the resources at their disposal.6 What these chefs saw was a restaurant culture in motion, in which the codes of classical fine dining were combining with progressive ideas and sensibilities veering off from snobby atmospheres and towards omnivorous eating habits that profess to be authentic, cosmopolitan, ecological, and entertaining (Johnston & Baumann, 2010; Pearlman, 2013; Emontspool & Georgi, 2017). They saw a restaurant culture which, although highly competitive, was showing a positive attitude towards exotic foods and preparations (Lane, 2013) and therefore  Interview, August 11, 2012.

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was undermining older culinary hierarchies while promoting the flow of culinary expertise from peripheral locations to global centres (Matta & Panchapakesan, 2021). Such a context paved the way for narratives of diversity, unearthing, and abundance in Peru’s gastronomic field, which accorded with subsequent narratives of extraction (see García, 2021; López-Canales, 2019; McDonell, 2019) and aesthetic transformation. In 2007, chef Sebastián Cavenecia told me that Peru is a pantry with no comparison in the South American subcontinent, as it provides all the raw materials a chef could wish for: Vegetables, fish, seafood, all kinds of produce. Even good meats, and this despite the fact that, in Cavenecia’s view, Peru is not a nation of livestock farmers. Such abundance is what has allowed Peruvian cuisine to develop so rapidly and extensively, he explained. Cavenecia also put emphasis on the large amount of available foods that many do not know. He recounted that a few weeks before our meeting, he went on a trip to the region of Huancayo, in Peru’s central Andes, and was amazed to find plenty of herbs and vegetables which were unknown to him. He shared with me that it was with excitement that he took some of these foods to Lima to see what he could do with them. Similarly, Emma McDonell (2019, para. 32) recalls that the biographical information page of Schiaffino’s Malabar restaurant’s website reads, “I never understood how limeños could live so close to one of the best repositories on the planet nor how international cuisine still hadn’t integrated all the ingredients with exquisite flavours and incredible nutritional value into their menus”. In 2011, chef Virgilio Martínez told me about two food-related patterns which, for him, were combining in a positive way: The growing sentiment of pride that Peruvians have for their foods and what it could be described as the global ‘coolness’ about ‘the local’.7 He said these trends were making things easier for creative chefs like him. To illustrate his statement, he elaborated on the Tuna Tataki and Tasting of Andean Tuber, one of the dishes on the menu at his restaurant Central at that time. Previously, his reflex would have been to accompany the tataki with risotto or with a rice preparation like those he had tasted in Spain: This is not the case anymore. As people became more receptive to native and  Interview August 18, 2011.

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local ingredients, Martínez progressively shifted to using what was available in  local markets across the country such as, in this case, Andean tubers. Bringing elements from popular food to high cuisine made his cooking not only easier, cheaper, and more fun as they provide more flavours to work with and more stories to tell, but also more meaningful as he was helping local producers, he explained. That same year, chef Jaime Pesaque elaborated on the new context in terms of business and competitive advantages.8 What was important to him was the possibilities native foods and the biodiversity of the country offer chefs to foster individual creations and claim ownership of them. He explained that although fine-dining restaurants all share similar characteristics, they all are, and must be, different. Being recognised as the first to create a dish or the only one using a sophisticated technique can make a difference. This quest for individuality therefore became key to business survival in a relatively young market of limited scope. The second half of the 2000s was indeed a time when chefs put into practice all that they had learned throughout previous stages; not only in cooking but also in marketing and communication. Chefs featured extensively in  local lifestyle news and magazines as trendsetters in delivering high-­end experiences. Some of them, inspired by the global success of the cuisine of Catalonian chef Ferran Adrià, employed the techniques of molecular gastronomy to attract the most cosmopolitan diners. In his restaurant Fusión, whose name is self-explanatory, chef Rafael Piqueras, former disciple of Adrià at ElBulli, traded the classic yellow pepper sauce for a yellow pepper foam in his version of cebiche. Chef Rodrigo Conroy, in his restaurant Rodrigo, used the knowledge he acquired in Europe and Canada to concoct the more intricate “caramelized quinoa cannelloni stuffed with foie gras, fig carpaccio and quail’s egg, served with a sweet parmesan ice cream”. These gastronomic developments, shaped by circulations and borrowings, have instilled a broadened awareness of Peru’s biodiversity and a gastronomic discourse within which business and aesthetic qualities come together in novel ways. This has provided a terrain of opportunity wherein exoticism and authenticity uphold the valorisation of the culinary features existing in the country.  Interview August 8, 2011.

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By that time, culinary exoticism already had a long history of helping diners across the world overcome their fear of the unknown and the appeal of the familiar (Régnier, 2004). Achieving these goals required, however, that the efforts in that direction were moderated or controlled. Indeed, in order for unfamiliar products to be eaten, they could not appear to be too different from familiar products (Régnier, 2009). The task for Peruvian chefs in this realm was particularly complicated, as they worked with products which were foreign or exotic even for them. The goal was, therefore, to establish analogies between the ‘exotic’ Peruvian features (the unfamiliar) and Western features (the familiar). They did this through technical and discursive tactics which, in turn, provided them with gains in authenticity. Authenticity, as understood here, encompasses moral ideals, self-­ determination, self-fulfilment, and the search of individuals to understand themselves in terms of what they also recognise in others (Taylor, 1991). Authenticity does not refer to the process of considering dishes in light of their conformity to traditional or particular methods of preparation. Rather, it concerns the capacity of the chefs to assert themselves as authentic individuals, in terms of acting and living in accordance with their own individual convictions, values, or projects, and embodying the signification of their creations. From the consumer side, authenticity is constructed on a subjective interpretation of identity, which Michaela DeSoucey and Daphne Demetry (2016: 2018) describe as—“a set of idealized expectations attributed by audience members about how something ought to be experienced to be considered credible, genuine, or even real”. Today, asserting a chef ’s authenticity is a good strategy to sell gastronomic experiences, as consumers frequently perceive authentic goods as having higher value (Johnston & Baumann, 2010; Kovács et al., 2014). The work of Pedro Miguel Schiaffino is an example of how authenticity and exoticism connect and interweave. Schiaffino has obtained notoriety in the last two decades as the chef and owner of the fashionable Malabar and ÁmaZ restaurants which, until their closing due to the Covid-19 pandemic, were celebrated for their cuisine centred on Amazonian ingredients. The son of a meat trader, he became acquainted with food at a young age by spending large amounts of time at his family’s farm. Schiaffino shared with the press that, as a teenager, he was

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already able to debone chicken and cattle carcasses and differentiate good food items from bad ones.9 He gathered cooking experience with a few internships even before graduating from one of the most reputed and expensive schools in Peru and pursuing his formal culinary education. He embarked on this part of his journey abroad, which included training at the Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York and years of working experience at Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy, the land of his ancestors. Upon his return to Lima, Schiaffino worked in prestigious restaurants such as Huaca Pucllana, where he became the head chef. The menu at Huaca Pucllana was mainly based on Andean ingredients, yet the sporadic arrival of Amazonian items captivated him. To explore his interest, Schiaffino moved to the Amazon city of Iquitos for more than one year. There he found the inspiration he needed to open his own restaurant. While wandering the region and engaging with jungle farmers, fishermen and local families, a new horizon opened for him: “I was encountering foods from my own country that I never knew existed … [h]earts of palm, scarlet camu camu fruits, fragrant achiote seeds … I felt like I was living in another world” (Schiaffino in Kaufman, 2010). Iquitos became the base from which Schiaffino started to pair ‘his finds’ with European cooking techniques. He did so first in Malabar, opened in 2004, and later in ÁmaZ, opened in 2012. Yet his cuisine is not entirely Amazonian. Emma McDonell (2019, para. 38) notes that even ÁmaZ, the chef ’s most-Amazonian venture, “features only a handful of dishes any Amazonian will recognize”. On Schiaffino’s style, journalist David Kaufman (2010) writes: [T]he jungle informs, inspires, and supplies the raw materials for his culinary repertoire. For instance, hearts of palm, which usually wrap local tamales, emerge whipped into a savory soufflé under Schiaffino’s care. The apple-like cocona fruit—sometimes eaten straight from the vine—is reduced to a purée, then layered in a shot glass between cubes of raw tuna, capped with a sugar crust, and torched into a brûlée.

 See https://elcomercio.pe/publirreportaje/pedro-miguel-schiaffino-la-calidad-extrema-como-­ filosofia-­culinaria-noticia/?ref=ecr, Accessed May 5, 2023. 9

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It is then the unknownness and ensuing discoverability of rainforest ingredients that make Amazonian cuisine particularly marketable to foreign and elite Peruvian diners (McDonell, 2019). Schiaffino’s mastery of culinary techniques, alongside his experience in the field, added both symbolic and economic value to his proposition, making him express with confidence that he is “able to communicate an entire culture through these foods” (Kaufman, 2010). However, convincing local elites and culinary tourists to try foods from an area which, in the imaginary of the former, represents barbarism and ‘uncivilization’10 and, in that of the latter represents absolute otherness, requires translation rather than simple communication or knowledge transfer. The following account addresses how the chef achieved this. Schiaffino was one of Peru’s representatives in the 2009 edition of the Madrid Fusión festival, an event which, since 2003, has gathered the cream of international chefs. He featured in a panel on the theme “environmental cuisine” (cocina medioambiental), where chefs showcased “naturalistic gastronomic trends associated with the plant kingdom, such as ‘gastrobotany’ and restaurants operating their own farms” (Quílez, 2009). Schiaffino titled his presentation “The Natural Pantry of the Amazon Jungle: The Last Version of Peruvian Cuisine”. To begin, he screened an 11-minute video about the produce of the Peruvian Amazon and his efforts to gather some of it. The film shows the chef visiting the markets of Iquitos, travelling along the Amazon River, and explaining how the region’s biodiversity can be used in sophisticated cuisine.11 He describes fruits like aguaje,12 the fruit of the moriche palm; camu camu, a Vitamin C rich berry13; chonta, hearts of palm cut into thin strips; uvilla, the Amazon tree grape; and macambo, a Theobroma relative of cacao. He also describes river fauna such as the Amazon snail and the gamitana,14 a large fish whose head resembles that of piranha; the carachama, an armoured catfish; and the paiche, one of the largest freshwater fish in the world. 10  For instance, chuncho and jíbaro, idioms which referred to actual tribal groups, are still widely used to pejoratively designate Amazon people as savage Indians. 11  Video available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T__44Dvhnj0, Accessed May 5, 2023. 12  Mauritia flexuosa L., slightly sweet-tasted fruit from a palm tree (Arecaceae family). 13  Myrciaria dubia Kunth. 14  Colossoma macroporum Cuv., herbivorous river fish often reaching over one-metre long.

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Schiaffino’s descriptions do not include the traditional uses of these foods. Locals eat aguaje in varied forms (raw, as juice, as popsicles or even as freeze pops), use camu camu as bait to fish gamitana and cure illnesses including asthma, atherosclerosis, depression, flu, glaucoma, hepatitis, and Parkinson’s (Pinedo & Armas, 2007), eat macambo seeds roasted in skewers or grounded in thick soups, and enjoy gamitana despite its similarity to piranha. This information would probably not suffice to attract an international audience. For all the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the event, Amazonian flora and fauna still remain too remote for most of the attendants to Madrid Fusión. To create familiarity, and by extension, appreciation for these foods, Schiaffino emphasised on their nutritional properties, a (Western) scientific register the audience can better relate to. In the video, he explains that aguaje contains between 20 and 30 times more beta-Carotene than carrots, that camu camu has anti-oxidant properties and is the fruit with the highest content of Vitamin C in the world, and that gamitana, when presented in a stylised manner on a plate, looks remarkably similar to a rack of lamb thanks to its large bones. For his cooking demo, the chef prepared “grilled gamitana ribs with cassava puree, chorizo sauce and breadfruit blinis, chestnut cheese and carachama caviar”. Spanish culinary blogger el pingue described Schiaffino’s act as stunning (demoledor).15 Schiaffino’s tactics consist of borrowing and re-signifying ‘unknown’, exotic, or marginalised food items by making them meaningful and available to social and cultural elites. These entail a double dynamic of displacement: One created by back-and-forth flows of people (Schiaffino and his team), foods, and culinary knowledge between the Amazon and Lima; and another, both technical and discursive, which displaces the work, knowledge, and cultural beliefs of the people who produce and consume these foods from the forefront of customary practice to the backstage of the gastronomic scene. Such a combination of business, technical, and discursive skills allowed him to place the Amazon rainforest at the core of his celebrated culinary persona (the jungle chef ) and his restaurants, in particular Malabar, among the most successful of Peru and Latin America.  See https://blogs.publico.es/elpingue/78/madrid-fusion-2008-jornada-n%C2%BA1, Accessed May 3, 2023. 15

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Schiaffino was a precursor for chefs who, using their educational skills and privilege, reinforce the dynamics of moving indigenous and long-­ marginalised foods from cookery to gastronomy and from local to global. Their advantaged social positions help them to challenge representations of the inedible firmly seated in the prejudices of the elite—both their customers and social peers. By casting their creations within individual aestheticised discourses, these chefs generate trust and prevent situations which, otherwise, might raise expressions of disgust or rejection. Most of this work both develops and produces effects in the realm of status: The new status of the native foods help gastronomes and foodies to maintain and display social status, and chefs to achieve celebrity status. People who make native foods possible are generally left out of the game of gentrification, as they passively embed the ‘unknown’ or the ‘nobody’, so frequent in chefs’ discourses.

Cooking up Positive Exoticism I witnessed culinary gentrification in Lima myself through fieldwork conducted since 2007 and my engagement as a diner on a number of occasions. In the following, I report on observations held in 2011 at the restaurants Central and Mayta, and subsequent interviews with their respective chefs and owners, Virgilio Martínez and Jaime Pesaque. Since their opening at the end of the 2000s, these venues located in the vibrant district of Miraflores have garnered local and international attention: They rank every year in the authoritative World’s 50 Best Restaurant List. I contacted both chefs by email and asked them to cook one representative dish from their current menu. The idea was to film and take pictures of their performance, as I wanted to obtain technical insight about their work with indigenous ingredients. Of course, the chefs were at liberty to choose which elements to use. I was surprised and pleased when both chefs kindly accepted my request. I obtained their approval for filming and photographing during a morning slot, between the mise en place (the kitchen preparatory work) and the beginning of the service. That means that the focus was on the assembling of the ingredients on the plate and on the cooking, which is

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usually made to order. After recording the preparations, semi-structured interviews followed so that I could find out more about the origins of the dishes, the technical and discursive skills involved in their preparation, and the ways the chefs responded to customers’ expectations. A few days before our meetings, the chefs told me which dishes they had planned to prepare. Martínez decided to use a selection of Andean tubers—Huayro potato (Solanum x chaucha), manioc, and sweet potato—and Pesaque guinea pig. Their choices of ingredients coincidentally connected with one of my most cherished previous food experiences, although this had occurred in a completely different context. In 2007, Berbelina, my family’s housemaid, invited me to eat cuy (the name by which guinea pig is known in Andean countries) with her and members of her family, migrants from the northern Andes who arrived in Lima in the early 1980s. Berbelina was the person who helped my parents bring me up, and naturally I was thrilled to join her. The lunch was planned to happen in the Lurín district on the outskirts of Lima, at the home of a woman who has a good reputation as a guinea pig cook. This woman rents out her dining room and culinary skills for events in exchange for 30 soles per cuy (around US$10), with a minimum of six animals. Although the price included some bottled beer, it was nonetheless expensive for people with a low income, such as Berbelina’s family. Nevertheless, they agreed to pay, as it was a special occasion in which only healthy, full-grown guinea pigs would be served. From our group of seven, only one of us knew exactly how to get to the venue, and so we agreed to meet in two stages. First we met for breakfast at 10.00 a.m. at Berbelina sister’s place, a small one-room studio in La Victoria, a modest and working-class district of Lima. The breakfast was composed of Inca Kola, a yellow-coloured, sweet, and very popular soft drink in Peru (see Chap. 6), and sweet-­ potato sandwiches—thick slices of slightly fried sweet potato inside bun-­ like bread—two per person. These sandwiches are a favourite in the breakfast mobile stalls spread out along streets busy with workers on their way to their activities. The first meal of that day somehow confirmed to me a long-held assumption about sweet potatoes which, I learned afterwards, was widely shared in other developing countries: Sweet potato is commonly eaten by poorer people. The crop’s image problem has been reported by researchers in Africa and Asia, and interpreted as a significant

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constraint to increased sweet-potato consumption (Tsou & Villareal, 1982; Woolfe, 1992; Low, 2011). As of the early 2010s, sweet potato has enjoyed a global superfood status. National Public Radio’s The Salt credits fad diets (diets without robust scientific evidence) for giving the vegetable this reputation.16 This was not the case in 2007, at least in Lima. Although Limeños eat sweet potatoes as accompaniments in some dishes (such as cebiche) or as snacks (such as sweet-potato chips), the reputation of the crop is still poor. For instance, I clearly remember how my own middle-­ class relatives purchased sweet potatoes only to feed their dogs. Once we finished breakfast, we headed all together to Lurín. After a one-hour trip in a colectivo (minibus) and moto-taxi, we arrived at our final destination. The dining room at the cook’s place was very humble but spacious; a dusty court separated the house into public and private spaces. The kitchen was located around an open fireplace in the court. The guinea pigs had already been prepared by the time we arrived, and the fur, stomach, and intestines removed. All the other organs (liver, heart, kidneys, and lungs) remained in place. The guinea pigs were seasoned throughout with a dressing made of salt, pepper, ground cumin, and ground chilli. Before frying, vegetable oil was heated in a large pan at a high temperature. The animals were then placed in the pan organ-side down. A few minutes later, they were flipped in order to cook the other side. To test how well they were done, the cook tapped the meat, applying light pressure with the back of a fork. Once the cooking was complete, she removed them from the oil and placed them in another pan to drain. Finally, the rodents were presented on the plates with extremities splayed, and with claws and head still in place. Boiled potatoes and ají amarillo17 sauce were served as accompaniments. The etiquette around eating cuy favours the use of hands over cutlery, and indeed at that time, I would never have considered doing anything else. Berbelina’s invitation anchored my representation of sweet potato, tubers, and guinea pig consumption in a context defined by specific socio-economic, cultural, and geographical backgrounds. A few years later, I realised that other ways were possible.  See https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/01/19/510436364/why-america-is-growing-the-­­ most-sweet-potatoes-since-wwii, Accessed May 8, 2023. 17  Yellow chili pepper (Capsicum baccatum L var. pendulum Willdenow). 16

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At Central: Making Modest Tubers ‘global’ Since their appearance in Europe, potatoes have been the subject of controversy and their history as an edible plant has been turbulent. Indeed the first contacts of Europeans with the root vegetable were not successful. For instance, when the Spanish conquistadors first encountered the potato in Peru, they looked down on it as food for slaves (Salaman, 1985). Later, in his 1765 Encyclopédie, Denis Diderot stated that the potato could never fit into the category of ‘enjoyable foods’. For many years the potato continued to be regarded as food for peasants, poor people, and farm animals (Berzok, 2003). However, its versatility and prolific character has made it central to the European diet from the end of the sixteenth century onwards (Lang, 2001). As its culinary values were progressively appreciated, the potato crossed all geographical and socioeconomic boundaries to finally become one of the world’s most significant foods; the United Nations declared 2008 as the International Year of the Potato. However, other modest tubers have failed to repeat the success story of the potato and remain in the shadows. In fact, in Lima’s upper- and middle-­class neighbourhoods, Andean and Amazonian tubers such as manioc, sweet potato, oca (Oxalis tuberosa Molina), olluco (Ullucus tuberosus Caldas), arracacha (Arracacia xanthorrhiza Bancroft), and many sorts of native potatoes had still been suffering from the prejudices against all kinds of produce that originates in the countryside until recently, when haute cuisine ‘rediscovered’ them. As of 2023, Virgilio Martínez is the most innovative chef in Peru and one of the most prominent chefs in the world. That year, his restaurant Central was crowned Best Restaurant by the World’s 50 Best Organizations. The son and brother of lawyers, Martínez traded the family profession first for a career in skateboarding, which was cut short by injury, and then again, for his now successful job as a chef. With the support of his family, he studied in the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu, in Ottawa and London, and trained in top restaurants in the United States, England, Spain, Singapore, and Colombia. After working as the executive chef of Acurio’s Astrid & Gastón in Bogotá, he returned to Lima to open Central in 2009. Then followed LIMA (London and Dubai), MIL (Cuzco), and

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MAZ (Tokyo). Martínez has become the most visible face of Peru’s gastronomic scene. In his several media appearances (including an episode about himself in Netflix’s award-winning series Chef ’s Table), he deploys a discourse operating in a settler-colonial logic where he, a white-mestizo male, becomes the continuator of the traditions of pre-Columbian cultures.18 Heavily inspired by the terroir-bound dogma of the New Nordic Cuisine, which has ideas of pureness, wilderness, and rediscovery as its guiding principles (Leer, 2016; López Canales, 2019), the work of Martínez is fuelled both by nostalgic fascination and by its seeming opposite, a self-­righteous superiority towards pre-Hispanic populations. In 2015, Central’s website explained this logic as follows:19 Virgilio chooses to approach the diversity of our ingredients in a manner similar to that used by the peoples of the Andes in pre-Hispanic times: through vertical ecological monitoring. According to this alternative way of understanding the geography, land is perceived not as a horizontal plane but rather vertically, so that it takes advantage of all that the flora and fauna are able to deliver according to the particularities of each ecological system.

Put simply, Martínez positions himself as an explorer and (re)discoverer of native ingredients as much as a creative and knowledgeable chef. In Chef ’s Table, Martínez showcases his experimental, yet almost predatory laboratory approach, which consists of collecting, identifying, and classifying ingredients within his own scientific parameters to, then, take those that have potential to Lima. In the episode, references to indigenous food knowledge are non-existent, and indigenous people appear as mere movie extras. Local and international gourmets acclaim this uninhibited approach which combines unconventional Andean produce with polished, minimalist, contemporary design. However, when we met in August 2011, Chef ’s Table did not exist, Martínez was not so famous, and his cooking style was a little more cautious—and perhaps less controversial. At that time, the chef admitted that the work of the gastronomic boom forerunners, Acurio and Schiaffino in particular, warned him of the hardships of challenging a conservative, 18 19

 For a compelling critique of Martínez’s work in terms of coloniality of power, see García, 2021.  See Matta (2016: 145).

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timid, and unadventurous market. Instead, he affirmed that recently Peru has been developing a great pride in its local ingredients. However, he recognised that an important part of his job lay in continuing to tackle preconceived ideas about Andean food and social class-related food neophobia (Wilk, 2009). He recounted, for instance, that when he changed his dish “Veal Sweetbreads with Pistachio Puree’ into “Veal Sweetbreads with Arracacha Puree”, the sales of this menu item fell drastically. Martínez was in some way surprised by that since, for him, pistachio puree does not taste as good as arracacha puree. He was using a local ingredient he considers subtly tasty, easy to source, and versatile, but customers were struggling to learn. Or, put differently, they preferred to stick to the familiarity of pistachios rather than to embrace the otherness of arracacha. The dish Martínez prepared that day, “Tuna Tataki and Tasting of Andean Tubers” (Fig. 4.1), was not an attempt to bring unfamiliar ingredients to high cuisine and global standards, but popular, humble ingredients. Martínez explained that his goal was to demonstrate that Peruvian tubers can be related to a global dish. The chef did so by introducing the tubers into the logic of fusion cuisine Peruvian style; that is, by connecting ingredients from mainstream gastronomy to others whose less recognisable origins are seen as a hindrance to their integration into global circuits of culinary culture. As in many fusion cuisine dishes, it is possible to highlight the link between the ingredients they use and their assumed places of origin. In this case, Martínez used tubers, ají amarillo, and mushrooms from the Andean town of Marayhuaca, all of which could easily be associated with Peru. Tataki is a Japanese cooking method in which a piece of marinated meat, fish, or beef, is seared on the outside while left very rare inside, and then sliced. Another key ingredient in this dish is Serrano ham, whose Spanish origin has never been questioned. During the mise en place, the tubers were cut in three-centimetre cubes and cooked in different ways. The Huayro potato was confit in olive oil. The manioc was slightly fried in charcoal oil20 to deliver a grill scent and smoky taste, and then dipped  Although there is not reliable information about the origins of charcoal oil—which is more precisely oil flavored with charcoal—it seems to have been popularised by Ferran Adrià in his restaurant ElBulli. Charcoal oil is obtained by burning the charcoal until it is red-hot, then plunging it into a metal container containing room- temperature vegetable oil. The charcoal flavour infuses the oil. 20

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Fig. 4.1  Tuna Tataki and Tasting of Andean Tubers. Central restaurant, Lima, 2011

in squid ink to obtain a charcoal-like colour. The sweet potato was first boiled and then confit in olive oil. A little hole was dug in every piece of tuber to hold emulsions of ají amarillo and Serrano ham. Andean mushrooms and more Serrano ham, both dehydrated and ground, completed the ingredients in this preparation. The chef plated the dish in less than five minutes. He started by drawing a large line of Serrano ham- aioli with the ‘spoon swoosh’ technique. The line extended closely and parallel to one of the longest sides of the flat rectangular, stone plate. He then cut a piece of tuna tataki into thick slices, which he placed one by one on the aioli base, forming something similar to a fallen row of dominoes. Next, the tataki was dusted with Serrano ham and Marayhuaca mushroom powders. Parallel to the tataki, Martínez drew a thick line of ají amarillo emulsion, placed the tubers on it, and proceeded to fill them with emulsions: The Huayro potato and the

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‘manioc charcoal’ were filled with Serrano ham aioli, while the sweet potato was filled with ají amarillo emulsion. He used mustard leaves and daikon radish sprouts to decorate the manioc and the tataki respectively. The result was representative of Martínez’s early work in Central: Innovative but also cautious. Indeed, Central has earned its initial international reputation by building on a balance between the familiar (the global) and the unfamiliar (the very local). In that respect, it is important to observe the weight accorded to the ingredients in the preparation. The tuna tataki is the protagonist: It is the most identifiable item and the source of protein in the dish. The Andean tubers are first and foremost an invitation to expand customers’ knowledge of flavours—Martínez explained that, for instance, a Japanese customer would be more than happy with only the bits of tubers, as they can find tataki everywhere in their country. Finally, the Serrano ham triggers a connection between the flavours of the tataki and those of the tubers, while acting as a symbolic bridge between the geographical origins of these ingredients. The hierarchy of ingredients in this dish is at odds with today’s Central ‘full-­Peruvian’ menu (Fig. 4.2): At that time, the non-Peruvian ingredients dominated the typically Peruvian ones.

At Mayta: Guinea Pig is Rendered ‘Edible’ For at least 500 years, guinea pigs have been used in the South American Andes as food, diagnostic medical devices, divinatory agents, and as part of religious offerings. The role they play in Andean life is so significant that, in some regions, families who do not raise guinea pigs in their households are accused of being lazy or considered very poor (Morales, 1994). Such a centrality cannot, however, be explained without taking into account the historical contribution of these rodents to the indigenous diet. Ethnological and archaeological research has stressed connections between the nutritional properties of guinea pigs and the food rituality in which they are involved: Guinea pigs served in communal fiestas in Andean Peru have been historically used to balance the diet when proteins are in short supply (Rosenfeld, 2008; Bolton, 1979). Therefore, people in the Andes “do not eat cuys because there are fiestas,

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Fig. 4.2  Razor clams (top) and clams and yuyo seaweed (bottom). Central restaurant, Lima, 2023. Photo courtesy of Amy Goodyear

but rather they have major fiestas when they do because there is cuy meat to eat” (Bolton, 1979: 246). However, the high regard for guinea pig as food in the Andes has been inversely proportional to its acceptance in urban areas. The work of Susan DeFrance (2006) backs this up: It shows that in the Andean city of Moquegua, in southern Peru, the guinea pig has evolved from familial food to a prestigious restaurant dish while just 90 kilometres away in the coastal city of Ilo, the guinea pig is regarded as a non-edible meat associated with indigenous culture. In Lima’s middleand upper-class areas, the situation has been analogous until recently:

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Guinea pig was regarded as food fit only for peasants and cholos. For Lima’s elites as well as for (non-Andean) people from abroad, guinea pig was not seen as a part of a meal: While the former regarded eating cuy as a betrayal of modernity, the latter have only imagined it as a pet, or as a laboratory test subject. Oscar Velarde, the owner of La Gloria restaurant in Miraflores, told the press than including guinea pig in his menu was no hard choice, “[b]ut most people from Lima wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole” (Tegel, 2014). By “most people” Velarde means Limeños that are like him: wealthier than most and of European descent. Recent international press coverage points at a change in attitudes. Guinea pig routinely lands on the popular top ten lists of the “10 foods to try before you die”; the Globalpost.com enquires about the presence of guinea pig in fine-dining restaurants and the increasing of exports of frozen cuy to North America (Tegel, 2014); finally, National Public Radio reports on the increasing consumption of the rodent in the United States (Bland, 2013). While the long-term presence of Andean migrants is invoked as the primary reason for guinea pig consumption in the United States, its presence in fancy restaurants around the world is explained as the result of Peruvian chefs’ reinterpretations of traditional recipes: “Traditionally the ‘cuy’ was deep- fried or served in a stew on the Peruvian hillsides. But, fortunately for pet lovers, Acurio […] has disguised it here as Peking duck, serving it sliced up into chunks with a rocoto pepper hoisin sauce. Once it’s wrapped up in a purple corn pancake, you won’t even think about Fluffy”.21 The previous quote helps us understand how guinea pig is ‘made edible’: Basically, it consists of hiding the fact that it is actually a rodent (see for instance Figs.  4.3 and 4.4). As discussed above, in the Andes the animal is cooked in its entirety, never dismembered, and served in one piece. Quite often, tourists ask for it only so that they can take photographs. In upscale restaurants, on the other hand, guinea-pig dishes undergo changes in presentation. Along with Gastón Acurio, Jaime Pesaque is one of the Peruvian chefs who turned cuy into a high-end culinary delicacy. His familial, educational, and professional backgrounds are similar to those of the other  See https://www.thenationalnews.com/lifestyle/food/in-pictures-10-dishes-to-try-before-you-­ die-1.463094, Accessed February 16, 2023. 21

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Fig. 4.3  Ravioles de Cuy. Cicciolina restaurant, Cusco, 2022. Photo courtesy of Jenny Herman

Fig. 4.4  Crunchy Guinea Pig with Creamy Chickpea Tamales. Mayta restaurant, Lima, 2011

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chefs leading the gastronomic boom in Peru: Pesaque is the son of an upper-middle class family, was trained at prestigious culinary schools, and followed an international trajectory. Back in Peru he opened Mayta, his Lima restaurant and headquarters, in 2008. Mayta is the Aymara word used to designate a special, appreciated person (the one, unique). Pesaque told me that his family’s housemaid inspired him to name the restaurant this, as she often spoke Aymara when cracking jokes with him and his brothers. At the time of our meetings Pesaque, who was only in his early thirties, also was the executive chef of three restaurants in Miami, one in Hong Kong, one in Punta del Este, and one in Oslo—as of 2023, his work focuses on Mayta, Sapiens, and 500 Grados in Lima, and Callao Cebichería in The Hague. The chef described his cuisine to me as combining Peruvian soul and Peruvian reminiscences with the technique and technology to elevate it to the highest level. His philosophy is similar to that of Martínez: To ‘rediscover’ and valorise ingredients from Peru’s hinterlands. However, unlike Martínez’s adventurer-genius guise, Pesaque’s approach is less individualistic: He formulated his commitment to native produce as a mission to be shared by the new generation of cooks and later mentioned Brazilian chef Alex Atala as an inspiration.22 In his restaurant D.O.M., Pesaque said, Atala was using ingredients of the Amazon region which nobody knew before. Introducing unknown, forgotten or little-used ingredients into high cuisine is not without risks, but this should not be an impediment for young Peruvian chefs to accomplish their duty, he explained. Implicit in Pesaque’s discourse is the idea that by using indigenous food varieties in their restaurants, chefs collaborate with local producers and contribute to strengthen the economy of Andean and Amazonian communities. The chef then described two preparations he was about to include on his menu, both with arracacha, which he depicted as  Atala is a Michelin-starred chef and a prominent media figure whose international success lies in being the pioneer in ‘rediscovering’ products from the Amazon region. Praised in the world of fine dining, Atala’s work is however controversial among Amazonian communities. The chef has been accused of cultural appropriation and economic dispossession for creating trade-marks for native ingredients allegedly without the full consent of Amazonian communities. See Matta (2022) and https://deolhonosruralistas.com.br/2019/07/17/instituto-de-alex-atala-registra-marcas-da-­ baunilha-­do-cerrado-alimento-tradicional-dos-quilombolas/, Accessed May 8, 2023. 22

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having a sweet, extraordinary taste when cooked. In the first preparation, arracacha, oca, and olluco will accompany tuna (in a way very similar to Martínez’s dish discussed above). In the second preparation, arracacha will be served as puree to accompany a goat confit. Like Martínez, Pesaque uses the example of arracacha to illustrate the new use given to local and underestimated food items. Such a coincidence affirms not only the previous resistance to Andean food among urban foodies, but also illustrates the premise of the cuisine of the gastronomic boom. However, in our meeting in Mayta’s kitchen, Pesaque put the tubers aside to perform what he called an overturning of tradition: He prepared “Crunchy Guinea Pig with Creamy Chickpea Tamales” a dish which, he said, was well received. The new status of cuy is accomplished by applying sous-vide cooking, a method used in fine-dining restaurants for decades. Food is vacuum-­sealed, cooked, chilled, and reheated. Pesaque confided to me that he invested US$14,000 in professional sous-vide equipment to cook his meats at a uniform, controlled temperature. The equipment consists of a vacuum oven and an immersion circulator. The prepared guinea pig can be dried in the vacuum oven at a very low temperature for 8 hours, or cooked in an immersion circulator for 12 hours at 140 °F. After the water has been removed, one finds that the heat has not affected the proteins, ferments, and aromas: Vacuum cooking manages to mimic the true moisture content of foods. The cooked piece of meat can then be kept chilled in the refrigerator for as long as several days. During the mise en place, the packaged meat is warmed in a water bath for roughly 20 minutes using the immersion circulator. Sous-vide cooking allows Pesaque to obtain meltingly tender guinea pig meat while retaining all of its juices; the day I met him, the chef removed every single bone from the meat simply by using his thumb and index finger. He then lightly fried each portion in olive oil, ensuring a texture crunchy enough to invoke the traditional preparation of cuy frito (fried guinea pig) but ‘improving’ on it—the animal can be stringy rather than crunchy in some cases. Once plated, the guinea pig was covered by its own juices and accompanied by two small chickpea tamales and salsa criolla (red onion juliennes, sliced hot pepper, and lime juice) seasoned with tamarind

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vinaigrette dressing. Pesaque explained that replacing corn with chickpea in the preparation of tamales, and lime juice with tamarind in the dressing, gives his dish a distinctive touch. Unlike the cuy frito, the “Crispy Guinea Pig” is eaten with cutlery.

 etween Coloniality and Capitalist B Value Making A new generation of Peruvian chefs uses top-end culinary techniques, technologies, and discourses to ‘elevate’ native ingredients from simple cooking to gastronomy and from a local scale to a global one. Key in such endeavours is the use of Andean and Amazonian elements in ways that challenge representations of ‘the inedible’ rooted in long-standing racial and social prejudices. As illustrated above, Peruvian chefs (re)appropriate ethnic food that elites have long seen as ‘dirty’, backward or old-fashioned by using haute cuisine techniques and aesthetics. Therefore, items previously kept away from fashionable tables, such as cuy, paiche, arracacha, or cushuro23 enter the scene and obtain a higher status. Andean and Amazonian foods are now sources of inspiration in the restaurant kitchen and, consequently, new sources of enjoyment for foodies. Chefs achieve culinary gentrification through specific combinations of material and discursive practices and across a number of steps. First by removing items from their prior social contexts—thus neutralising their potentially ‘harmful’ indigenous and lower-class characteristics—then by identifying and communicating their desirable attributes in ways that appeal to international audiences, and finally by connecting them with elements from other culinary cultures, in particular those which already enjoy global recognition. This cultural tour-de-force has allowed Peruvian cuisine to operate in a niche within the increasingly cosmopolitan and ‘ethnic-friendly’ gastronomic market.24 As time went on, Peruvian chefs began to rely less and less on fusion approaches, and instead generated  Nostoc sphaericum Vaucher, a river-bed, blue-green spherical algae.  This process can be seen as a variant of what Appadurai called “commoditization by diversion, where value, in the art or fashion market, is accelerated or enhanced by placing objects and things in unlikely contexts” (1986: 28), outside of their customary circuits. 23 24

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new stages where local and native ingredients are the main protagonists. The tasting menus at Astrid & Gastón, Central, Maido, and Mayta (Fig. 4.5) are examples of this recent focus on indigenous foodways. Sam Grey and Lenore Newman provide a strongly critical reading by describing progressions of this kind as culinary colonialism, a phenomenon which they identify as common to settler-colonial societies. The authors identify three steps in culinary colonialism. The first corresponds to “the destruction of Indigenous food systems as a tool of war (conquest)”, an idea that matches well with that of neutralising harmful Indian features. There follows the “forced conversion to a Settler diet

Fig. 4.5  Alpaca, olluco, ají panca, and cushuro. Mayta restaurant, Lima, 2023. Photo courtesy of Jenny Herman

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(assimilation)”, which implies cultural work to create trust and appeal. The final step is “the revalorization of Indigenous gastronomy for Settler consumption (appropriation)” (Grey & Newman, 2018: 719), which means articulating the material, technical, and symbolic dimensions of the resulting cuisine to be consumed in elite public spaces. Although this interpretation offers clarity on native food’s move from the inedible to the sublime, it would be misleading to think that Peruvian chefs—as well as other chefs across the world—always embrace a colonial gaze, and that they do so in systematic and intentional ways, even though they do reap major benefits of the gastronomic enterprise. When referring to cultural colonialism—of which food and cuisine provide myriad examples—we must distinguish claims about cultural appropriation from claims about use, and interrogate the actual consequences this has on ethnic Others. In cooking, it is very difficult to draw the line where cultural appropriation begins: All culinary and gastronomic traditions are the product of cultural hybridisation (Heldke, 2003). The foods of Andean countries, like foods everywhere, have all been influenced by other peoples’ cooking and edible cultures (Markowitz, 2018). In Peru, the use and re-interpretation of native foods in fine-dining settings has not deprived indigenous communities from using these same foods even if white, male elite chefs are the primary beneficiaries. Not of least importance is the fact that many of the ingredients that chefs ‘discover’ are not used in actual everyday cooking by indigenous peoples. Here the colonial dimension corresponds more to the use of metaphors of exploration and discovery, which are common in culinary discourse (see Emontspool & Georgi, 2017; McDonell, 2019; López-Canales, 2019; Wolff, 2022). If Peruvian chefs mostly adhere to gastronomic techniques and aesthetics inspired by nouvelle cuisine and other modernist trends, it is less due to a will to (in Grey and Newman’s words) “destroy” indigenous food systems than to the fact that they are caught in the structural forces alongside the coloniality of gastronomy. As Zilkia Janer (2023: 2) argues, ­“[g]astronomy’s strong and lasting impact comes not from excellence or superiority but from its articulation with modern structures of power”, supported by a narrative of modernity which celebrates the West and its achievements “without acknowledging that they were made possible by the sustained appropriation and exploitation of the resources, labor and knowledge of

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the peoples and places that have been colonized and otherwise subjected by the gradual establishment of global capitalism”. Gastronomy is furthermore a competitive market in which compensation is concentrated on a few top performers, and the boundaries of chefs’ main spaces of intervention (restaurants) are still defined by the luxury and hospitality industries. Since the work of chefs still depends largely on the perceptions of local and international gourmets and foodies, their skills and goals, together with the foods they manipulate, have little choice other than to subordinate to Western aesthetic canons and consumption trends (Janer, 2007). In Lima’s culinary schools, for instance, teachers and students strive to reach a balance between the French technical framework and some characteristic elements of Peru’s cuisines (Lasater Wille, 2017). That being said, it is fairly probable that the good intentions proclaimed by chefs in terms of environmental conservation and collaboration with farmers may encounter serious difficulties in becoming realities. The global rise of Peruvian cuisine has thus to be understood within the context of the global forces of the gastronomy and tourism industries that, as they expand relentlessly, allow—if not directly promote—processes that neutralise ‘negative exoticisms’ and instead propose ‘positive exoticisms’. Chefs know that the lines between the acceptable and the non-acceptable may be thin, and therefore they must tread a tightrope, sometimes concealing the uncanny and at other times embellishing reality. Cooking in a vacuum and deboning a guinea pig, dying manioc black, and naming cushuro seaweed Andean caviar (as Pesaque admitted he did) are tactics that can take place only in the context of cultural and economic competition on the global stage. Emma McDonell’s (2019) proposition to think the gentrification of Peruvian cuisine in terms of frontiers and wilderness pertinently situates this process in its immediate capitalist production. Her intention draws on the considerations by geographer Jason Moore (2017) and anthropologist Anna Tsing (2006), who theorise frontiers as central to the functioning of capitalism and as desired sites of wilderness, non-­regulation, and ambiguity where capitalist enterprises “erase old residents’ rights to create wild and empty spaces where discovering resources, not stealing them is possible” (Tsing, 2006: 68). McDonell extends this metaphor,

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which refers to natural resources, to Peru’s gastronomic boom by paralleling the search of the unknown to “a story of searching and probing more frontiers” (2019, para. 40). Such a reading is useful as it takes “seriously how capitalism works and how value is made” (2019, para. 56), while providing nuance and calling for case by case analysis. For instance, Schiaffino’s engagement with Amazonian foodways complicates a reading based solely on colonialism, as it does not limit itself to gastronomic creations based on the exploration and exploitation of ‘remote’ territories. In his frequent appearances in the press, Schiaffino has often expressed concern for the sustainable use of the Amazon’s biodiversity and the living conditions of local farmer communities. He also highlighted the potential nutritional contributions that Amazonian foods could give to the entire Peruvian society. In 2016, the chef founded the NGO Despensa Amazónica (Amazonian Pantry). Although this name may suggest compliance to the logics of extraction that rule the work of a number elite chefs throughout the world, a closer scrutiny of the association’s website provides a more nuanced picture. The website informs that Despensa Amazónica develops collaborative actions in the food supply chain to promote and expand markets for Amazonian produce and prompt awareness about the urgency of preserving the rainforest area. The idea is to generate a virtuous circle based on sustainable production, legal frameworks, and formality that provides income benefits to communities and Amazonian foods to Peruvian consumers in restaurants, shops, markets, and supermarkets. The NGO’s team is composed of Schiaffino as the research director, a communicator and writer who has long supported Schiaffino’s work with local communities, and a specialist in supply chain design who previously worked for the Peru’s Protected Area Service (SERNANP) and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism. Despensa Amazónica draws on the conservation-through-­ commercialisation hypothesis, a conservationist approach which has led to initiatives across the world to provide markets for forest products in a sustainable and environmentally-friendly manner. Such initiatives are often based on the empowerment of local people, their indigenous knowledge, and the recognition of their rights to manage the forest resources. The conservation-through-commercialisation approach has been heatedly debated as studies have shown that, besides a few

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exceptions, strategies based on the assumption that developmental and conservational interests coincide are often unrealistic and therefore provide limited possibilities to improve the income of local populations (Arnold & Pérez, 2001). However, independent of the success or failure of Despensa Amazónica (as mentioned before, chefs’ good intentions may easily fall short), it is fair to recognise the moral dimension of Schiaffino’s culinary persona and the legitimacy of the idea to extend the benefits already obtained by the chef to the people of the regions from which he sources his restaurant. These considerations do not aim at dismissing the importance of criticism in terms of coloniality. I concur with Johnston and Baumann (2010) and other scholars in that foodies’ search for exotic and ‘new’ foods, and the discourses surrounding them, draw from an old legacy of colonialism as well as contemporary inequalities. This is especially true in the fine-­ dining landscape of settler-colonial societies (see Gálvez, 2018; Granchamp, 2019; Matta, 2022; Ranta et  al., 2022; Sammells, 2019; Zaneti & Schneider, 2016) where, as María Elena García notes for the case of Virgilio Martínez, some chefs have difficulty working outside the framework and mentality of settler-colonialism, relying on the profit garnered by evoking and using traditional knowledge and products in an extractive manner, thus “perpetuating romanticized and anachronistic representations of indigenous people” built upon on notions of authenticity, which may hinder community claims to food sovereignty and intellectual property (García, 2022: 100). Food is always loaded with power and, thus, is never innocent. However, I consider it equally important not to take for granted modern cross-cultural cuisines as intentional acts of (neo-) colonisation. Otherwise, we incur the risk of overlooking subtle changes or inflections in people’s views and attitudes (practitioners, producers, and customers) as well as the emergence of new voices resulting from their interactions with new knowledge, information, and codes. As we will see, gentrified Peruvian cuisine has not only turned the country into a gastronomic mecca. It has also endowed food with a broader meaning, nourished policy and private expectations, and contributed to a (very) modest improvement in the way the contemporary urban elite looks at the rural world; at least now accepting that it ‘exists’.

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Pearlman, A. (2013). Smart casual: The transformation of gourmet restaurant style in America. University of Chicago Press. Peterson, R., & Simkus, A. (1992). How musical tastes mark occupational status groups. In M.  Lamont & M.  Fournier (Eds.), Cultivating Differences. University of Chicago Press. Peterson, R. A., & Kern, R. M. (1996). Changing highbrow taste: From snob to omnivore. American Sociological Review, 61(5), 900–907. Pilcher, J. (2008). The globalization of Mexican cuisine. History Compass, 6(2), 529–551. Pinedo, M., & Armas, M. (2007). El camu camu y sus usos populares como planta medicinal. LEISA Revista de agroecología, 23, 22–24. Poulain, J.-P. (2012). The sociology of gastronomic decolonization. In S. Nair-­ Venugopal (Ed.), The Gaze of the West and Framings of the East. Palgrave Macmillan. Quílez, R. (2009). Medio ambiente, crisis y ciencia, en Madridfusión 2009. El Mundo. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://www.elmundo.es/ elmundo/2009/01/16/cultura/1232126293.html Raj, K. (2007). Relocating modern science. Circulation and the construction of knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650-1900. Palgrave Macmillan. Ranta, R., Colás, A., & Monterescu, D. (Eds.). (2022). ‘Going native?’ Settler colonialism and food. Palgrave Macmillan. Rao, H., Monin, P., & Durand, R. (2003). Institutional change in Toque Ville: Nouvelle cuisine as an identity movement in French gastronomy. American Journal of Sociology, 108(4), 795–843. Régnier, F. (2004). L’exotisme culinaire: essai sur les saveurs de l'Autre. Presses universitaires de France. Régnier, F. (2009). How we consume new products: The example of exotic foods (1930–2000). In G. Barbosa-Cánovas, A. Mortimer, D. Lineback, W. Spiess, K. Buckle, & P. Colonna (Eds.), Global issues in food science and technology. Academic Press. Rosenfeld, S. A. (2008). Delicious guinea pigs: Seasonality studies and the use of fat in the pre-Columbian Andean diet. Quaternary International, 180(1), 127–134. Salaman, R. (1985). The history and social influence of the potato. Cambridge University Press. Sammells, C. (2014). Haute traditional cuisines: How UNESCO’s list of intangible heritage links the cosmopolitan to the local. In R. Brulotte & M. Di Giovine (Eds.), Edible identities: Food as cultural heritage. Ashgate.

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Sammells, C. (2019). Reimagining Bolivian cuisine: Haute traditional food and its discontents. Food and Foodways, 27(4), 338–352. Schellhaas, S. (2020). First Nations Cuisines-Wandel und Professionalisierung indigener Ernährungskulturen in British Columbia, Kanada. transcript Verlag. Siniscalchi, V. (2023). Slow food: The economy and politics of a global movement. Bloomsbury. Solomon, S. (2008). Circulation of knowledge and the Russian Locale. Kritika, 9(1), 9–26. Svejenova, S., Mazza, C., & Planellas, M. (2007). Cooking up change in haute cuisine: Ferran Adrià as an institutional entrepreneur. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 28(5), 539–561. Taylor, C. (1991). The ethics of authenticity. Harvard University Press. Tegel, S. (2014). Red wine or white, sir, with your guinea pig? GlobalPost.com. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/ regions/americas/peru/140425/peruvian-­cuisine-­cuy-­guinea-­pig Tholstrup Hermansen, M. E. (2012). Creating Terroir. An anthropological perspective on new nordic cuisine as an expression of Nordic identity. Anthropology of food, S7. https://journals.openedition.org/aof/7249 Tsing, A. (2006). Friction: An ethnography of global connection. Princeton University Press. Tsou, S. C. S., & Villareal, R. L. (1982). Resistance to eating sweet potato. In R.  L. Villareal & T.  D. Griggs (Eds.), Sweet potato: Proceedings of the First International Symposium. Asia Vegetable Research and Development Center. Warde, A. (2018). Changing tastes? The evolution of dining out in England. Gastronomica, 18(4), 1–12. Warde, A., Wright, D., & Gayo-Cal, M. (2007). Understanding cultural omnivorousness: Or, the myth of the cultural omnivore. Cultural Sociology, 1(2), 143–164. Wilk, R. (2009). Difference on the menu: Neophilia, neophobia and globalization. In D. Inglis & D. Gimlin (Eds.), The globalization of food. Berg. Wolff, L.  A. (2022). Coloniality on a virtual plate: Contemporary Mexican Foodways as (Counter) Visuality. Gender & History, 34(3), 590–613. Woolfe, J. (1992). Sweet potato: An untapped food resource. Cambridge University Press. Zaneti, T., & Schneider, S. (2016). Ingredientes singulares à la carte: implicações do uso de produtos diferenciados na gastronomia contemporânea. Anthropology of food, Varia. https://journals.openedition.org/aof/8111

Part II … to Gastro-Politics

5 Gastro-Politics: Unveiling the Neoliberal Taste

The internationalisation of Peruvian cuisine, the media exposure of chefs’ successes, and the identification of potential economic benefits have led political, economic, and cultural elites to load Peruvian food with high hopes and idealistic expectations for the future. This has been supported by a narrative of national pride and unity, wherein the cultural and emotional dimensions of food take on a heavy political tone embodied in the positive connotations allocated to the national cuisine. These connotations echo the belief that food is a crucial aspect of national identification, a fecund ground for connecting Peruvians, defining what being Peruvian means, and projecting this identity within and beyond the country’s borders (Wilson, 2013; Matta, 2014; Claux, 2019). The narrative of a culinary nation has given Peruvians an awareness of their (alleged) common values and characteristics as a nation. It has also situated Peru as unique (at least in part), with the hope of instilling pride domestically and garnering respect from other nations. National narratives need not be true (they often have untruthful elements in them) but they unite

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Matta, From the Plate to Gastro-Politics, Food and Identity in a Globalising World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46657-1_5

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people, create loyalty to the nation, and can be seen as reasons why citizens should support new policies and programs (Prager, 2008).1 Food is at the core of a political and cultural project intended to overcome the fear of an uncertain future in Peru (Matta & García, 2019). This sort of project is recurrent in nations characterised by a sense of persistent threat that pulls the nation into a constant pursuit of value and security (Abulof, 2015), or in nations with a “body politic infected by race, region, ethnicity, religion, or another discriminatory designation, currently diseased by these past wrongs and now aspiring to cure itself ” (Prager, 2008: 407). Confronted by traumatic ruptures in the body politic, governments and elites seek to repair past wrongs through a process and politics of reconciliation to heal emotionally infirm communities. This implies that societies have the capacity to overcome their traumatic pasts, just as individuals have the capacity to vanquish psychic trauma and fragmentation. The visual and media politics that have shaped the narrative of post-­ crisis Peruvian success have often cast chefs as national heroes and engines of development, self-esteem, and national pride. Public and private elites have endorsed these aspirations and have come together in a project that posits food as a force for social change, capable of creating new linkages between rich and poor, new opportunities for managing anxieties around race, and for repairing the tears in the fabric of national sovereignty caused by decades of war and centuries of racialised inequality (Matta & García, 2019). The project has led to the emergence of a “gastropolitical complex” (García, 2021: 5) made up of celebrity chefs and high-end restaurants, state tourism and gastronomic agencies, culinary schools, cookbooks, festivals, nation branding campaigns, diplomatic efforts, and much more (Cánepa, 2013; Matta & García, 2019; Wilson, 2013). Gastro-politics in Peru has been interpreted in different, positive ways: As the turning point in the long-time lack of interest among elites in the needs of rural  Writing on French gastronomy, Ferguson (2004: 9) argues: “Every culture has its myths. Neither right nor wrong, neither truthful nor mendacious, myths are. Above all, they are useful. Products of a collective imagination, these understandings of the everyday serve individuals as they work for societies. Whether we are aware of these stories or not, every one of us needs them to make sense of the world that we inhabit, and that need is no less pressing today than in the past”. 1

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populations; as an opportunity for the country to consolidate gains in international food markets; and as a means for promoting the nation internationally. The following sections explore the semantics, practices, and ideologies at stake as expressed in public discourse and media. By unfolding central processes of this ambitious gastro-political project, they describe with nuance how the national food narrative is claimed to hold the promise of resolution and unity without compromising the promise of progress and development.

The ‘Indian’ as a Venture Partner As seen in the previous chapter, the flipside of culinary gentrification in Peru is the invisibilisation of indigenous peoples and their food systems and culture: All recognition went to the bold white, elite chefs who ‘(re) discovered’ ingredients and brought them to high levels of sophistication. Even though the resulting creations contained an “inclusionary rhetoric” (García, 2013: 515), the traditional/native dimensions within have been either obscured or moderated by the cultural work of such chefs. This dynamic began to reverse after the mid-2000s, when international accolades to Peruvian cuisine and understandings of taste involving biological, cultural, ecological and political contexts brought food into policy and politics; namely, at the centre of an ambitious discourse about development that unfolds around two main prospects. First, Peruvian culinary culture could bring positive economic impacts to the country if grounded in a balance between cultural preservation and adaptation to the international markets. Second, food as a privileged vehicle for national identity could instigate social reconciliation in a nation fractured by old and persistent inequalities. National consensus has been built on these ideas and with the following assumption: Peruvian cuisine has the potential to connect the urban with the rural, the male chef with the female peasant, the traditional with the modern, the past with the present. This rapidly has become the discursive cornerstone on which rests the present and future of Peruvian cuisine. Writings and speeches by what I term here as ‘culinary elites’ epitomise this outlook, which rapidly plugged

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into notions of development, social inclusion, and economic value (Acurio, 2006; Valderrama, 2009; Villarán, 2006). Culinary elites are a diverse, numerical minority group within the societal hierarchy that is able to make use of food to uphold either conservative or progressive values, and possesses sufficient means to press moral and societal demands. It may include a diversity of dissimilar members from chefs, entrepreneurs, restaurateurs and connoisseurs to policy makers, business consultants, politicians, academics, and the media. Mirko Lauer’s book La olla de cristal (2012)2 is an exemplar of the definition above. Through a thoughtful prospective essay by the author and a series of interviews with professionals and experts in the food world, the volume navigates the topic of the future of Peruvian cuisine from the angles of cultural identity and heritage, experiential tourism, commodities and exports of produce, hospitality service, and production and marketing strategies. This account of the expanding scope of applications of Peruvian cuisine is crucial to understanding why culinary elites have been defining it in terms of opportunities for national and societal development since the early 2000s. One early and prominent attempt to discuss cuisine’s prospects for development was that of engineer and economist Fernando Villarán, former Minister of Labour. His essay “Visión estratégica de la culinaria peruana” (Strategic vision of Peruvian cuisine), published in 2006 in the influential newspaper El Comercio, established the supporting structure from which to build Peruvian cuisine as a cultural global asset. Starting with the question “Why is Peru a global culinary power?”, the piece elaborates on the competitive advantages of the country in that realm, asserting that if in today’s world diversity is a universal value, then Peru is a privileged country, home to biological mega-diversity and notable cultural diversity. However, it is star chef Acurio who took Peruvian cuisine’s cultural and entrepreneurial dimension to its pinnacle in his seminal speech to students at the elite Universidad del Pacífico in Lima. On this occasion, he issued a call to stop thinking about Peruvian cuisine merely in terms of its biological resources—that is, as raw material—and, by contrast, start considering it as a sum of cuisines with economic potential to be  The Crystal Pot.

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exploited through the creation of concepts and brands. In this way, Acurio places value not only on food and ingredients, but also on cultural aspects reflected in culinary practices, knowledge, and customs: Behind our beloved cocina criolla [Creole cuisine,] our pollerías [Peruvian rotisserie chicken restaurants], the neighborhood chifitas [chifas, Chinese-­ Peruvian restaurants], or Novo-Andina cuisine, Arequipa’s picanterías [traditional eateries from Arequipa], the anticuchos [beef-heart skewers], our sánguches [Peruvian style sandwiches], Nikkei cuisine or the cebicherías, there are tremendous opportunities to create concepts that transcend their local area to become products, Peruvian export products that not only aspire to rub shoulders with concepts already installed globally, as pizza, hamburger, sushi bars, and Mexican taquerías, but also generate enormous benefits both economic to individuals as well as to Marca País [Peru’s nation brand]. (Acurio in Lauer & Lauer, 2006: 246)

Acurio sees cuisine as a cultural commodity that must live up to internationally recognisable standards—what he calls “concepts”—, incorporate creativity, and serve as a representation of local food cultures because, in the end, it is cultural difference that becomes commercially valuable. The omnivorous nature of gastronomic consumption and the avid search of culinary exoticism3 worldwide (Heldke, 2003; Johnston & Baumann, 2010) supports and enhances the centrality of cultural diversity in Peru’s culinary narrative. Proof of this is that Acurio’s address was nothing less than prophetic.4 In the years that followed his visit to the Universidad del

 Whether referring to the exoticism of foods hailing from geographically faraway regions or the exoticism of foods from socially distant places. 4  In a 2018 interview to the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia, Acurio commented about the resounding Impact of his speech: “It became a political harangue throughout Latin America. For music and the arts, cinema and design, for companies and young people. I said that opportunities lie in fearlessly embracing our identity, our products, our resources, our cultural heritage; in adding value, turning it into an international brand without fear of conquering the world with what is ours. And I explained to them how I thought you could do that in the kitchen. And all that I thought would be done in 20 years happened in 10. And with that speech under their belt, they opened restaurants and cebiche became popular”. “Gastón Acurio: ‘He abierto restaurantes que han sido un fracaso’”, La Vanguardia, 09 September 2018. Available at https://www.lavanguardia. com/comer/de-carne-hueso/20180909/451677962103/gaston-acurio-entrevista.html, Accessed April 26, 2023. 3

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Pacífico, the chef opened in Peru and abroad, restaurants corresponding to almost all the categories he mentioned that day, which add to his emblematic Astrid & Gastón. Among these are: La Mar and Barra Chalaca (cebicherías); Tanta, Panchita, and Yakumanka (cocina criolla); Chicha (Novo-Andina); Madam Tusan (chifa); and Pasquale Hermanos (sanguchería).5 These venues cover a narrow range from casual, yet attractively stylish, to upscale, since converting Peruvian cuisine into a high-end product was essential to Acurio’s plan. The chef did not want to follow the example of Mexico, whose cuisine is commonly associated with that of a poor country, and therefore ought to be cheap. Acurio preferred to retrace the footprints of Japan, whose cuisine, reputed as elegant and light, had opened the door to the export of niche Japanese food products. In the chef ’s mind, if Japan could export premium-quality fish, Wagyu beef, and sake, Peru should be able to export ají amarillo, Peruvian limes, and pisco (Mapstone, 2009). Inspired by Acurio’s ability to transform humble and vibrant food cultures into fashionable concepts, culinary elites began to reflect on representing, valorising, and conceptualising Peruvian cuisine as well as how to fit the existing culinary traditions in the country into globalised spaces for ethnic consumption. This caused a shift in perspective, at least discursively, in the way the country’s culinary excellence was understood so far. Not only did historically undervalued or neglected foods become objects of appreciation in upscale restaurants, culinary elites also refigured indigenous peasants and farmers as food producers and brought them to the forefront of the gastro-­political agenda. This was achieved, in part, by acknowledging their involvement with the biodiversity underpinning Peruvian food cultures. The artisanal and millenary traditions embedded in peasants and their foods provided the base upon which a value-added food marketing platform is defended, although still by a (white and male) gastronomic authority based in Lima (Fan, 2013). Following Cook and Crang (1996), when it comes to cuisine and food, there are different ways to work the surface appearance of  See https://acuriorestaurantes.net/ Accessed September 1, 2022.

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commodities—the “most intimate point of interaction between people and things” (Bridge & Smith, 2003: 261). One way is to relate the quality of the commodity with a supposed local essence rooted in the land, the climate and the agricultural and culinary traditions, such as the French-­inspired concept of terroir does. Another method implicates elaborating on the value of the biography of the commodity while underscoring the quality of its production and distribution channels. Additionally, it is also possible “to rough up commodity surfaces, playing on and with them with the aim of recognizing, perhaps creating, moments of rupture in a cultural fabric that appears all too continuous” (Cook & Crang, 1996: 147). The prevailing argument about the value of Peruvian cuisine derives from the first and the third models. For instance, assigning terroir to primary products such as potatoes, salt, coffee, and cherimoya has transformed them into the premium commodities papas huayro, sal de Maras, café Tunki and chirimoya de Cumbe (Fan, 2013). The relationship between a successful product—as Peruvian food has been for two decades—and the people, places, and territories where it is rooted has brought to light the crucial linking role peasants have in the food value chain and has sparked reflection on their potential contribution to the country as a whole, as expressed below by Villarán (2006: 3). They [the chefs] are certainly spearheading this movement, but we must remember that many other people and activities are involved in it … Rural farmers are probably the most involved, and are those who can benefit the most. They are in charge of upkeeping the variety and quality of food products in the field, maintaining thousands of varieties of potato, sweet potato, corn, and Andean grains, raising alpaca (whose meat is a new ingredient in Peruvian food). But at the same time, they also need to improve their growing methods to raise productivity and income, while at the same time taking care to preserve and enhance natural and ecological methods. Scientists at universities and research centers need to help them with biotechnology and other developments to fertilize plants naturally, deal with pests, improve yield per hectare, and, if possible, enhance flavor and durability; all of this without chemicals or preservatives.

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Notably, production methods that enable reifying traditional types of production with economic value are not set in stone. Rather on the contrary, bridging the gap between chefs and farmers (or between modernity and tradition) should rely on research and technical assistance to adjust to market demand and cyclical changes in consumption. In this view, the gastro-political complex should aim for the re-interpretation and re-creation of cuisine and foodways within the confines of a nation invigorated in its move towards capitalist development. The reach of this top-­down strategic vision reveals glimmers of change in how the ruling creole elite thinks. In some ways, it represents a first step in the realisation of a project that locates the path to national progress in the crosslinks that bind the various regions, peoples and cultures of Peru, rather than the antagonism between Indians and creoles or between Lima and its periphery. The hope is that the discursive transmutation of Indians into guardians of the country’s food may seed change in how coastal elites and people living inland perceive one another—wrought not through violence and conflict, as in the past, but through productive alliances (Fan, 2013). This implies recognising the Other (the indigenous peasant farmer) not only as an object of care or aestheticisation but also admitting that they are interlocutors and collaborators (Zúñiga, 2007). Imagined as an associate in business ventures, “the Indian” is no longer “the big obstacle in the middle of the narrative of progress” (Orlove, 1993: 328). However, their acceptance into the culinary re-foundation of the nation is subject to conditions. Their inclusion ‘must’ go hand in hand with market-­ oriented policies to bring about significant improvements in the image of Peruvian cuisine and be profitable to everyone contributing to its global reach, regardless of their place in the food production chain. In other words, Indians ‘must’ be competitive and strive for a higher aspiration than their own needs and goals; they ‘should’ act in the greater national interest. The rendering of praise to peasant farmers shows similarities to what took place in past creole-devised inclusion projects such as indigenism, which sought to bring indigenous peoples into the dominant folds of

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society. In Peru, during the first decades of the twentieth century, literature and visual culture produced by the indigenist movement paid rhetorical praise to idealised Incaic roots (Lauer, 1997; Coronado, 2009). Although breaking with a long history of dismissive representations of indigenous peoples and prompting political efforts to reconstruct the nation according to its Indian heritage, indigenism deployed a unilateral vision of development that overlooked indigenous peoples’ culture and forms of organisation (Greene, 2005; Méndez, 1996). The narrative of the culinary nation signifies an update of indigenism in that it stresses the new role of peasants in the country’s food system and grants them with symbolic recognition in culinary festivals and the media (see below). However, this only occurred after their labour was deemed to have economic value as well as significance that leverage the imaginary of a culturally diverse yet unified nation. How this can translate into improved livelihoods is a question that remains to be answered. It is apposite at this point to juxtapose the compelling force of this narrative against shifts in context, such as the generational renewal of Lima’s elites, greater social and racial intermixing in the main cities, the consolidation of gastronomy as a cultural industry, and the palpable effects of sustained economic growth in Peru. These circumstances have enabled the narrative’s momentum among various sectors of society who now see food as an agent of social change. Peruvians’ obsession with ‘their’ food manifests in expressions of national pride that were very rare not long ago; chefs refer to the responsibility they carry in dealing with social and environmental issues and the centrality to that aim of considering the realities of small producers (Kollenda, 2019); even activists and academics who usually assume critical stances in discussions about development and national unity have backed the potential transformative power of food (Matta, 2011). In the words of Peruvian anthropologists Gisela Cánepa and Felix Lossio (2019: 27), gastronomy has become “the most important symbolic reference regarding the possibilities of imagining ourselves as a national community”.

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Cooking up the Culinary Nation The entrenched and emotive links between food and nation can be perceived by tourists who visit Peru. It would even be advisable for any visitor to the country to be able to talk about food, or at least to show some interest in it, if they desire to connect with locals. This is because they will be asked, probably repeatedly, how much they know about Peruvian cuisine, whether they have already tried it and, if so, what dishes and how much they liked it. If the visitor has experienced Peruvian cuisine and the experience was positive the host, a taxi driver for instance, will produce a smile of satisfaction as both have reached the conclusion that Peruvian food is delicious, which, today in Peru, is taken as fact rather than an opinion. If the verdict of the visitor is nuanced, the driver will most probably invite the passenger to defend their impression, not in an effort to debate (there is no debate about Peruvian cuisine, only celebration) but simply because the visitor has awakened in the driver a mixture of curiosity and disbelief. In such a case, it would not be surprising that the driver, disconcerted but with firm convictions, would bring forth the name of Gastón Acurio, ‘the living proof ’ that Peruvian cuisine must appeal to everyone. In an online article for BBC World,6 journalist Jaime Bedoya (in Wallace, 2016) describes Peruvians as “culinary snobs” who compare all flavours with their own. However, Bedoya also depicts them as genuinely generous with foreigners when it comes to food, since in his view Peruvians are self-aware that their cuisine is the best they have to offer. This hypothetical situation exemplifies, in broad strokes, what occurs within a large sector of the Peruvian population when reference is made to ‘their’ cuisine: They think in terms of nationalism. This is the result of the convergence of food, identity, and politics in everyday, multifaceted, and persuasive ways. Such an occurrence is far from being unique to Peru. One of the most compelling examples dates back to the interwar period, when through a range of food-related writings, images, and artwork evoking terroir, the French produced an unrivalled sense of national identity linked to food (Herman, 2023). Currently, connections between food and national identity are gaining in prominence across the globe.  See https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-38094026, Accessed May 22, 2023.

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Atsuko Ichijo and Ronald Ranta (2016) have identified two contemporary approaches towards national cuisine. One is bottom-up, the other top-down. The former is unofficial and unprescribed: It derives from the practices and sensitivities of ordinary individuals, consumers, and producers. The latter is official, promoted by governmental authorities through strategies ranging from development policies and international trade to state marketing and cultural diplomacy. The top-down approach is particularly active in countries with tormented pasts and uncertain futures (Karaosmanoğlu, 2007; Chapple-Sokol, 2013). In these countries, the idea of a national cuisine is seen “as an antidote to political turmoil” (Parasecoli, 2022: 120). The case of Peru is important for understanding the extended scope of this phenomenon in present times, when nations and communities rush to define and establish their particularities in order to ‘exist’ economically and politically in a global system (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2009). National cuisines perfectly suit these endeavours. One reason for this is the capacity of food to generate sentiments of belonging. As food scholar Fabio Parasecoli (2022: 115) argues, “food is a tangible element through which the citizens of a country imagine being part of a single, coherent body”. Another reason is that national cuisines can embody cultural diversity and ethnicity in ‘safe ways’; that is, without the necessity of accounting for the problematic relationships between the social, ethnic, and culturally diverse populations that fashion them. The consumers who care about where their food comes from and how food production (including cuisine) has impacted and still impacts people’s lives are a numerical minority, namely middle classes and above. A further consideration is the capacity of food to connect the local with the global in ways that are not readily apparent. Anthropologist Richard Wilk (1999) has provided important insights on this by demonstrating that while tourists may perceive the national cuisine of Belize as a badge of authenticity, in reality, the dishes which compose it are entangled in long-standing transnational flows of people, goods, culture, and capital. A similar account could be offered for Peruvian cuisine. However, as we will see, the elements and symbols of the narrative have been played out in a different and bolder manner. Food and cuisines, with their malleable, ever-transforming significance and their nature as a basic human need and cultural definer, can

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endow ideas of nation and cosmopolitism with positive connotations, which are easily accessible to large segments of society. Colours, flavours, smells, textures, food practices, and rituals combine to create inflated narratives of cultural difference, value and independence, social change, and programmatic success. The narrative of Peruvian cuisine is that of an engine for development. It is the story of a country of cooks working for a nation with unlimited possibilities. Expressions of nationalism that draw upon longstanding enthusiasm for food and the unprecedented gastronomic boom are the fuel of the national food machinery. I opt here for Rogers Brubaker’s (1996: 10) definition of nationalism, which makes clear its function as a political tool: Nationalism is “a heterogeneous set of ‘nation’-oriented idioms, practices and possibilities continuously available or ‘endemic’ in modern cultural and political life”. As the discourse on Peruvian cuisine exploits a series of tropes and clichés around identity, belonging, unity, as well as values that allegedly transcend classes and ethnicities (such as diversity, pride, and tolerance), it is fair to address it in terms of culinary nationalism, and consider it as central to the gastro-political project. As suggested above, culinary nationalism in Peru continues the legacy of the rhetoric of indigenism, which sees the inclusion of Indians as peasants in the national agenda as its main characteristic. Culinary nationalism, too, deems itself capable of awakening national consciousness and representing the multifarious groups of the nation. The central difference is that, while indigenism is the result of powerful historical events that altered national territory and identities over centuries through bottom-up and top-down processes, culinary nationalism is overarchingly top down: It emerged from recent auspicious economic performances of Peru in the global economy and optimistic projections in the fields of tourism and soft power.

Staging Gastro-Politics The foundation of Peru as a culinary nation owes massively to the state agency PromPerú (Commission for Promotion of Exports and Tourism), created by the government of President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) in 1993, as Peru was recovering from its decade of war and economic

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decline. PromPerú operates under the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism, although it maintains a certain degree of administrative, economic, and operational independence. Its objective is to support the entry of Peru into the global market by promoting an appealing image of the country, capable of attracting the attention of fellow nations and international investors, and improving levels of exports and tourism. Its plans and strategies are carried out in coordination with other government agencies, each acting within the framework of their respective competencies, and with partners from the industrial sector. During its first two decades, PromPerú developed activities in parallel with other stateand corporate-sponsored initiatives encouraging the consumption of Peruvian products in the domestic market, as these products were in disadvantageous positions in the face of imported goods. Nationals perceived products made in Peru as poor quality and commonplace, a negative picture resulting from the passage from a protectionist economy to a competitive, liberal economy. Values such as patriotism, loyalty to the nation, and commitment to the development of the country were at the core of these campaigns (Palacios Sialer, 2019). By the beginning of the 2010s, PromPerú conducted more integrated efforts that combined national identity, intersectoral collaboration, and public–private partnership, thereby establishing the conditions for a modern wave of nationalism. To erase negative perceptions of Peru is at the top of the list of PromPerú’s agenda. The agency has been meeting this objective in remarkable ways over the years. First, by moving its selling point from history and living culture (monuments and landscapes) to engaging personal experiences (experiential tourism). Second, by shifting from campaigns directed exclusively to foreign markets to a dual-track strategy that builds a positive image of Peru within the country and abroad (see Silverman, 2015). As shown later, food and cuisine have been in the vanguard of these shifts as they are instrumental in the fields of practice in which PromPerú excels: Nation branding and public diplomacy. Nation branding is PromPerú’s raison d’être. The definitions of nation branding are numerous and based on the expertise of marketing and communication consultants, who have continuously shaped the concept since its inception in the mid-1990s. A compelling definition comes from media researcher Nadia Kaneva (2011: 118), who sees nation branding as

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[A] compendium of discourses and practices aimed at reconstituting nationhood through marketing and branding paradigms […] nation branding includes a wide variety of activities, ranging from “cosmetic” operations, such as the creation of national logos and slogans, to efforts to institutionalize branding within state structures by creating governmental and quasi-governmental bodies that oversee long-term nation branding efforts.

Unlike forms of territorial marketing which, as the name suggests, focus on the attractiveness of territories, the nation brand focuses on what makes a nation attractive. Insofar as the concept of nation designates a large social group formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as history, language, ethnicity, culture, and territory, nation branding has the ethos of the country and its population as its field of intervention. Selling the nation as a marketing feature gave rise to the country brand Marca Perú (Cánepa & Lossio, 2019; Palacios Sialer, 2019; Gomero, 2019). Public diplomacy is most often described in opposition to mainstream diplomacy. While the latter focuses on developing relations between states and state representatives, public diplomacy seeks to build relations with non-state actors (Pahlavi, 2004). Public diplomacy therefore does not, at least in principle, address the political elites of a target country: It essentially seeks to exert influence on a larger population, in particular the middle and entrepreneurial classes. As for as the nature and content of the relations established, there are notable differences. Whereas mainstream diplomacy deals with topics in a confidential manner with the hope of finding solutions in a specific field, the content of public diplomacy is essentially cultural; it puts forward a country’s creative and artistic expressions for prospective purposes of exchange in the mid and long terms. Food and cuisines, cultural expressions capable of involving populations at a sensory, cultural, and affective level, participate in the construction of identities that are both attractive and competitive; identities based on persuasion, economic intelligence, and participation. They can serve both the entrepreneurial spirit of nation branding and the soft pulse of public diplomacy to win the hearts, minds, and money of global publics through the palate (Rockower, 2012).

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PromPerú has been active in supporting the image of Marca Perú, and thus the idea of the culinary nation, by exploiting the positive connotation of the country’s food. It has not only sought to develop tourism and entrepreneurship opportunities by promoting food festivals across the country, such as for instance Mistura,7 but also by placing Peruvian food at the forefront of events organised abroad by Peruvian trade commissions (Wilson, 2013), in international exhibitions and fairs, in media campaigns at the national and international levels, and by sponsoring creative productions featuring Peruvian food, such as documentary films. In the following, I focus on the visual and discursive aspects contained in gastro-politics and analyse how they communicate ideology. Four films released between 2009 and 2014  in cinemas, on television, and the Internet will serve as material for analysis: De ollas y sueños (Cooking Up Dreams), Perú sabe (Cuisine as an Agent of Social Change), Marca Perú (Peru-Nebraska), and Buscando a Gastón (Finding Gastón). All of these have been presented as documentaries, participated in international festivals and, in some cases, have won prizes. PromPerú has played a central role in the impact these movies have had among their audiences, either as a funder of their production or as a facilitator of their distribution—for instance in film festivals and international trade and tourism events. I argue that these movies transmit and stimulate neoliberal rationalities according to which individuals organise and perform their lives in an entrepreneurial fashion; that is, by setting goals, defining strategies, anticipating eventualities, and managing resources (or managing themselves as a resource) based on market requirements.8 The movies achieve this by  Mistura has been declared to be an event of national interest by the Peruvian government. See https://www.mincetur.gob.pe/mistura-es-declarada-de-interes-nacional-por-el-poder-ejecutivo/, Accessed April 26, 2023. 8  Building on neo-Foucaldian approaches, I understand neoliberalism as a mode of governance encompassing, but not limited to, the state, which produces subjects, forms of citizenship and behaviour, and an organisation of the social and public life based on the principles of market economy. Neoliberalism spreads a rationale that encourages people to see themselves as individualised and competitive subjects responsible for heightening their own wellbeing (Brown, 2003; Larner, 2000; Lemke, 2002; Rose, 1999). 7

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translating the objectives of political and economic authorities into narratives of successful entrepreneurship and individual commitment. In other words, these films are invitations to action within an ideological framework which requires and values ‘participatory individuals’; that is, risk-taking, creative, and innovative people. The staging of gastro-politics operates according to what French philosopher François Lyotard (1979) calls the principle of performativity, which I summarise as the ability to generate, within a system, actions and behaviours that structure a normative force, which is legitimate to the extent that it guarantees the continuity and efficiency of the system itself. In neoliberal societies, in which the outcomes of actions matter less than the actions themselves (as long as the actions result from freedom of choice, corporate rationality, and individual autonomy and responsibility), performance, and even the simple act of doing are always celebrated. Opening restaurants, expanding gastronomic markets through Peruvian concepts, making Peru known to the world through its cuisine, getting out of poverty by cooking, and professing national pride while eating cebiche are actions valued within the gastro-political complex. In this sense, I consider these movies as bio-political devices which link individuals to governing bodies, including the nation-state, with the aim of managing a population (Foucault, 2004). As we will see, each of these express mandates of performativity; that is, mandates of action, participation, and efficiency (Cánepa, 2013; McKenzie, 2001). To understand how these movies exploit the symbolic repertoires that structure gastro-politics in Peru, it is necessary to attend to the contexts related to the production, circulation, and consumption of images and discourses. In most cases, the analysis of audio-visual material is associated with the concept of representation. Conversely, my approach stresses the entanglement of discursive and material practices that bring a culinary nation into being. The food imageries which concern us are involved in performative and prescriptive semantics with two different aims: In negotiations of power (Kershaw, 1999) when addressing international audiences, and in the production of normativity (McKenzie, 2001, 2003) when addressing nationals. I refrain as much as possible from the representational function of images in order to understand how these are strategically put into action.

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A New Peruvian Ethos The process of updating national aspirations through food is strongly linked to successful, individual kitchen stories. Gratifying news about Peruvian heroes in chef whites are quickly spread and over-exposed in local and international media, establishing a sense of national pride in the public discourse. Perhaps the most striking example of the intersection between nationalist sentiments and Peruvian food is the film that launched the nation branding campaign Marca Perú, orchestrated by PromPerú. The campaign consisted of a series of promotional movies, some aimed at national audiences and others aimed at international audiences. The movie analyzed below is addressed to nationals. It stages Peruvian food as the flagship feature for building national pride, unity and commitment, and marks the preparatory stage for global competition. The video Marca Perú (also known as Perú-Nebraska) is a 15-minute mockumentary produced by the advertisement company Young and Rubicam. It was first aired on April 2011 on cable, open-signal television channels, and the Internet.9 The movie had a great impact on social media, going viral among Peruvians living in the country and abroad. It depicts what happens when a group of Peruvian “ambassadors” composed of talented personalities arrive in a small town in the United States. The opening sequence shows a red bus driving across open plains. The bus has the logo of Marca Perú on its side, which resembles a Nazca line in the shape of a capital P. Meanwhile, the narrating voiceover pronounces a phrase that sets the tone for the story about to unfold: “Every Peruvian, by the mere fact of being Peruvian, has the right to enjoy how wonderful it is to be Peruvian”. The video continues with a description of the town to which the bus is headed. Peru, Nebraska (569 inhabitants), is a rather unexciting town with little-to-no cultural activity and diversity. Life in this town is so soporific and unstimulating that the narrator affirms, with some humor, that the most recent intervention of the only sheriff in town was “to separate a dog from a cat in 1998”. The voiceover then specifies the reason for this visit: “Peru, Nebraska, has a problem: they are  Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL9gsVy9gfU&t=612s, Accessed May 9, 2023.

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Peruvians, but they don’t know what that means”. In the following, the video focuses on explaining Peruvianness not only to the inhabitants of Nebraska, but also to anyone who watches it. The visitors’ mission is to teach the small town’s inhabitants “their rights as Peruvians”, all of which are associated with leisure and cultural aspects meant to be representative of Peruvianness. Among those shown in the movie are: Andean music (“the right to dance huayno”), exotic tourism (“the right to take a domestic flight from the Amazon to the ocean”), surfing (“the right to surf the world’s longest left hand waves”), and food (“the right to eat tasty”). After an initial period of reluctance, the Nebraskans respond to the presence of Peruvians with affability and courtesy, enthusiastically accepting the novel foods, music, and activities proposed by the newcomers. Food stands out by far. More than a third of the video’s length is dedicated to the display of typical Peruvian dishes. Nebraskans appear tasting cebiche, anticuchos (beef heart skewers), papa a la huancaína (boiled potatoes covered with a spicy cheese sauce), and the soft drink Inka Kola. Moreover, among the number of Peruvian celebrities featured in the film, a third are chefs. If food is the spearhead of this strategic move to fulfil the new aspirations of the country, chefs are the commanders-in-chief of the enterprise of conquest. In one of the initial scenes, Acurio, from the driver seat of the red bus, first invites his fellow chefs to set foot on the ‘new land’. The chefs immediately incite the locals to explore Peru through the senses. Using a megaphone, chef Christian Bravo (at that time also a TV news presenter) informs the town of the primary, and perhaps most important, of their rights: “The right to eat tasty” (el derecho a comer rico). By presenting a fictional depiction of the re-foundation of Peru, this mockumentary demonstrates not only the way nation branding seeks to refashion nations in ideology and practice, but also how food can support this endeavour. Although it may seem paradoxical that the re-foundation event occurs in the United States instead of Peru, it corresponds precisely to the aims of PromPerú. This becomes clear by the end of the spot, when the narrator explains that the goal of the visit from the Peruvian ambassadors is for Peru, Nebraska, not to dwindle in “backwardness and oblivion”. This statement informs the viewer that the small North-American town is a metaphor for Peru in the 1980s and early 1990s when,

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submerged in debt, it was banned from the investment community. If it is true that the 2000s looked better than the two decades that preceded it, the optimism conveyed by the movie is unprecedented: Peru, Nebraska, is presented as a part of the past, a painful memory. One of the final scenes especially supports this idea as it slips one attribute, strictly economic in nature, in between the many cultural attributes of Peru: Economic growth. This is embodied by the image of an ignited firework in form of 10%, which refers to the top monthly gross domestic product growth rates obtained between 2000 and 2010. In this way, Peru seeks to present itself among its nationals as an economically viable country, secure for investment, with Peruvian food being a great ally in the quest for achieving a “competitive reputation” (Lossio, 2019: 84). Peru-Nebraska is an example of how states employ nationalism as a framework within which competitiveness invokes more noble aspirations than high and readily available profit opportunities (Davidson, 2008). Food is instrumental in shaping these aspirations through a national narrative not about the here and now but about the future. By appealing to nationalist sentiments, Peru’s entrepreneurial and political elites try to convince themselves and their fellow nationals that what they do is in the greater national interest (even if in reality it mainly serves their own). However, it would be a mistake to think that these strategies are set without any form of social concern. These concerns may actually exist, but they must be seen as the result of market-oriented ideas of development. So then if Peru is to be collectively competitive, it follows that Peruvian entrepreneurs must be individually competitive, but they are in competition with each other as much as with foreign rivals.

A Delicious, Mixed Nation From the above discussion, we see that food in Peru is laden with hopes for economic and social development to be achieved through strategies driven by market competition. The objective is to brand and sell Peruvian cuisine to the world. Supporting this goal is the idea of Peru as a culinary nation founded on racial and cultural mestizaje.

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Mestizaje refers to racial and/or cultural mixing of white people and native people living in what is now Latin America and the Caribbean. It may be defined as a “gesture of deep reverence for the indigenous (or, in Brazil and perhaps Cuba, African) roots of national identity, combined with a European-oriented mestizo (mixed-race) subject, as bearer of rights and source of political dynamism that looks to the future” (Hale, 2005: 12). Mestizaje emerged as Latin American state projects in the early twentieth century when creole elites sought narratives to ensure hegemony by highlighting strong national identities while downplaying (non-­white) racial and ethnic identities, which were usually assumed to impede national development. But as “science increasingly discredited white supremacy”, intellectual elites promoted renewed ideas of mestizaje based on literary and scientific texts, political, and artistic expressions and state policies with the aim to counter whitening ideologies and “put a positive spin on mixture as the essence of Latin American nationhood” (Telles & García, 2013:132). These ideas became a moral obligation for Latin America, even though some elements of whitening ideologies remained (De la Cadena, 2005; Telles & García, 2013). Scholars have critically questioned the rhetorical potential of food to bring people and cultures together and redress historic wrongs. Some warn that food literature and cultural expression deploying progressive or inclusive rhetoric tend to build on entanglements of nostalgia and utopia, offering narrators a stable basis on which to distort history and culture (Bak-Geller, 2016; Kelting, 2016; Pilcher, 2012). Catarina Passidomo (2017) shows that cookbooks from postcolonial nations stylistically undermine racial, class, and gender hegemonies, whereas in practice, they reinforce them: They celebrate cultural diversity, but, at the same time, reinforce the primacy of white, male voices. For María Elena García (2013, 2019), the idea of mestizaje as synonymous with national identity and unity in Peru contains a celebratory glow that obscures a fraught side of continuing ostracism against indigenous and nonhuman bodies. Amy Cox Hall (2020) argues that mestizaje provides Peruvian chefs with a common foundation through which to invent dishes that are more cosmopolitan, but it does so by obliterating the racial and gendered

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stratifications of the country’s (food) history. Read together, these works convey that the relationship between food and the nation diverts attention away from social and cultural inequalities and conceals historical and political conflicts. The movie Cooking Up Dreams,10 perhaps, summarises the culinary nation’s ethos better than any other cultural or scholarly production. Cooking Up Dreams is a movie which premiered in 2009 and was directed by Peruvian filmmaker Ernesto Cabellos. The movie received funding from multiple investors including banks, corporations, universities, non-­ profit foundations PromPerú, and was screened in cinemas, movie festivals, and public diplomacy settings (embassies and international fairs, among others). The wide acclaim it received is likely due to its use of stereotypes and romanticism (and, of course, food) to narrate the country’s history: Cooking Up Dreams presents Peru as a nation already liberated from all conflicts, be they class-based, economic, racial or cultural. The plot revolves around the question of whether cuisine can represent a nation and develops the answer around the following proposition: In a country with so many differences and inequalities as Peru, “there is a unique and auspicious space in which the nation is harmoniously integrated; this space is the pot” (Cabellos, 2009). Cabellos illustrates his arguments through a notion of mestizaje recognised both as a historical process of cultural mixture and fusion, and as an agent of integration of differences in modern times. The movie opens with a rapid image flow of food with different colours, forms, textures, preparation methods, and contrasting landscapes (city versus countryside, urban opulence versus rural poverty), all of them carefully selected in order to demonstrate difference. Meanwhile, the voiceover defines Peruvian cuisine as mestizo by describing it as the result of “encounters and dis-encounters” and as a space in which different flavours, tastes, and colours “struggle, confront, negotiate and reconcile” and where “poor and rich share the same spirit”. Most strikingly, however, is how mestizaje emerges as an asset for the country’s projection in the global economy. This occurs in the last quarter of the movie, particularly when chef Acurio makes his appearance, affirming, “When I was a child, the word mestizo was pejorative; today it is our  De ollas y sueños.

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worth (nuestro valor, or our value)” (Acurio in Cabellos, 2009). The use of the term valor refers not only to people’s greatness, but also to a value in monetary terms, thus suggesting that mestizaje can become a competitive advantage in markets (see Matta, 2017: 107). As Charles Hale (1999: 309) notes, positioning oneself as mestizo is “infinitely more productive for those interested in forging hegemony because the process of mestizaje inherently includes Indians in name”, while the notion of creole primarily contains a presumption of “Spanishness” (Kuznesof, 1995). Peru’s food narrative embraces the mestizo logic by downplaying the European influences, which have been overrepresented at the elite’s tables in past decades, to advance instead the idea of mixture or fusion as intrinsically and distinctively Peruvian. This food identity supports the optimistic business projections proclaimed in the movie and defines the guidelines of action for and in line with the spirit of Peruvian cuisine. Acurio states this idea as follows: “Our job is to transform Peruvian cuisine everywhere we go into a powerful consumption trend, so that other Peruvian restaurants can open and be equally successful, and so we can finally … let’s say, defeat other trends like Japanese sushi bars or Italian trattorias” (Acurio in Cabellos, 2009). Acurio reinforces the movie’s performative and prescriptive dimensions by announcing the secret for global success is incarnated in his disciples, young cooks in training. The apprentices are students at the Instituto Pachacútec, a culinary school nearly free of charge and located in one of the poorest districts of Lima. Acurio created the school as a social initiative; it only enrols young people from underprivileged backgrounds. The students see this as an opportunity to move forward socially and professionally, inside or even outside the country. Although certainly most of them will remain in Peru, they believe that their cooking skills are sufficient for working abroad. The attitude they show in the movie is competitive and spirited, nearly martial. One of them recounts with a trusting and affirming smile, “I believe that all of us here have a mission, a very important mission from our hearts, which is to make our gastronomy known to the world … like one teacher once said: ‘everyone be prepared for when we finish’” (Raquel Ramírez in Cabellos, 2009). One of her classmates confirms this enterprising and conquering spirit by saying,

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“We are studying to increase our knowledge and then declare war on the food of all the other countries”. The apprentices seem to have completely internalised the idea of a competitive culinary nation, with Acurio backing this up in a previous scene: “The boys and girls at Pachacútec’, he says with a challenging gesture, ‘really are authentic soldiers’” (Acurio in Cabellos, 2009).11 He elaborates that, despite all the setbacks in their lives, these students show strong commitment to their country. Such an attitude, he adds, is missing among Peruvian economic elites. The latter stance is not uncommon in Acurio’s media appearances. The chef has been engaging with politics for many years with a discourse blending competitive entrepreneurship, social responsibility, and sustainable development (García, 2010; Matta, 2019a). Indeed, it is not surprising to see him depicting—not without reason—the country’s elites as historically indifferent to the problems of poor and rural populations, and primarily aiming at economic growth. With Acurio at its centre, the movie’s claim for culinary greatness breaks with a tradition of pessimism in elite thought, viewed by historian Cecilia Méndez (1996) as an intellectual stance with a lengthy trajectory in Peru. Cooking Up Dreams proposes cuisine as a means to alleviating poverty and opening up a new way of thinking Peruvian society. This is staged by showing a think-tank of chefs and cooks from different social and ethnic backgrounds discussing the future of Peruvian cuisine and wider issues such as the significance of peasants’ work or the nutrition problems in rural Peru (Cabellos, 2009). Tackling matters related to indigenous and minorities’ rights—as in the state’s discourses of mestizaje—this scene evokes the rise of a culinary leading class composed of “all bloods” (todas las sangres), and makes itself unique within cultural representations of the nation in neoliberal times. Even if it would be difficult to consider how profound this shift in attitude is, we should not neglect the possibility of newer elites engaging frankly in self-critique and demonstrating receptiveness and interest in a more inclusive conception of society.  The military metaphor was commonly used to ennoble the individual yet “national” endeavours of Peruvian chefs. “Heroes”, “martyrs of Peruvian gastronomy”, and “soldiers” were, for example, the terms used by the media and public figures to refer to a group of chefs who lost their lives in a car accident in 2012. See, https://www.inforegion.pe/146892/martires-de-nuestra-gastronomia/, Accessed February 21, 2023. 11

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However, so far, the nation’s resurgence through food is driven by the search for global acclaim. This becomes clear in one scene in which Acurio frames the mestizo, fusion character in food as a tool that leads to cosmopolitanism and modernity, turning it into a valuable resource for survival in competitive contexts. In this moment, when fusion is a tendency throughout the world, when integration, globalization, and all these kinds of concepts become modern concepts, Peruvian cuisine appears, having fused cultures, but in a very balanced, very reflexive, very consensual way over the last 500 years, and this is what makes it magical, what makes it so attractive. (Acurio in Cabellos, 2009)

Good as this may sound, the statement is unrealistic. Cultural and culinary exchanges originating from interactions between native and settler societies have not been balanced nor consensual but rather conflictive and uneven (Long, 1996; Markowitz, 2018), like all other relationships resulting from such encounters. Behind the façade of harmony and consensus are the harsh realities of colonisation, the annihilation of indigenous peoples, the political violence of the 1980s and 1990s, present-day racism and classism as well as the disdain for indigenous mindsets and agency. Cooking Up Dreams makes a tabula rasa of this backdrop and leaves us a “culinary fiction” (Mannur, 2009) with an enchanted, idealistic narrative.

An Avenue for Revolution and Reconciliation Revolution and reconciliation are strong concepts. Both deal with change, although in ways that can be described as opposite. Revolution typically denotes accelerated change to the point of explosion. Reconciliation describes a non-explosive mode of dealing with explosive situations. The narrative of the culinary nation, as we have seen, makes extensive use of both terms to stress the supposed potential for social change in Peruvian gastro-politics. However, there are instances in which neither of these terms reflect the intensity they were intended to convey.

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The movie Finding Gastón was directed by Patricia Pérez and released in 2014. It was sponsored by the telecommunications company Telefónica, the bank Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, PromPerú, along with a number companies in the food sector for whom the association with the good reputation of Peruvian cuisine would be beneficial. The movie was screened in festivals around the world and won awards at the festivals of San Sebastian, Bel Air, Douro de Vinhateiro, and Berlin. The plot revolves around the life and work of Gastón Acurio, whom the cameras follow in two distinct and contrasting contexts. In humble locations in rural Peru, Acurio engages his senses with regional fare, praises farmers and fishermen practicing traditional, environmentally sound techniques, and surveys his initiatives to support new talent. In Europe, Acurio showcases sophisticated versions of Peruvian cuisine to affluent audiences: He gives cooking demos in the famed restaurant El Celler de Can Roca, in Girona, and leads a brigade of chefs in Stockholm, in the event for which he received the 2013 Global Gastronomy Award from the hands of Swedish Prince Carl Philip. These two contexts merge in a single heroic narrative, one of uncertain beginnings furnished by big dreams, and then of hard work leading to considerable success. Yet, Acurio’s story is not only portrayed as his individual story but also as that of Peru. Unlike Cooking Up Dreams, which emphasises culinary mestizaje as the pathway towards national cohesion and development, Finding Gastón works as an account of the achievements of Peruvian cuisine in and outside the country. The narrative takes up the idea of political and social reconciliation through culinary mestizaje and goes a step forward by describing what would seemingly be a radical cut with the country’s recent past of political and economic decay, as the use of the terms movement and revolution suggest: I feel very proud to be part of a movement, a national movement; to have lived a revolution without spilling a drop of blood; a revolution that has not taken anything from anyone, but that has distributed among all. It’s a revolution of hearts: cuisine as a product that promotes a new country that leaves behind terrorism, leaves behind violence, leaves behind corruption, leaves behind dictatorship to once again become that magical country. (Acurio in Pérez, 2014)

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This quote is important as it strongly corresponds to discourses and practices in nation branding and public diplomacy. Paul Rockower (2012) has coined the term “gastrodiplomacy” to characterise the concerted efforts in public relations made by state and non-state actors to increase the value of a country’s nation brand through food. In this movie, Acurio embodies the gastronomic diplomat par excellence as he endorses Peru as a country freed from violence and political burdens; a country which is safe to visit and to invest in. The chef appears then as the best ally of the national strategic interests. To oppose a “revolution of hearts” with a revolution of blood aligns with the goal of extolling the country image, while serving the additional purpose of establishing the gastronomic boom—also known as gastronomic revolution (Lauer & Lauer, 2006)—as the foundation for a modern Peru. In this new national project, food could shape and inspire the Peruvian identity in the future, and support its process of expansion. Acurio backs this idea later on in the movie, by affirming that there is “the opportunity, not through marches or confrontations of any kind, but through the cuisine, to positively influence each of the areas [cuisine] touches” (Acurio in Pérez, 2014). This statement, although positive and goodhearted, is rather ineffectual as it emphasises conciliation and openness in a context where striking social inequalities and subsequent contradictions remain (Acurio himself has expressed in various media appearances commitment and concern over living in a country rich with biodiversity and edible resources but where its rural population suffers from poverty and malnutrition). Finding Gastón does not vigorously question the unequal distribution of power and resources in society and its effects. The movie showcases, in fact, a fairly depoliticised gastro-­politics, if we attribute to ‘the political’ a dimension of struggle. Acurio, arguing that cuisine, “positively influences each of the areas it touches” means nothing more than taking economic advantage of the opportunities mestizo cuisine provides to the nation and its “beautifully mixed” (García, 2021: 49) and sanitised image. The scene featuring Bernardo Roca-Rey, one of the leading figures of the gastronomic boom, is essential to understanding this point: “The appearance of Gastón means a revaluation of what was already in the

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culture; and he does it through food, which makes him present himself as a successful, triumphant personage […] and tell people: if I could, you too can; my weapons are yours, my concerns are also yours” (Roca-Rey in Pérez, 2014). In Roca Rey’s statement “what was already in culture”, but has not been visible until today, is the diversity of cultures and environments of the country. Acurio has given new value to them by monetising their edible components and placing his work as an example to follow in future enterprises. Following this rationale, the movie exhorts people to embrace Peruvian food as an ultimate resource, a sure bet for anything or anyone who wishes to achieve a better future: For the country to prosper in its business and image ventures, and for Peruvians to prosper in a capitalist economy. That said, Finding Gastón omits crucial information about what in economics are called barriers to entry. Indeed the movie does not inform the viewers that they probably do not and will not have the social and economic weapons Acurio has and had at his disposal—let’s not forget that the chef is a member of a well-off family and son of a former prime minister. It also fails to mention that, due to this fact, fellow Peruvians probably do not share the same concerns and ambitions as the star chef. Viewers are promised gratitude for their efforts and are sold on the allegedly transformative power of cuisine; they could be in a favourable position to change their individual situations themselves—provided they are skilled in business—or, at least, obtain some sort of recognition. Finding Gastón shows some examples of the latter. In a sequence at a public school event, Acurio appears together with children and mothers from indigenous and modest backgrounds. The chef tastes a dish prepared by one of the mothers, a cold appetiser called ocopa, consisting of boiled potato covered in black mint sauce. After an approving gesture, the chef tells the woman, “I am going to do something, I am going to use this sauce in my restaurant, and I’m going to put your name on [the menu] and invite you to try it”. The woman is immediately seen hugging Acurio with tears in her eyes. The scene is interesting for at least three reasons. First, it exemplifies the rapprochement of two distant figures in Peru, that of the chef—male, white, and successful in business—and the figure of the cook—female, with darker skin and whose work is confined

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to the domestic sphere. Second, the tears of happiness shed by the female cook are a revelator of the long absence of women in the narratives of the nation, culinary and others. Third, the scene could perfectly fit into recent debates over cultural appropriation and colonialism in the food domain (Gálvez, 2018; Grey & Newman, 2018; Holzman, 2018), and over (economic) redistribution against (social) recognition (Fraser & Honneth, 2003). Another sequence shows a group of Andean peasants, dressed in their typical costumes, visiting the premises of Astrid & Gastón, Acurio’s luxurious restaurant in Lima, and then sharing a table with him. Upon welcoming them, Acurio says, “The cooks here are very happy that you have come and also very grateful because, thanks to you, we have been able to make many people happy all year around with the potatoes you have given to us”. This public recognition is similar to the awards that cooks and farmers receive at events and festivals such as Mistura (see Dölz, 2014; García, 2021; Kollenda, 2019). These praises can certainly increase personal satisfaction, occupational reputation, and social recognition in specific contexts. However, in this particular case, it is fair to ask if they are sufficient for peasants and farmers to be “happy all year round”, as Acurio’s customers may be. Although more research is required into the living conditions of the peasants and humble cooks after the euphoria of the gastronomic boom, what remains clear is the strong performative and prescriptive content in Finding Gastón.

Entrepreneurship Promises “There are as many young people here who want to become cooks as want to become football players”, says chef Ferrán Adrià, one of the most influential food personalities in the world, in Perú sabe (Cuisine as an agent of social change), the documentary by the Spanish director Jesús Santos.12 The movie was financed by the Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica and the banking group BBVA Continental.  Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1BRZqfytyo, Accessed August 21, 2022.

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Premiered in 2012, Perú sabe was presented in diverse contexts: Prestigious film festivals in Berlin and San Sebastián; and organisational settings, such as the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations Organization in New York, the German Chamber of Commerce in Berlin and the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. The plot revolves around a series of food encounters and social expectations. The focus is on Gastón Acurio guiding Adrià on a culinary road trip across different regions of Peru and diverse settings such as markets, gastronomic festivals, restaurants, and culinary schools. Together, they explore the edible biodiversity of the country and taste a large number of dishes and recipes. Besides the journey itself, the main argument of the movie is to show Adrià why becoming a chef in Peru became the dream of thousands of young people wanting to achieve a better life. Peruvian cuisine as an agent for social change is the central tenet of the movie, and the testimonies of cooks, restaurant owners, small producers, and culinary students who have improved or sought to improve their lives through cooking serve as proof. Santos’ movie has been distributed as a documentary format, though it rather resembles a 70-minute advertising spot: The rapid flow of images and messages, the several, overacted testimonies, and the overproduced scenery give the movie an intentional propagandistic character. Aligned with the promises of the gastronomic boom, Perú sabe is an additional staging of the national food narrative promoted by culinary elites. Indeed, even though people from modest origins play a leading role in the movie as examples of self-improvement, the articulation between food, national identity, and economic success emerges from the perspectives of two people who represent the social elite: The Peruvian elite, in the case of Acurio, and the global elite in the case of Adrià. From their travels, visits to food businesses and culinary schools, and their conversations with the people they meet, the two celebrated chefs reach the conclusion that, in Peru, food can change the lives of those in need for the better. Perú sabe connects Peruvian cuisine with biographies of success, whether achieved or in progress. Both the narration and the testimonies revolve around phrases such as “cuisine is the culture of the nation”, “this is Peru”, “the cuisine transforms the nation”, or “the cuisine is a

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weapon for social inclusion”. Through these affirmations, the movie not only presents the national cuisine as the binding element of Peruvians but also establishes it as an effective way to combat poverty. Poverty, the common denominator of all of these stories, is given an individual character: It affects subjects struck by fate but able to escape it if they engage in culinary work. Structural poverty, that which should be addressed through well-designed, inclusive socioeconomic policy, and for which food plays a crucial part, is hardly mentioned in the movie. Perú sabe pins all the hopes in individuals connecting to “the gastronomic value chain”, which hypothetically involves a large sector of the country’s population. Despite the optimism of Acurio and Adrià, the movie leaves additional loose ends. For instance, the stories never make clear how Peruvian cuisine contributes to social inclusion, or even what social inclusion means in this context. Perú sabe limits itself to affirming repeatedly that about 80,000 young people are training in schools to become cooks. Such an emphasis conceals the high probability that most of these trainees will likely obtain tough and badly paid jobs after graduation (see Chap. 3). Unlike Peruvian star chefs, they cannot rely on substantial amounts of social and economic capital. It is thus fair to say that, in Perú sabe, social inclusion simply means obtaining a job; a job that may be precarious, but a job nevertheless. Acurio and Adrià also address the possibility for some of the trainees to create their own businesses. Despite the expansion and increasing diversity of the culinary market, their statement may sound over-optimistic. Indeed, the movie does not take into account the persistent inequality of life chances in countries such as Peru, which will deprive the majority of students featured in the movie from having their own profitable business. By pushing forward the expectations of owning a business among people in disadvantaged contexts, the chefs are indirectly promoting a recent picture of the contemporary worker: The precarious entrepreneur. While presented as a factual documentary, Perú sabe is a fiction used as a tool to promote neoliberal ideals and, therefore, an example of the pervasive nature of neoliberalism. On the one hand, the movie stresses that one’s wellbeing depends on the identification and the accomplishment of

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aspirations and desires, rather than rights and obligations. On the other hand, it encourages future cooks to see themselves not as workers in a progressive political sense, that is as people who have something to gain through solidarity and collective organisation, but as entrepreneurs of the self (Foucault, 2004), managers of their own corporate lives (see Feher, 2021). Broadly put, the movie tries to sell the experience of an American Dream Peruvian style where, theoretically, everybody committed to cooking Peruvian food professionally should be able to improve their lives. Interestingly, this dream might not necessarily occur within Peru. Acurio and Adrià speculate on prospects for young cooks venturing abroad to work in Peruvian restaurants, and eventually opening their own. That way, they will be contributing to the international expansion of Peruvian cuisine, the recruitment of fellow Peruvians as co-workers, and the flow of money remittances to Peru. The idea of the migrant cook was already present in Cabellos’ Cooking Up Dreams: The movie features Peruvians who own restaurants in London, Amsterdam, and Paris, respectively, who open up about the challenges, expectations, and rewards of their business journeys, albeit always positively. In the gastro-political rationale, migration transforms from an uprooting, solitary, and sacrificial experience to an exciting adventure. Gisela Cánepa (2019) notes that this shift finds its roots in the early 2000s, when state policies aimed at watching over the interests and rights of Peruvians living abroad who, on their side, are increasingly educated and professionally integrated. These policies and, more recently, the campaigns of Marca Perú have contributed to challenging the predominant image of migrants as precarious workers of indigenous descent, or political dissidents who have had to flee the country. Today, the migrant is no longer a racialised and unskilled subject, but a fellow countryman and partner in a new national project framed in neoliberal terms (Cánepa, 2019: 206). Gastro-politics in Peru massively capitalises on this, as the chefs who initiated the gastronomic boom described themselves as successful migrants during their formative years. Against this background, Perú sabe establishes a narrative in which taking risks is valuable and desirable and in which migrants are always positively connoted; their qualities are glorified and their potential never questioned.

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Of Conquest and Dreams Peru has found in its cuisine an ally in its efforts to promote itself as a new, entrepreneurial, and economically viable nation. The diversity of public and private entities engaged in the production of creative and cultural work supporting this idea is evidence of this. The actualisation of the country’s image originates from a series of social, economic and cultural changes, which correspond to global tendencies (commercial exploitation of cultural identities), as well as to local particularities (economic growth, pacification of the country, adoption of globalised cultural features). Peruvian food has emerged as the element that best permits combining novel social and economic expectations into a narrative charged with ideology that has gained track among large sectors of society. The material analyzed above shows how the social space of the national cuisine, since it took on business and political tones, captures, translates, and performs a series of values of societies governed by neoliberal regimes: The movies are celebrations of entrepreneurship, competitiveness, and individual responsibility. The mise en scène of Peruvian cuisine conveys a celebratory discourse based on a succession of small national achievements (which are in fact individual or corporate) which are transforming the idea of nation, and with it the valuation of what is Peruvian in all its diversity. Always raising the flag of a successful culinary culture, Peru presents itself as a proudly mestizo and entrepreneurial country that knows how to be competitive worldwide. This rhetoric—where food, identities, and markets entwine—comes together through three primary attributes. The first, mestizaje, unites distant social groups, erases conflicts and traces of history and ensures cosmopolitanism. The second, entrepreneurship, promises reward for undertaking risks irrespective of their results. The third, competitiveness, assures progress and development. That said, it can be argued that Peru’s culinary nationalism reproduces a recurrent situation in Latin American societies: That of individuals who navigate the challenges of life without solid institutional support. In such a context, the potential of social change via the power of food seems likely to remain unfulfilled.

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Lossio, F. (2019). La nación en tiempos especulativos o los imperativos culturales de las marcas país. In G. Cánepa & F. Lossio (Eds.), La nación celebrada: Marca país y ciudadanías en disputa. Universidad del Pacífico. Lyotard, J-F. (1979). La condition postmoderne. Rapport sur le savoir. Minuit. Mannur, A. (2009). Culinary fictions: Food in South Asian diasporic culture. Temple University Press. Mapstone, N. (2009). Teaching the world to love Peruvian cuisine. The Financial Times. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://www.ft.com/content/cbd2df34-­ 48ca-­11de-­8870-­00144feabdc0 Markowitz, L. (2018). Making and unmaking the Andean food pyramid. In L. Seligmann & K. Fine-Dare (Eds.), The Andean world. Routledge. Matta, R. (2011). Posibilidades y límites del desarrollo en el patrimonio inmaterial. El caso de la cocina peruana. Apuntes: Revista de Estudios sobre Patrimonio Cultural, 24(2), 196–207. Matta, R. (2014). República gastronómica y país de cocineros: comida, política, medios y una nueva idea de nación para el Perú. Revista Colombiana de Antropología, 40(2), 15–40. Matta, R. (2017). Unveiling the neoliberal taste. Peru’s media representations as a food nation. In S. May, K. Sidali, A. Spiller, & B. Tschofen (Eds.), Taste | Power | Tradition. Geographical indications as cultural Property. Göttingen University Press. Matta, R. (2019a). Celebrity chefs and the limits of playing politics from the kitchen. In J.  Dürrschmidt & Y.  Kautt (Eds.), Globalized eating cultures: Mediation and mediatization. Palgrave Macmillan. Matta, R., & García, M. E. (2019). The gastro-political turn in Peru. Anthropology of Food, 14. https://journals.openedition.org/aof/10061 McKenzie, J. (2001). Perform or else: From discipline to performance. Routledge. McKenzie, J. (2003). Democracy’s performance. The Drama Review, 47(2), 117–128. Méndez, C. (1996). Incas sí, indios no: Notes on Peruvian creole nationalism and its contemporary crisis. Journal of Latin American Studies, 28(1), 197–225. Orlove, B. (1993). Putting race in its place: Order in colonial and postcolonial Peruvian geography. Social Research, 60, 301–336. Pahlavi, P. (2004). Mass diplomacy: Foreign policy in the global information age. PhD Dissertation. McGill University. Palacios Sialer, M. (2019). Marca Perú: un nuevo Perú en busca de nuevos peruanos. In G.  Cánepa & F.  Lossio (Eds.), La nación celebrada: Marca país y ciudadanías en disputa. Universidad del Pacífico.

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Parasecoli, F. (2022). Gastronativism. Food, identity, politics. Columbia University Press. Passidomo, C. (2017). “Our” culinary heritage: Obscuring inequality by celebrating diversity in Peru and the US South. Humanity & Society, 41(4), 427–445. Pérez, P. (2014). Buscando a Gastón [Film]. Chiwake Films. Pilcher, J. (2012). Planet taco. Oxford University Press. Prager, J. (2008). Healing from history. Psychoanalytic considerations on traumatic pasts and social repair. European Journal of Social Theory, 11(3), 405–420. Rockower, P. (2012). Recipes for Gastrodiplomacy. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 8(3), 235–246. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom. Cambridge University Press. Silverman, H. (2015). Branding Peru: Cultural heritage and popular culture in the marketing strategy of PromPeru. In M. Robinson & H. Silverman (Eds.), Encounters with popular pasts: Cultural heritage and popular culture. Springer. Telles, E., & García, D. (2013). Mestizaje and public opinion in Latin America. Latin American Research Review, 48, 130–152. Valderrama, M. (2009). Gastronomía, desarrollo e identidad cultural. El caso peruano. Retrieved May 19, 2023, from https://cyberletras.files.wordpress. com/2012/08/gastronomc3ada-­desarrollo-­e-­identidad-­cultural.pdf Villarán, F. (2006, April 23). Visión estratégica de la culinaria peruana. El Comercio. Wallace, A. (2016). Contrastes, racismo, gastronomía... 8 claves para entender mejor a Perú y los peruanos. BBC News Mundo. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-­america-­latina-­38094026 Wilk, R. (1999). “Real Belizean food”: Building local identity in the transnational caribbean. American anthropologist, 101(2), 244–255. Wilson, R. (2013). Cocina peruana para el mundo: Gastrodiplomacy, the culinary nation brand, and the context of national cuisine in Peru. Exchange: The Journal of Public Diplomacy, 2(1), 2. Zúñiga, M. (2007). Límites y posibilidades de lo multicultural e intercultural en el discurso del chef peruano Gastón Acurio. Construyendo Nuestra Interculturalidad, 4, 1–21.

6 Food as Heritage: Peruvian Foodways’ Road to UNESCO

Food as Heritage In light of the previous chapters, it would be redundant to further emphasise “the centrality of food in sustaining life both materially and symbolically” (Ichijo, 2017: 263) and the role of food in national identity construction (Appadurai, 1988; Cusack, 2000; Ichijo & Ranta, 2016; Porciani, 2020). Recent Peruvian history has a long of list of instances that show how food provides collective meaning and belonging, but also difference and demarcation. Consider the establishment of national days for cebiche and pollo a la brasa.1 Honouring these specialties is a way for the government to remind Peruvians of the status of Peru as a food nation and to provide significant opportunities for the culinary industry to exploit it. Yet, at the same time, it creates a context for ordinary people to enact “everyday nationhood” (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008). This context is important for establishing the foundations for projects that, “[s]purred by encounters with new culinary habits and systems”, aim at tackling  In 2008, the Ministry of Production, through Ministerial Resolution No. 708-2008PRODUCE, declared June 28 as the national cebiche day. In 2010, through Ministerial Resolution No. 0441-2010-AG, the Ministry of Culture declared each third Sunday in July as the “pollo a la brasa day”. 1

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perceptions of a loss of culture by conceptualising “food and foodways as heritage to be cherished and protected” (Bortolotto & Ubertazzi, 2018: 410). In Peru, two ‘national drinks’ have been at the centre of events that have sparked fears of cultural loss and responses to these issues that have been voiced in explicitly nationalistic terms. These debates and controversies were crucial in creating awareness of the benefits that the nation may achieve from framing food as heritage. The first episode concerns Inca Kola, the most popular soft drink in Peru. This sweet and brightly yellow-colored soda plays an immense role in everyday food sociability to the extent of it having become a powerful national symbol (Alcalde, 2009). Hence the slogans: Inca Kola con todo combina and La bebida de sabor nacional.2 Also, it shares with the Scottish Irn Bru, the distinction of being one of the only two local soft drinks to outsell Coca-Cola in their own territories (Alcalde, 2009).3 In 1999, Coca-Cola purchased 50% of the shares of Inca Kola and took control of overseas marketing and production. The Lindley Corporation, creator and producer of Inca Kola since 1935, was allowed to retain ownership of the drink within Peru. News of the acquisition produced two kinds of reaction. On the one hand, it prompted celebration among those who saw the acquisition as an if-you-cannot-beat-them-join-them move from Coca-Cola, meaning a national victory against the top global seller (Hay, 2019). On the other hand, some people saw the acquisition as a surrender to the multinational corporation, and accused the Lindley family of betraying the nation. Back then, I was a marketing student in Lima, and I remember that there were rumours circulating about the removal of Inca Kola from strategic points of sale in order for Coca-Cola to reach the top market position. The rumours proved to be unfounded, as Inca Kola has always maintained its lead in the country. Still, those were times when beverages triggered patriotic sentiments. Another nationalistic quarrel developed almost in parallel. It involved what both Peru and Chile consider their national spirit liquor: Pisco. The ‘pisco war’ dates back to 1998, with the World Intellectual Property  “Inca Kola combines with everything” and “The drink of national flavour”.  See also, https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/branding-lessons-from-inca-kola-theperuvian-soda-that-bested-coca-cola/, Accessed May 22, 2023. 2 3

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Organization (WIPO) granting Chile the right to use the appellation of origin (AO) pisco. Yet the most obvious conflicts arose with the commercialisation of pisco of Chile as a distinctive Chilean product (pisco chileno) in foreign markets such as the United States. Since then, pisco producers in Peru and Chile have engaged in a series of legal disputes, at the World Trade Organization and in the courts of different consumer countries (Lacoste et al., 2013). Each country claimed the rights to use the pisco AO with its own arguments. Chile focused on validating a generic definition of the liquor: Any grape brandy, produced according to the pre-­ established attributes of pisco, could be commercialised under this AO, regardless of its region of origin. Peru claimed exclusive author rights by insisting on unique crafting methods and that the drink originated in the town of Pisco, in coastal Peru. WIPO rejected Peru’s motion since Chile’s commercial agreements were already guaranteed by international law (Mitchell & Terry, 2011). Currently both countries share the AO, with each one’s reputation mostly relying on how successful their respective trade and marketing strategies are (Hamrick et  al., 2022; Alarcón Porflidtt, 2022). Failure to recognise pisco as exclusively Peruvian has been seen as a defeat for many nationals. It has also stimulated imagination in order to overcome this upset and bounce back. In August 2007, in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated the town of Pisco, then Minister of Production Rafael Rey offered crates of “Pisco 7.9” (referring to the Richter’s magnitude for the event) to government representatives from the international community as thanks for coming to their aid. Rey stated: “There is a small label on the back that says ‘Pisco, there is only one’, which is the phrase coined by the President [Alan García], so it also has a commercial interest on the part of Peru”.4 This gastro-diplomatic move was widely criticised as labelling pisco as 7.9 was seen as disrespectful of the victims and their families. These controversies illustrate, respectively, the attachment people can feel to foods that convey national imaginaries, and how attempts to use foods as national symbols can sometimes go wrong. These episodes are also exemplary of the concerns and motivations that drive food  See https://elpais.com/diario/2007/08/25/revistaverano/1187992827_850215.html, Accessed May 9, 2023. 4

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heritagisation. In general, these rely on the fact that foods to be recognised as heritage oscillate between the poles of multiple opportunities of commodification and the enhancement of the human activities that constitute them. The potentialities contained in heritage-making processes spur both opportunity and apprehension among actors involved in food production and preparation, as they see how the increase of global commercial integration challenges long-established combinations of ownership and control of foods (Avieli, 2016; Klumbyté, 2010; Welz, 2015). Against this background, an ever increasing number of governmental and private institutions—from Ministries and business brokers to farmer’s consortia and food entrepreneurs—work to stabilise, promote, and manage the particularities of national foods and cuisines and the image of the countries themselves (Caldwell, 2002; Karaosmanoğlu, 2007; Hiroko, 2008). Heritagisation unpacks the social demarcating power of food, in both inclusionary and exclusionary ways. It also sets new agendas in which food embodies values and opens up space for contemporary claims on people, whether in terms of beliefs, social structures, and traditions, or in terms of political and economic strengths (Di Giovine & Brulotte, 2014). Submerged in a variety of interests, food as heritage challenges national understandings of heritage and identity formation as the cultural dimensions of foodways may act as solid bridges between local and global benefits. I adopt a broad working definition of food heritage encompassing all sets of food knowledge and skills considered by groups as shared legacies or common goods (Bessière & Tibère, 2010). Food heritage includes agricultural products, ingredients, dishes, and cooking artefacts. It also comprises the symbolic dimension of food (table manners, rituals), techniques, recipes, eating practices, and food-related behaviours and beliefs; and it extends to processes of selection, de-contextualisation, adaptation, and reinterpretation. It is, therefore, a historical, cultural, and social construction that combines “conservation and innovation, stability and dynamism, reproduction and creation” (Bessière, 1998: 27). As such, one can only understand food heritage by the role it has been granted and the interests it serves (Espeitx, 2004). In this regard, a great number of projects that put food at the centre of a triangulation surrounded by culture, identity, and economics have

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come to light. The leisure and tourism sectors take full advantage of this configuration. The ever-expanding eating out industry is driven by the growing number and type of ethnic restaurants, and by a gentrification of national cuisines based on the use of local, rare, and high quality ingredients distinguished by their origin and methods of production—as seen for Peru in Chap. 5. When traditional cuisines cater to the preferences and interests of tourists and the global elite, they become heritage cuisines (Sammells, 2014; Timothy, 2016). Private, public, and non-profit sectors also engage in strategies of food particularisation falling into the realm of heritagisation. The mechanisms at stake reveal an understanding of heritage based on the development and sustained use of traditional local foods, leading in some cases to large shifts in agricultural trade and in rural landscapes. Examples include the ‘rediscovery’ of ‘superfoods’ from the Global South (Katz & Lazos, 2017; Wilk & McDonell, 2020), the creation of gastronomic routes for tourists (Suremain, 2017), the implementation of Geographical Indications of origin (Parasecoli & Tasaki, 2011), and the restructuration of agricultural production systems to promote competitiveness of niche products (Ilbery & Kneafsey, 1999). Food heritagisation is also an area of contestation. For instance, the emotional and nostalgic interest in traditional and terroir products is to some extent a response to modernity and the sense of loss of contact with nature it triggers, which signals a potential loss of local foods and food cultures (Bérard & Marchenay, 2004; Contreras & Gracia, 2005; Pétursson & Hafstein, 2022). Resistance and contestation also appear to be fruitful routes for food heritage-making in the countries of the Global South. Such is the case in Latin America, where the valorisation of long-­ forgotten indigenous food practices strengthens identity in terms of cultural differences and self-determined development (Bak-Geller et  al., 2019; Rebaï et al., 2021; see Chap. 7). Finally, the increasing use of food as a power resource in the framework of international relations should be mentioned. As seen in the Chap. 5, gastro-diplomacy, the facet of cultural diplomacy that connects historical narratives with current gastronomic practices, showcases up-to-­ date food traditions with the aim of improving the reputations of countries and fostering global cultural and business relationships (Rockower,

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2012). On a similar scale, but on a different ideological basis, UNESCO plays a major role in this regard. Through inscriptions into the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage (hereinafter the ICH List), UNESCO champions a community-oriented and sustainable approach for the preservation and promotion of culture that is reframing the ways food is conceptualised, communicated, and commoditised. We see then that expressions of food heritage are diverse, heterogeneous, and competing; they are the subject of imagined origin stories and multiple valorisations pursuing different aims. Consequently, they are a source of legal disagreements, ideological confrontations, community tensions and displays of identity. The widespread nature of this phenomenon has attracted the attention of interdisciplinary scholarship. Anneke Geyzen (2014) speaks of the “heritage turn” in food studies to refer to the growing amount of research on initiatives connecting identity crises, attempts at re-identification, and cultural work around food and gastronomic milieus. In these initiatives, scholars have sustained and active participation (see Csergo, 2016; Medina, 2019). In Peru, obtaining UNESCO distinction for Peruvian cuisine is seen as the corollary of an ambitious developmentalist discourse promoted since the mid-2000s by governmental and private actors. The discourse has been analysed in depth in the previous chapter, yet it is good to remind that its premise is that Peruvian culinary culture, if based on a balance between tradition and adaptation to market forces, could bring positive economic impact to the country and lead to social reconciliation in a nation shaped by inequalities of race, class, and gender. Such a goal is laudable but also elusive if we consider that the history of Peru has been built upon systems of exclusion that keep rural populations impoverished and disenfranchised from rightful opportunities. Surprisingly, more than any other state program, discursive formations around food have successfully addressed the possibility of reducing Peru’s structural dualism. Rapidly appropriated by politics and the media, the country’s culinary triumphs were placed at the core of a project of national unity and celebrated as results and sources of horizontal partnerships, social inclusivity, and harmony. Granting Peruvian cuisine the UNESCO label became then a major opportunity to uphold the country’s unity and capitalise on the gastronomic boom in both monetary and imagistic terms.

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In the following, I engage with cultural heritage-making processes conducted by stakeholders and interest groups within UNESCO’s intangible heritage paradigm. By tracking the path of Peru’s cuisine to the ICH List and focusing on turning points during food’s shift from culinary to heritage status, I shed light on the political and economic forces that shape the meanings of food heritage. The focus is on the bureaucratic fabric of global heritage and the reasons and mechanisms through which authoritative actors seek to administer cultural resources. The views of grassroots and indigenous actors’ views, which were excluded from the initial debates on food heritagisation, will be the subject of Chap. 7. The voices included here are those of actors involved in producing the content of the documents supporting the nomination of Peruvian cuisine as UNESCO intangible heritage: representatives of the Ministry of Culture, scholars, and diplomatic representatives.5 Their perspectives are particularly useful in showing how, despite a discursive emphasis on cultural continuity and intercultural dialogue, the inclusion of food cultures into the UNESCO intangible heritage designation may operate as an elite-­ driven global competitive asset far more so than as a tool for cultural safeguarding and inclusive development. To illustrate this, the next sections provide the backdrop that led to the rise of food heritage awareness in Peru and an account of the evolution of the candidature of Peruvian culinary features to UNESCO’s ICH List.

Food and the UNESCO ICH List After the ratification of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (hereafter CSICH), nation-states for whom food was already relevant to their heritage and tourism began constructing narratives about their cuisines with the help of social scientists, tourism promoters, chefs, and culinary experts (Di Giovine & Brulotte, 2014). The culinary candidatures to the ICH List led to UNESCO’s decision to reinterpret the CSICH to include food practices. However, food heritage  As the majority of these informants are still holding public servant positions or working closely with state institutions, I chose to anonymise their names. 5

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additions to the list were only made after a period of lobbying. Indeed, until 2009, it seemed that food cultures would not fit into the ICH category. This was mainly due to the doubts of UNESCO officials in interpreting food as cultural heritage, and to local stakeholders’ misconceptions about what intangible heritage is, to whom, and how it should be addressed. When debating the inclusion of food-related elements within UNESCO, “experts highlighted the need to give a pivotal role to cultural and social processes associated with foodways without referring to the products themselves” (Bortolotto & Ubertazzi, 2018: 411). The CSICH was conceived as a “legally binding instrument which allowed for stronger representation of heritage expressions of the South, which placed communities and grass-roots initiatives at the centre of its activities, and which would strengthen the recognition of, and support for, heritage practitioners” (Rudolff & Raymond, 2013: 154). According to this, the criteria for inclusion of food in the ICH List should focus on the locality of the heritage under consideration and emphasise “the representation of foodways as ritual, cultural, and social expressions of a community” (Bortolotto & Ubertazzi, 2018: 411). Formulations of food as heritage, however, clearly exceeded the intentions of the Convention. The earliest food-related candidatures to the ICH List showed that the stakeholders’ focus was mainly on uniqueness, excellence, and superiority on the global scale. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy and renowned French chefs indicated that a “World Heritage” inscription would confirm the place of French cuisine as the “best gastronomy in the world” (Sciolino, 2008). Japan’s nomination was in part triggered by gastro-nationalism and competition with Korea (Cang, 2018). A nationalistic orientation is also present in the “People of Maize” dossier, the first-ever (but unsuccessful) food-related candidature, submitted by Mexico in 2005. Its strong focus on maize as a symbol of national identity revealed not only the risk of producing reified heritage susceptible to being easily appropriated by the food industry (Suremain, 2017), but also Mexican cuisine’s tendency to conceal ethnic heterogeneity by promoting a homogenous national narrative (Moncusí & Santamarina, 2008). In Peru, it has never been a secret that the inclusion of Peruvian cuisine on the ICH List promises to increase its growing international prestige (see Matta, 2011). Although the purpose of inscriptions are not to reward the quality of

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food items but to ensure its transmission from generation to generation, early formulations of food heritage attached greater importance to international standing and market development rather than to principles of typicality and representativeness, which are more in line with UNESCO’s interpretation of intangible cultural heritage (UNESCO, 2003). To summarise, we can say that UNESCO’s reluctance to consider food-related applications was due to the following: (1) The penchant of public opinion for confusing food culture with highbrow gastronomy; (2) The selection of a broad heritage corpus rather than specific ones; (3) The overall competitive climate between nations; (4) The fear of dealing with as many culinary inscriptions as the number of state parties, or becoming “a gastronomic court of adjudication” (Pilcher, 2008: 542). However, during the third session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage (Istanbul, November 2008), the delegations of Peru, Mexico, and France pushed for an external meeting of experts in order to dispel any doubts or fears. This event, held in April 2009  in Vitré, France, paved the way for food heritage nominations. In November 2010, France, a collective of Mediterranean nations (Spain, Greece, Italy, and Morocco), Croatia, and Mexico—who recovered from its failed 2005 attempt—all succeeded in their respective endeavours. The subsequent inscription of elements submitted by Turkey, Japan, and Korea established foodways as a sought-after heritage designation.6 Given the increasing importance of food in constellations of cultural, social and creative/productive activities, attempts to inscribe food-related heritage boomed and are now among the most mediatised. Even if, as Chiara Bortolotto and Benedetta Ubertazzi identify, “most do not make it to even the respective national inventories, such efforts reflect the enthusiasm for food-related ICH. Examples range from Belgian fries to the French baguette, from Confucian family cuisine to Spanish tapas, from German bread to Swiss raclette” (2018: 411). After the first successful nominations, Peru was poised to make its case for the coveted recognition. With a stabilised, growing economy, and a  Inscribed were the ‘Traditional Mexican cuisine—the Michoacán paradigm’, the ‘Gastronomic meal of the French’, ‘The Mediterranean Diet’, the ‘Gingerbread craft from Northern Croatia’ (2010), the Turkish ‘Ceremonial Keşkek tradition’ (2011), the ‘Kimjang, making and sharing kimchi in the Republic of Korea’, and the ‘Washoku, traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese’ (2013). 6

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relatively pacified society when compared to previous decades, Peru found, in food, an instrument of choice in facing the challenge of re-­ inventing itself among a world of nations. The national cuisine emerged as a potential vector of economic development, image building, and social inclusion. Supported by a sophisticated complex of cultural brokering by elite chefs and advertisement work by state agencies and tourism operators, the country was already on its way to become one of the world’s foremost culinary destinations (Cherro Osorio et  al., 2022; Nelson, 2016). It was also at that time when high-end versions of Peruvian cuisine began to cross borders in significant ways: Encouraged by the success of Acurio and other Peruvian chefs who had opened venues abroad, the Peruvian government incorporated restaurant creation as a central aspect of its cultural diplomacy (Wilson, 2013; Cánepa, 2019). At the local level, a diverse set of actors, public and private, started supporting farm-to-table schemes to (re)connect producers and consumers, thereby revaluing the role of farmers and peasants within the food system (Kollenda, 2019). This context jump-started the strategic push by political and entrepreneurial sectors into the fields of public diplomacy and soft power, with food at its core. Peruvian cuisine was already a source of enjoyment and praise for Peruvians and foreigners alike. The next step consisted, then, in consolidating the gains at a larger scale by becoming globally recognised heritage.

 he Slippery Road of Peruvian Cuisine T to UNESCO Peruvian food’s first incursion into the heritage field happened in 2007. Based on a Ministry of Culture report highlighting its roots in traditional knowledge and beliefs, its contribution to the world’s diet, and its high potential to attract tourism, Peruvian cuisine was declared a Cultural Heritage of the Nation. The definitive step to granting it global heritage recognition was undertaken shortly thereafter. In 2008, one year before foodways were agreed to be worthy of UNESCO endorsement, a nomination file for Peruvian cuisine to enter the ICH List was already in

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preparation. Although the Peruvian government has not made available any documents stating the goals and strategies behind this initiative, key informants from the stakeholder community informed me that the candidature should have met the following conditions: first, to develop a cross-cutting, holistic approach in order to ensure the national representativeness of the element and, second, to be submitted before the end of President Alan García’s mandate in July 2011.7 Unlike other inscription processes in which UNESCO State Parties ensured that public and private stakeholders linked to food production and consumption were represented (Cang, 2015; Tornatore, 2012), the task of inscribing Peruvian cuisine fell on a small number of actors. Following the standard diplomatic procedures of heritage nominations, the Ministry of Culture was responsible for the management of the nomination file. A first version of the document was ready in mid-2008, and thereafter sent for approval to the Permanent Delegation of Peru to UNESCO, the only valid interlocutor between the Peruvian State and the international organisation. After examination, the delegation did not agree to the proposal, and consequently opposed it reaching UNESCO’s office. In 2010 and 2011, a second document was prepared but, as we will see, the responsibility for this version was entrusted to different actors. This situation, which is one of the possible outcomes of complex deliberative processes such as heritage definitions, will be examined in detail with a view to elucidating contrasting conceptions of cultural heritage.

 he First Candidature to the ICH List: Balancing T Cultural Conservation and Development The first nomination file was under the Division of Intangible Heritage of the Ministry of Culture. It mobilised its research staff, formed by anthropologists, and named one external researcher as the head of the  This information was provided by a member of the Peruvian diplomatic delegation at UNESCO through an email exchange on January 23, 2014 (the same person mentioned when referring to the interview from July 7, 2011), and by the officer of the Division of Intangible Heritage of the Ministry of Culture during the interview of August 8, 2011. 7

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writing team, an anthropology professor from the Universidad Católica del Perú. Her designation raised controversy among prominent cooks and food scholars who considered themselves more qualified to complete the task. Having been dismissed the complaints did not produce results: Despite not having previous research experience on food cultures, the professor was confirmed in her role due to former collaborations with UNESCO in matters of cultural heritage nominations. Yet, when the Ministry of Culture called for her expertise, she was not particularly willing to accept the task. As she explained to me, she would have preferred not to be involved “in the making of a technical dossier [which] would unavoidably culminate in an invention of traditions”.8 The broad scope of the element to be inscribed—Peru’s national cuisine—the vagueness of the notion of “communities” within UNESCO’s participatory approach (Hertz, 2015), and the subsequent difficulties in providing written proof of the involvement of these communities as heritage practitioners and tradition bearers, a mandatory requirement for inclusion in the ICH List, were obstacles that justified her worries. The very question was: “from whom and how many signatures shall we collect?”, revealing thus a concern regarding heritage ownership. The professor finally accepted the Ministry’s proposal but, as she confided to me, she still had serious reservations about building national culinary heritage from scratch. With the aim of dispelling every form of ethical malaise, the writing team sought to introduce depth and complexity into the candidature’s statements. Several pages were produced to reflect both the dimension of the commonality of Peruvian cuisine and its role in the production of categories, hierarchies, and social distinction. In other words, this nomination file was a document with academic depth, which, beyond highlighting the shared meaning within the country’s existing foodways (Andean cosmology, food rituals, and food knowledge transmission patterns), also raised issues of power and hegemony, mechanisms at the root of social relations in societies with colonial histories. The main ideas in the first version of the dossier suggest a search for balance between the valorisation strategies of Peruvian cuisine and the  Interview, March 17, 2014 in Berlin, Germany.

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preservation of traditional features of local food cultures.9 Indeed, the document stresses the need to promote “traditional Peruvian food” in accordance with the interests of the custodians of traditional and indigenous knowledge, namely, Andean and Amazonian peasants. However, no particular community was mentioned as the main heritage practitioner: The strategy to justify community participation consisted only in asking to regional governments, the Peru’s Ecological Peasants Association, and members of the food productive chain to sign supportive documentation for the candidature. In the same vein and in order to prevent knowledge displacement, the dossier suggests that any emergent culinary trend or activity claiming to be derived from Peruvian food heritage must somehow be consistent with the existing cultural food patterns, as they are part of the living memory of the communities. Finally, the expected enhancement of gastronomic activities via the UNESCO recognition is also contemplated: the document argues that the rewards from the nomination should not only strengthen market mechanisms but also enable intercultural dialogue with traditional farmers and contribute to food security. The candidacy was, however, suspended. As I was told by an officer of the Intangible Heritage Department of the Ministry of Culture, the Peruvian diplomatic delegation at UNESCO requested not to submit the nomination file. The reasons for the interruption were manifold. First, the debate about the suitability of culinary heritage at UNESCO had not yet concluded—moreover, rumours had spread suggesting the French application would fail.10 Thus, in order to avoid rejection, the delegation recommended waiting for the results of the candidatures of France, Mexico, and the Mediterranean countries before going forward. Second, according to the delegation’s preliminary report from June 26, 2008, the file was too anthropological and cultural in its orientation, as well as being disconnected from practical issues related to safeguarding heritage. Third, the same report argued that the file contained many references to the internationalisation of upscale features of Peruvian cuisine, which could have been detrimental to the candidature. Finally, the delegation  The main content of the first dossier has been published in Cánepa et al. (2011).  Interview, Ministry of Culture, August 8, 2011.

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pointed out that the scope and contour of the element to be inscribed were not sufficiently delineated: Peruvian cuisine seemed to be an “all-­ inclusive” element, difficult to be measured as representative of a group. In this respect, the diplomatic delegation (possibly overlooking the government’s willingness to inscribe the national cuisine) expected the focus to be on one specific food-related practice, knowledge or technique.

 he Second Candidature: T The Conservation-­Through-Development Approach The candidature resumed two years later in 2010. By that time, the gastronomic boom was in full swing: Peruvian restaurants had opened in major cities around the world and the increasing admiration of Peruvian cuisine by nationals and foreigners alike was making the news almost every day. Such a context might have motivated the government to take advantage of it on many fronts. On the one hand, circumstances were favourable for promoting food culture as a conveyor of meaning, identity and national imagery, thus providing new drive to the country’s cultural policy and diplomacy. On the other hand, the widespread infatuation with Peruvian cuisine would have helpfully detracted attention from heated debates about transgenic agriculture in Peru, for which President García’s neoliberal administration was in support. The government’s attempt to nominate chef Gastón Acurio as Minister of Culture supports these hypotheses. Acurio, the leading spokesperson of the gastronomic boom has, since the mid-2000s, diffused a development-­oriented discourse about the potentialities of Peru’s agro-­ biodiversity. As seen previously, Acurio builds on his success as a celebrity chef to promote an idea of Peru that overcomes representations depicting the country as mystical, indigenous, exotic, and backward. To do so, he puts Peruvian cuisine into a cosmopolitan vision which promotes pride in traditions and native food resources, while attracting the attention and money of local and foreign foodies (García, 2010). Given his capability to formulate a discourse that interweaves entrepreneurial, cultural, and political agendas, the government hoped for him to lead the Ministry of

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Culture.11 However, independent journalists and critical public opinion interpreted this as an attempt to silence the critical voice of the chef during the debates over the entry of transgenic seeds into Peru.12 In any case, the chef declined President García’s offer, arguing that he was not interested in politics. It was then that anthropologist Juan Ossio was named minister of culture, on September 4, 2010 (almost one year before the end of President García’s mandate). He was seconded by journalist Bernardo Roca-Rey as vice-minister of cultural heritage and cultural industries. Judging by the number of Roca-Rey’s official and media appearances, during which he articulated correlations between Peruvian gastronomy, the increase of the gross domestic product, and the opportunities biodiversity offers to the country, one could say that Roca-Rey was the real minister. One example of his influence is that he was the first—and the only—vice-minister to be sworn in during an official ceremony. His prominence was not only due to the position he was assigned: as mentioned previously, Roca-Rey belongs to one of the most influential families in the country, the Miró-­ Quesada family, which owns Peru’s largest media group, El Comercio. Additionally, the vice-minister has long enjoyed a reputation as gastronome and cook, especially as the creator of Novo-Andina cuisine. Last, but not least, he is the founder of APEGA (the Peruvian Society of Gastronomy), a lobby and think-tank focused on food issues, composed of restaurant owners, experts in development studies, heads of culinary schools, and chefs. It would definitely be fair to say that Roca-Rey had many credentials and connections to run and promote the candidature project successfully. After that restructuring, the government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, delegated the execution of the project to other actors. If the Ministry of Culture was still decisive in the process, as it is an unavoidable institution within cultural diplomacy, the Department of Intangible Heritage was dispossessed of the dossier. Such a decision caused disappointment among the public servants of that office, as they saw their  See http://elcomercio.pe/politica/gobierno/alan-garcia-le-ofrecio-gaston-acurio-ministro-­ cultura-­2010-noticia-1673645, Accessed May 23, 2023. 12  As we will see in the next chapter, Acurio played a prominent role in a multi-sectoral mobilisation which forced the government to suspend the introduction of genetically engineered seeds. 11

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previous efforts dismissed and their competencies and authority undermined. The task of writing a new nomination file for inscription in 2012 was entrusted to members of the diplomatic delegation at UNESCO, while APEGA would act as a consultant. However, APEGA did far more than just support the delegation; it provided the candidature with a new rationale that prioritised heritage safeguarding. APEGA was a non-governmental association founded in 2007. It framed Peruvian food and foodways as vehicles for fostering national identity, social inclusion, and economic development all across the country. Despite its goals, APEGA’s direction only listed top-down professionals; there were no representatives of peasant communities nor of small-scale food traders. The association’s website stated that its mission would be accomplished by promoting the excellence of local agricultural inputs, safeguarding Peru’s biodiversity, and reassigning value to the role of small agricultural producers within food chains. Yet, closer inspection reveals that it was primarily concerned with promoting Peruvian cuisine internationally, attracting tourism, and producing value-added food products grounded on alleged sustainable principles. APEGA’s rationale was based on an intervention in the semantics of the noun gastronomy, which includes cuisine. More precisely, the association’s work rested on the equation of gastronomy with what in English is called foodways. Foodways designate the activities, attitudes, and behaviours associated with food in our daily lives. They include all the manners of food production, preservation, presentation, marketing, and trade. In Spanish, there is no translation for foodways; in Peru, people use instead ‘the gastronomic sector’ (sector gastronómico) to encompass the spectrum of food-­ related issues. APEGA’s emphasis on establishing a correspondence between cuisine and the sector gastronómico introduced a considerable shift in the tone of the candidature. If on the one hand, the association’s ideological line allowed for the possibility of listing food heritage with a national scope, on the other hand, the exchangeability of the meanings of Peruvian gastronomy and Peruvian foodways moved the focus from culinary practices representative of a group to foodways management, including the safeguarding of traditional food biodiversity. The notion of safeguarding therefore became related to that of sustainability, a notion which until recently in Peru was associated neither to the domain nor to

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the rhetoric of culture, but rather to ecology, biological sciences, and development. We will see below that the perspective on sustainability put into practice by APEGA corresponds to that denounced by critical theorists of development, who suggest that sustainability, as it is based on agendas of sustainable development, economic development, and growth, does not imply fundamental changes to society, patterns of decision-­ making, or power relations necessary to implement real social transformation (Escobar, 1995; Ferguson, 1990; Hopwood et al., 2005). In this specific context, sustainability is therefore understood as a tool of capitalist development attempting to link the (poor) periphery to the (wealthy) core by food niche markets as a solution to poverty and ‘backwardness’. As one of the writers of the nomination file explained to me, the position of APEGA and chef Acurio (one of the founders of APEGA) was preferred for defining the heritage object and safeguarding measures to be included in the document.13 The second file remains inaccessible, hence I cannot offer a precise analysis; I was told that the document still belongs to Peruvian diplomacy, and it is, therefore, confidential. I tried to contact APEGA officers to obtain non-classified insight, but they never replied to my requests for interview. However, I had the opportunity to talk to other decision-­ makers in the nomination process. The data I collected, coupled with the accounts provided by anthropologist María Elena García (2013), who succeeded in interviewing APEGA’s director, can appropriately infer the reasoning behind the Peruvian food heritage project. In February 2012, María Elena García met APEGA’s executive director, Mariano Valderrama, to speak about the association’s role in Peru’s gastronomic boom. But as she explains (2013: 510), highlights of the conversation were APEGA’s work on promoting culinary tourism and a recurrent “problem of hygiene” among the different foodways stages. Valderrama put the issue simply: the international appeal of Peruvian cuisine will suffer unless hygiene standards in restaurants and markets drastically improve. García also recounts that an organiser of Mistura under the pseudonym of Carlos explained to her that the producers attending the fair needed to show up clean and “appropriately dressed, 13

 Interview, July 7, 2011, in Lima.

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with either clean costumes [sic], or white aprons, but definitely not with dirty polleras14” (Carlos cited in García, 2021: 104). The concerns expressed by Valderrama and Carlos brought me to the interview I carried out with an officer of the Centre for Environmental Sustainability of the Universidad Cayetano Heredia (CES), which supported APEGA in matters of sustainable development. I requested the meeting to know more about the safeguarding measures that were included in the argument for the listing of Peruvian cuisine as an UNESCO heritage. On that occasion, I learnt instead that agricultural producers, mostly Andean people, were not complying with hygiene and presentation requirements during the gastronomic fairs in which they showcased the results of their traditional knowledge. Dirty hands and nails, passivity, and dilettante-­ like attitudes were reasons for criticism. [T]he other day there was a gastronomy and biodiversity fair in the Parque de la Exposición, organised by Conveagro [a union of farmers and graziers]… and it was a nice fair. You go on Friday and it’s wonderful, all the products are there. On Saturday there are less products, and on Sunday there is nothing. It’s a fair that doesn’t have enough supply for three days. You walk around the fair and you cannot taste anything because everything has already been sold out. Or [you see] that the hands, the nails of the persons who sell are dirty. These are issues that are still not well managed. That’s what Gastón [Acurio] means by standardisation. I mean, if you are hosting a three-day fair, make sure you have three-day supply. And if you have sellers, make sure they are not sleeping on the counters, that they have a [good] presence, that they attend to the public, that they are careful in their practices. (CES officer, interview July 15 2011)

The remarks of Valderrama and of the CES officer offer significant information about the concept of food heritage used by stakeholders. First, they show a deep disposition of compliance with international and urban market standards. Second, they suggest that the only cultural dimensions they identified in local foodways are incompatible with their

 A pollera is a big, colourful, and embroided flared skirt used in Andean regions of South America.

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understanding of cultural heritage, and are subsequently seen as challenges to overcome. “Let them to maintain their culture, but they should also be careful with the forms”, affirmed the CES officer. When it came to the particularities with which Peruvian cuisine might obtain heritage recognition, arguments resting on cultural dichotomies clearly came to light. The CES officer explained that Peruvian cuisine as a heritage object should rely “on its niche products, on traditional agriculture, on taking advantage of the diversity of products, and on its many agricultural techniques”. Her appreciation of the local/traditional was, however, followed by an interpretation that embraces the global/modern: her very idea was to “add value to the diversity that makes us [Peruvians] unique, and sell it as boutique products”. She then specified that the process of adding value should be accomplished by introducing a certain level of standardisation in agricultural production. The CES officer was not arguing for high levels of standardisation, such as those in use in mass and transgenic-based agriculture (to which the CES and the tenants of gastronomic boom are frankly opposed). Her concern was to ensure a minimum of predictability; otherwise, “you don’t know if you are going to harvest 100 yellow potatoes, 200 red, 300 green”. Production estimation would be just impossible, “because the way these crops are produced is inconstant; they are the result of… let’s say, a very traditional management”. During our meeting in Paris, a member of the Peruvian delegation at UNESCO expressed a similar concern when he referred to fishery activities and, particularly, to prawn farming, which provides the crucial ingredient of the cuisine of the region of Arequipa in South-western Peru. The officer was surprised at the lack of technology in prawn farming methods. He confided to me that he found it incomprehensible how the University of San Agustin in Arequipa has not yet made investments to develop “a super system to multiply by ten the number of prawns in Arequipa’s rivers”; a very productive system that, “additionally, does not pollute the rivers”.15 From this perspective, science and technology should concur not only with the preservation of one or more species but also to an exponential reproduction of prawns, in line with export-oriented aims.

15

 Interview, Peruvian Embassy in Paris, June 16, 2011.

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The above considerations show that what are described as the traditional dimensions of Peru’s foodways are merely considered impediments to development and modernisation. The importance accorded to the introduction of predictability in traditional (and less predictable) agricultural management, along with expectations on the increasing of productivity, makes clear that the nature of the heritage project changed substantially. Far from the initial demands for intercultural dialogue and inclusive development, Peruvian cuisine’s road to the ICH List finally favoured commitment to international markets. It is not my intention to advocate any particular approach to heritage, be it market or culture oriented. However, what is salient in the idea of heritage of the stakeholders of the second nomination file is the presence of a linear notion of ‘progress’ inseparable from distinctive performances in the global economy. Less evident, but equally significant, are the representations of alterity in the discourse of stakeholders. For instance, and as will be discussed below, the hygiene considerations with regard to the market performances by peasants reactivate cultural cleavages derived from colonial representations that infantilise and delegitimise indigenous populations (Slater, 2008). I should clarify that, in many cases, these representations are expressed unconsciously, as they have been internalised across generations; consequently, they must be considered independently from the good intentions professed by many development experts. “The time has come for [Peruvian] gastronomy to be recognised by UNESCO as an intangible heritage of the humanity. And we do not have the slightest doubt that it will”, said Gastón Acurio in March 2011 during the press conference announcing the candidature. Among the commentators present that day were Minister of Culture Juan Ossio, Vice-Minister Roca-Rey, APEGA’s director Mariano Valderrama, and journalist Raúl Vargas. Social inclusion, food chains, and the international renown of Peruvian gastronomy were the topics addressed. The event not only aimed to inform the public about the submission of the file titled “Peruvian Cuisine”, but also to invite citizens to participate in the online signature campaign Cocina Peruana para el Mundo—Peruvian Cuisine to the World—in order to provide the nomination with

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additional support. Indigenous women wearing traditional polleras performed a dance to open the gathering. Optimism was at its height.16 One year later, in March 5, 2012, the Secretariat of the CSICH sent a preliminary report to the Ministry of Culture. I obtained this internal, non-public document from one of my field consultants, in early 2014. The report provided technical advice on putting together the dossier and pointed out some of the issues outlined previously. The first was the lack of focus in the definition of the heritage object. Actually, the Secretariat indicated that the vast scope of the object makes it difficult to deliver a “clear, vivid, and simple description” of it. For UNESCO officers it was also challenging to understand how Peruvian national identity might be represented by Peruvian cuisine, if the latter was defined as a sum of regional cuisines. The inaccurate delimitation of heritage practitioners was mentioned as a direct consequence of this contradiction: if the inclusivity argument and the scope of the nomination “were more clearly defined, the practitioners could perhaps be more restricted”. In the opinion of the Secretariat, the safeguarding dimension also required revision. First, it was noted that the safeguarding measures appeared “overwhelmingly centred on the restaurant industry and on the mediatisation of popular chefs”. Second, the description of current efforts on safeguarding foodways and agricultural production was pointed out as having little relevance, as it was asked to provide information about the safeguarding plans that would require the support of UNESCO. Finally, the online campaign Cocina Peruana para el Mundo was regarded as irrelevant, as it “seems to be promoting a marketing and branding campaign for the Peruvian food industry”. The Secretariat invited the diplomatic delegation to revise the manuscript. The Ministry of Culture presented a new document a decade later but with different content. Before addressing the most recent attempt for inscription, it is useful to first interpret the findings above within the broader context of cultural and social governance.

 Sequences of this event are available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_FMJ9cQZgM, Accessed May 2, 2023. 16

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Power Asymmetries in Heritage-Making As we have seen, the heritagisation of Peruvian cuisine corresponds to an all-encompassing discourse on the need to preserve food diversity, local knowledge, and ecosystems through their articulation and incorporation as commodities into the global market. We should then consider food heritage-making as part of the broader debate on the entry of local features into global circuits, where they are given practical utility (either as commodities in trade or as signs in systems of representation) as well as universal value. The discussions and controversies that emerged in this process evoke the tensions that arise when local and formal knowledge get integrated into development-focused interventions. In such cases, practitioners and advocates of local and traditional knowledge formulate objectives in vindicatory terms, seeking to legitimise them and re-­establish their rights as communities vis-à-vis the premise of science, academia and the prevailing economic logic either by adapting to it, seeking alternative circuits, or rejecting it. Competing knowledges establish an arena for negotiations of power intersected by gender, class, and ethnic differences. Global governance organisations like UNESCO, although promoting culture and a global ethics based on a diversity-and-human-rights rhetoric, favour the preservation of local knowledge through (allegedly ‘slow’) economic dynamics over which they have no control. The myriad cultural tourism initiatives that have flourished with the UNESCO heritage label as endorsement provide examples of this (Di Giovine & Brulotte, 2014; Bak-Geller et al., 2019): UNESCO acts solely as nominator and regulator of heritage nominations, meaning that it ascribes and denies heritage status. In cases of misuse or overexploitation of the designation, UNESCO may issue warnings to state parties or even retract the granted status. The outcomes of tourism and other economic initiatives, either positive or negative, are not of its competence. Neither does UNESCO reclaim economic gains, nor is it accountable for the tensions and conflicts the implementation of these activities may cause in local communities. It is up to local actors of different size and power to deal with these concerns. This is a central issue, as bearers of local heritage and knowledge are the most vulnerable to folklorisation and cultural and economic dispossession.

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Clearly, APEGA and collaborators failed to foster commitment for building and sustaining a context that promotes intercultural dialogue and strengthens local knowledge systems so that farmers, agricultural producers, and other actors of the food chain, who identify as the actual heritage bearers, could have a voice in decisions on cultural change and maintenance. A mutual learning approach (Ramalingam, 2005) would have helped to avoid the pitfalls of imposing external knowledge and objectives into contexts where they might be not meaningful or, even worst, detrimental. Such an approach would have also contributed to embracing epistemic diversity (Molenaar, 2007) by recognising and integrating community-produced knowledge into the equation and, therefore, neutralising to some extent the historical power differentials existing between social groups in settler colonial societies. Putting this into practice is certainly no easy task, as it implies breaking with top-down approaches dominated by the jargon and technicalities of experts, ensuring the effective participation of underrepresented actors, and developing strategies that would allow for more than just short-term planning (Sarmiento Barletti & Larson, 2021). Yet none of the above occurred in the making of Peru’s culinary heritage: Questions of social inclusion and participatory engagement remained largely at the level of media rhetoric. Importantly, the stakeholders did not acknowledge the differentials in power, income, and social circumstances when determining why, by whom, for whom, and to what end heritagisation efforts should be conducted. They overlooked the fact that class, race, and gender shape heritage. The remarks of official stakeholders about the farmers’ lack of hygiene and commercial skills in food fairs are clear examples of this. They denote a vigilant attitude against practices and behaviours perceived as undesirable, inappropriate, and in need to be corrected; an attitude that follows a long tradition in Latin America of ethnic assimilation projects where Indians and mestizos were subjected to endeavours of modernisation and civilisation (García, 2021). Foodscapes, in particular food markets—places which allow for the display of attitudes towards filth, taboos, impurity, and (im)morality—were crucial to those projects in the early twentieth century (Weismantel, 2001; Camacho, 2014). Today, traditional or ethnic food festivals held in settler colonial nations have become the most common

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type, with Latin American countries offering well-documented examples of adoption of imposed values (Aguilera, 2016; Campos Quezada, 2018; García, 2021; Matta, 2021). In a similar drive for “cleansing” or “sanitizing difference” (García, 2021: 104), stakeholders played (again) upon “white fears” (Weismantel, 2001: xxvii) by invoking concerns of hygiene and safety. They did not attempt to understand the underlying reasons why farmers allegedly showed drowsiness at fairs and had dirt under their fingernails. They did not wonder whether the farmers’ fatigue was due to the additional effort it takes to bring themselves to the fairs and sell produce—farmers can hardly hire vendors to do the job for them. Nor did they consider that maintaining clean and polished fingernails may be the least of the concerns of people who work the soil on a daily basis. APEGA and collaborators simply blamed farmers for not acting ‘right’, which in this context means not enacting the role of entrepreneurs bestowed upon them. With culinary elites speaking for farmers and peasant communities, opportunities for equitable collaboration among all participants in the food chain were discarded from the outset. This has led to understandings of cultural heritage that benefit powerful actors and, certainly, added to the rejection of the candidature by UNESCO. Ideological biases and decision-making based on favourable circumstances have diverted Peruvian food heritage’s focus away from cultural diversity and, instead, to sustainability strategies driven by local and international trade. Such an approach envisions the safeguarding of food heritage by means of mechanisms of reproduction aligned with market logics. The path of Peruvian cuisine to the UNESCO ICH List has indeed shown how cultural and anthropological concerns delineated in the first application vanished to leave room for developmentalist objectives. More precisely, the initial willingness to recognise local and traditional food knowledge as the basis of Peruvian cuisine was replaced by a business-­ oriented program that prioritised propelling Peruvian food into world-­ class gastronomic circuits and selling it as cultural heritage. Under this premise, the presence of local communities as custodians of heritage has become practically unnoticeable—just as indigenous knowledge fades from the creations of high-skilled chefs. The inescapable materiality of food and its many connections to the concepts of cultural economy, identity, and belonging, along with the increasing use of foodways in

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international relations, have provided strong evidence of this shift in orientation. Aware of the many benefits to be gained by emphasising the national cuisine as exportable excellence composed of exportable excellent features, official stakeholders have placed the alleged interests of the entrepreneurial and competitive nation above those of the many people working as a part of the country’s food chain. Culinary elites have arbitrarily assumed that what is best for the food businesses of Peru is best for the society and its constituencies. Consequently, it is pertinent to ask whether it is possible to do anything fundamentally different in regard to effective grassroots participation and ownership within cultural heritage projects when the work of stakeholders is predominantly sponsored by state and private agencies’ agendas where functional responses require functional questions. It is not my intention here to idealise anthropologically oriented concepts of heritage—indeed, an anthropological UNESCO file does not necessarily ensure outcomes that benefit communities and local economies. Instead, I argue the need to further explore to what extent on-the-ground actors can actually be included in heritage management and decision-making. This concern is, of course, not new (Watson & Waterton, 2010); however, despite UNESCO’s particular attention to communities in the CSICH, it remains far from being resolved.

Inscribing Cebiche Culture. Lesson Learned? In the light of the foregoing evidence, it would be fair to say that the failure of the Peruvian cuisine nomination was basically due to the inability of stakeholders to abandon claims of outstanding value, rather than severity at the examination stage. Indeed, there is evidence that successful applications are mostly dependent on training, compliance to expert recommendations and guidelines, and benchmarking (Rudolff & Raymond, 2013; Cang, 2018; Da Silva, 2018). By this, I mean that with a better-­formulated argument, one hiding or masking the real intentions of stakeholders, the listing of Peruvian cuisine in the ICH List could have been successful. However, the changes in the dossier requested by UNESCO were so considerable as to practically invalidate any new attempts to inscribe Peruvian cuisine.

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In an official press release dated February 15, 2019, the Ministry of Culture announced that a multi-sectoral working group composed of representatives of seven ministries (Culture, Environment, Agriculture, Foreign Trade and Tourism, Production, Foreign Affairs, and Health) was preparing a dossier to, this time, nominate not Peruvian cuisine but a distinctive feature of it:17 “This is the first nomination of an element of Peruvian cuisine to the UNESCO list, and it will not be the last. We invite all Peruvians to proudly recognise our national identity, and to value the role of those who keep our cuisine alive” elaborated the then Minister of Culture, Rogers Valencia. The emphasis put on a single element, rather than on the whole culinary domain, suggests that stakeholders might have learned their lesson. The announcement states that the committee has collected and analysed the opinions and positions of over 20 food specialists from different disciplines in order to determine the nomination of the candidate. An announcement, posted on the Ministry’s Twitter page five days later, on February 20, revealed that the selected element was cebiche, a dish emblematic of Peruvian cuisine, which, by the early 2010s, had garnered international acclaim. The decision of choosing one national specialty was warmly embraced by social media commentators and the press, and was seen as a logical outcome due to the strong presence of cebiche at the tables and in the social imaginary of Peruvians. However, even before it was adopted, the idea of inscribing cebiche was already raising concern and criticism among other players in the culinary realm and in cultural diplomacy. On August 2, 2019, the Sociedad Picantera de Arequipa (The Picantera Society of Arequipa, hereafter SPA) issued a statement in the local newspaper El Pueblo to warn against the decision to inscribe one particular dish or a national cuisine rather than ‘a tradition’ on the ICH list.18 The  See https://www.gob.pe/institucion/cultura/noticias/25676-elemento-de-la-cocina-peruanapostulara-­a -la-lista-representativa-del-patrimonio-cultural-inmaterial-de-la-humanidad-de-­ unesco, Accessed May 9, 2023. 18  “It is clear that Peru’s application cannot be limited to one dish or a handful of recipes, nor can it cover all of the national culinary richness (as was intended to be done a few years ago), since it is a convention that privileges, precisely, specific cases of intangible heritage that combines ancestral knowledge and community practices with permanence over time”. See https://redaccion.lamula. pe/2019/08/15/propuesta-picantera-para-la-lista-del-patrimonio-cultural-inmaterial-de-la-­­ unesco/redaccionmulera/, Accessed May 22, 2023. 17

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statement also advised to consider for inscription the traditional eateries called picanterías (described below). One month later, on September 3, the weekly newsmagazine Caretas published a short article by Josefina Cano titled “Patrimonio vivo. La sabrosa batalla en UNESCO” (Living heritage. The flavorful battle at UNESCO) which endorsed SPA views. Upon first reading those pieces, I was given the impression of a regionalistic ploy, reviving the social myth that depicts the region of Arequipa, in southern Peru, as free from the class and racial divisions that have obstructed democracy and national identity within Peru (Chambers, 1999). In this mythology, Arequipa symbolises progress and a “solidarity not achievable at the national level” (Chambers, 1999: 2). It is not coincidental that in the plazas and markets of the city people hawk mock passports and bank notes of the “Republic of Arequipa”. Inscribing picanterías, a distinctive element of Arequipa’s food culture, precisely where the state has failed to do for the national cuisine, could have revitalised a sort of territorial pride. Yet, a closer examination of both articles shows that, far from constituting a provocation, the support for inscribing picanterías relies on a perceptiveness of current heritage ‘grammars’ as the pieces fit both the spirit of the CSICH and the existing scholarship and commentary on Arequipa’s foodways.19 The SPA is the association for the protection, promotion, and development of family-run taverns known as picanterías, and of the social life contained within them. The tradición picantera is described in the association’s webpage as “the most significant expression of the traditional food practices that characterise the city of Arequipa and its rural environment”.20 The article published in El Pueblo, besides pointing out the risk of rejection incurred by nominating food specialties—that is, inscribing material culture for intangible heritage recognition—urged the Ministry of Culture to support the candidature of the tradición picantera to the ICH List, since according to the SPA, if “there is a tradition in our country, due to its historical characteristics, cultural richness and validity in its respective communities, that can guarantee a successful

19 20

 On the latter, see Cornejo Velásquez (2006) and Alvarez (2016).  See https://sociedadpicanteradearequipa.pe/

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application, that is, without a doubt, the tradición picantera”.21 The SPA even proposed a potential title for the nomination file: “La tradición picantera peruana: los casos de las picanterías de Arequipa y Cusco y de los chicheríos de Piura” (The picantera tradition of Peru: the cases of the picanterías in Arequipa and Cusco and the chicheríos in Piura). This intention recognises that although Arequipa is the most well-known region for picanterías, the tradición picantera also exists in Cusco and Piura, in southern and northern Peru, respectively. Accounts of the existence of picanterías date from the sixteenth century (Cornejo Velásquez, 2006). Initially, they were called chicheríos, as they mainly served as places to drink chicha, an ancestral drink made of fermented maize, which contains roughly the equivalent in alcohol as beer. With the offer of food progressively increasing in chicheríos of Arequipa and Cusco, in particular that of chili pepper-based dishes called picantes, the name of these venues changed to what they are known as today. The food available in picanterías can fairly be described as traditional and local, as it is sourced from the region and is distinctly identified as Arequipeña, Cusqueña, or Piurana—never as Peruvian. The kitchens of picanterías are open and displayed around a wood-fire hearth, adding a convivial atmosphere amplified by rustic dining rooms with benches spanning large communal tables. The centrality of chicha and beer creates an environment conducive to lively conversation, even among strangers. Even though picanterías are still an emblem of Arequipa, many of them have closed down or been turned into restaurants offering regional food in modern settings. The text in Caretas argues that picanterías depend heavily on the agricultural, livestock, and fishing activities within the Arequipeña region, and that cooks rely on technical skills that has been passed down from generation to generation, such as grinding grains and spices with a batán,22 sun drying, smoking, and the making of jerky (charqui). It also mentions specific cultural features such as the significance of the tertulia picantera23 and the fact that picanterías offer a different dish every day of  Available at https://redaccion.lamula.pe/2019/08/15/propuesta-picantera-para-la-lista-delpatrimonio-­cultural-inmaterial-de-la-unesco/redaccionmulera/, Accessed May 22, 2023. 22  Kitchen utensil composed of a flat stone and a grinding stone. 23  In Ibero-American countries, tertulias are social events with political or artistic overtones. Composed of likeminded people, the gatherings are usually scheduled in public places such as bars or a restaurants, although some are held in private spaces. 21

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the week with the exception of weekends, when a full menu is available. The author of this piece took the time to learn what cultural heritage is really about. Yet she failed to address the gender dimension: Whereas in Peruvian cuisine male restaurant chefs play the leading role, the world of picanterías is ruled by women. Still, Cano, in a few paragraphs, managed to make a case for assigning heritage value to these eateries. The surge of picanterías as a potential element for ICH nomination provides an example both of contested cultural heritage (Silverman, 2010) and of what Amy Cox Hall (2019) has termed “heritage prospecting”, which refers to the ability of people to identify valuable cultural features in particular contexts and to attempt to exert control over them. Yet, picanterías advocates still have to wait to see their initiative succeed one day. On October 29, 2019, at the Third Gastronomic Forum of the Lima Chamber of Commerce, the representative of the Ministry of Culture Miguel Hernández officially presented the element submitted for inscription on the ICH List: “Practices and meanings associated with the preparation and consumption of cebiche, an expression of traditional Peruvian cuisine”.24 “Picanterías, representative spaces of Peruvian cuisine” was shortlisted together with “The festive cuisine of Peru” and “The culture of chili pepper in Peru”. In his presentation, Hernández provided a detailed account of the nomination process. This departed from the approach taken by APEGA, which was never made public knowledge. Another difference between the candidatures of Peruvian cuisine and cebiche is that, while the former sought to become the only and ultimate global heritage endeavour for the country’s food culture, the latter is considered the first step in a process for granting global recognition to Peruvian cuisine. This is why Hernández indicated that the shortlisted elements should not be forgotten but rather taken into consideration for future attempts of inscription. The main criteria of selection, however, had a similar scope in both candidatures: The element had to achieve national representativity, stress identity affiliation or Peruvianness, and enable conditions for its own  Available at https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=3052868801394690&ref=watch_permalink, Accessed April 30, 2023. 24

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development and for the safeguarding of cultural diversity. According to experts, cebiche would seemingly comply with these requirements: It is a specialty appreciated both in festive and family contexts; it is regarded as the national dish by the majority of Peruvians; it is a dish that, if canonical for many, is also open to innovation; and relies on both specific agricultural and traditional fishery practices, the latter of these qualifications is debatable. In the candidature, cebiche is described as “a traditional culinary dish prepared with raw fish marinated in lime, seasoned with chili pepper and salt and accompanied with locally grown produce, which makes the existence possible the existence of a quite large number of cebiche varieties”. This definition denotes diversity and a certain degree of malleability of the dish, which would therefore allow for the inclusion of diverse ingredients from the different regions of the country, also valorising both the producers and the knowledge they possess which has been transmitted through generations. Viewed in this way, cebiche becomes a cultural element that is “transversal to the Peruvian territory, so it strengthens mutual appreciation and respect between different communities, groups and individuals”.25 The working group led by the Ministry of Culture put emphasis on community participation. Unlike the candidature of Peruvian cuisine, which merely consisted in collecting signatures among as many people as possible, that of cebiche obtained the support of over 300 individuals from the food and agricultural sectors, among them members of agricultural associations, fishermen, researchers, chefs, cooks, cebichería owners, local authorities, and other public servants. The collection and validation of data was carried out through qualitative methods, including individual and group interviews, observations, and online workshops with fishermen, cebiche cooks, and food commentators in 16 regions of the country, as indicated by chef Adolfo Perret in his presentation at the Third  Information taken from a video and a preliminary slideshow of the candidature, available at the UNESCO website, https://f5vip11.unesco.org/en/files-2023-under-process-01248? include=slideshow_inc.php&id=01952&width=620&call=slideshow&mode=scroll#https:// ich.unesco.org/img/photo/thumb/16359-HUG.jpg and https://ich.unesco.org/es/expedientes-­ 2023-en-curso-01248?include=film.inc.php&id=66748&width=700&call=film, Accessed, 22 May 2023. 25

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International Gastronomy Conference “The Gala of Cebiche”, held online on September 8, 2021.26 The Ministry of Culture has made available some recordings of the workshops held for public consultation through the Facebook page Cocina Patrimonio, created in February 2019, which also includes short vignettes about the lives of individual fishermen and women. The candidature also addresses a series of safeguarding measures so as to tackle the challenges and risks faced by the heritage bearers. Taking a stance against the depredation of the marine ecosystem, it proposes an improvement of sea waste management, regular fishing bans, and the creation of preservation areas. To counter the high dependency on food intermediaries, it proposes higher levels of engagement and participation among associations of farmers and fishers. Wanting to reduce the risk of losing traditional food practices and ingredients, the dossier proposes to revitalise them through the organisation of food festivals and celebrations. Interestingly, the section that deals with the safeguarding measures looks very similar in nature to that of the candidature of Peruvian cuisine, as it also focuses on foodways management, the implementation of short, food supply chains, and the sustainability of the marine ecosystem. In the presentations by Hernández and Perret, there is no mention to endangered traditional culinary knowledge and skills, perhaps because interest in cebiche is alive and thriving, not only in Peru but also internationally, nearly as a gourmet delicacy. With regard to the rituality and beliefs associated with cebiche, neither the presentations nor the workshop discussions provide insightful inputs. They mention the religious festivity of San Pedro, patron saint of fishermen, an annual celebration organised by artisanal fishers and in which cebiche is the most consumed specialty. However, a high consumption of cebiche during the event does not account for any ritual centrality of the dish. The cebiche candidature proponents put instead a particular emphasis on the threatening of marine biodiversity and artisanal fishery. Yet this  Available at https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=21436481740 5287, Accessed April 25, 2023. 26

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call for alarm, although well-intentioned, contradicts data showing that conservation initiatives in the realms both of fishery and of the culinary profession are well established in the country (López de la Lama et al., 2020). For instance, cebiche has been at the core of recent environmental campaigns, such as that called “No quiero esto en mi cebiche” (I don’t want this in my cebiche), which fights against the increasing presence of micro-plastics in the sea. This evidence, together with the fact that white-­ fleshed fish used to prepare cebiche are less likely to ingest micro-plastics (Irons, 2022), undermines the urgency of the endangerment claims proposed by heritage stakeholders and therefore exposes the new candidature to criticism by UNESCO officials. The selection of cebiche to represent Peruvian foodways has led authoritative voices to express sharp and valid contention. Take the instance of Manuel Rodríguez Cuadros, an experienced Peruvian diplomat and former Ambassador of Peru to UNESCO between 2012 and 2019. For him, neither the praise of cebiche among Peruvians, nor the development of artisanal fishery, nor family farming are relevant or pertinent means with which to typify cebiche as intangible culture. In a book chapter in which he analyses the ICH Convention in regard to food inscriptions, Rodríguez Cuadros (2020) elaborates that for the purpose of ICH candidatures it is of no relevance that the chosen element is strongly rooted locally or originates from a “marvellous biodiversity”. What matters, he argues, is the knowledge, techniques, cultural representations, and the festive and spiritual dimensions associated with the element. In his view, the knowledge and skills involved in cebiche preparation, as well as the historical and cultural depth of this practice, are scarce in comparison to other culinary cultures existing in the country (indeed, cebiche is a post-Columbian specialty whose basic recipe can be made with only three ingredients: fish, lime juice and chili pepper). In the same piece, the diplomat extends his disapproval beyond the selection of cebiche to point out a common rationale behind the food-related candidatures formulated by Peru: one that seeks to placate the economic sectors that have supported the boom of Peruvian cuisine. I would add to Rodríguez Cuadros’ points that the candidature of cebiche symbolises the supremacy of the (white) city and its cosmopolitan ideals over the rural world.

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Despite the debate and criticism surrounding this initiative, the dossier “Practices and meanings associated with the preparation and consumption of cebiche, an expression of Peruvian traditional cuisine” has done better than its predecessors, since it reached the examination phase, in which the UNESCO Committee reviews the applications and makes its preliminary selections. The candidature surrounding this fish specialty has, therefore, a high probability for being inscribed on the ICH List by the end of 2023.

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M.  Skey & M.  Antonsich (Eds.), Everyday nationhood: Theorising culture, identity and belonging after banal nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan. Ichijo, A., & Ranta, R. (2016). Food, national identity and nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan. Ilbery, B., & Kneafsey, M. (1999). Niche markets and regional specialty food products in Europe: Towards a research agenda. Environment and Planning A, 31(12), 2207–2222. Irons, R. (2022). Ceviche revolution: Coastal cholera, marine microplastics, and (re)fashioning identities in postcolonial Peruvian gastropolitics. Gastronomica, 22(4), 10–19. Karaosmanoğlu, D. (2007). Surviving the global market: Turkish cuisine “under construction”. Food, Culture & Society, 10(3), 425–448. Katz, E., & Lazos, E. (2017). The rediscovery of native ‘super foods’ in Mexico. In B.  Sebastia (Ed.), Eating traditional food. Politics, identity and practices. Routledge. Klumbytė, N. (2010). The Soviet sausage renaissance. American Anthropologist, 112(1), 22–37. Kollenda, H. (2019). From farm to the table: Productive alliances as a pathway to inclusive development in Peru. Anthropology of Food, 14. https://journals. openedition.org/aof/9992 Lacoste, P., Jiménez, D., Castro, A., Rendón, B., & Soto, N. (2013). A bi-­ national appellation of origin: Pisco in Chile and Peru. Chilean Journal of Agricultural Research, 73(4), 424–429. López de la Lama, R., De la Puente, S., & Valdés-Velásquez, A. (2020). Bringing sustainable seafood back to the table. Oryx, 54(4), 520–528. Matta, R. (2011). Posibilidades y límites del desarrollo en el patrimonio inmaterial. El caso de la cocina peruana. Apuntes: Revista de Estudios sobre Patrimonio Cultural, 24(2), 196–207. Matta, R. (2021). Documenting the UNESCO feast: Stories of women’s “empowerment” and programmatic cooking. Social Anthropology, 29(1), 188–204. Medina, F. X. (2019). Alimentación cultura y patrimonio en el área mediterránea. In S. Bak-Geller, R. Matta, & C.-É. de Suremain (Eds.), Patrimonios alimentarios. Entre consensos y tensiones. El Colegio de San Luis & IRD Éditions. Mitchell, J. T., & Terry, W. C. (2011). Contesting pisco: Chile, Peru, and the politics of trade. Geographical Review, 101(4), 518–535.

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Molenaar, H. (2007). Raising the veils of aid: Development and diversity. In B. Haverkort & S. Rist (Eds.), Endogenous development and bio-cultural diversity. Compas. Moncusí, A., & Santamarina, B. (2008). Bueno para comer, bueno para patrimonializar. In M. Alvarez & F. X. Medina (Eds.), Identidades en el plato. Icaria. Nelson, V. (2016). Peru’s image as a culinary destination. Journal of Cultural Geography, 33(2), 208–228. Parasecoli, F., & Tasaki, A. (2011). Shared meals and food fights: Geographical indications, rural development, and the environment. Environment and Society, 2(1), 106–123. Pétursson, J. Þ., & Hafstein, V. T. (2022). Stirring up Skyr: From live cultures to cultural heritage. Journal of American Folklore, 135(535), 49–74. Pilcher, J. (2008). The globalization of Mexican cuisine. History Compass, 6(2), 529–551. Porciani, I. (Ed.). (2020). Food heritage and nationalism in Europe. Routledge. Ramalingam, B. (2005). Implementing knowledge strategies: Lessons from international development agencies. ODI Working Paper 244. Overseas Development Institute. Rebaï, N., Bilhaut, A. G., de Suremain, C. É., Katz, E., Paredes, M., & (Eds.). (2021). Patrimonios alimentarios en América Latina: recursos locales, actores y globalización. IRD Éditions. Rockower, P. (2012). Recipes for Gastrodiplomacy. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 8(3), 235–246. Rodríguez Cuadros, M. (2020). Los saberes, técnicas y representaciones de la cocina y gastronomía como patrimonio cultural inmaterial: el caso del Perú. In S.  B. Guardia (Ed.), Gastronomía peruana. Patrimonio cultural de la humanidad. Universidad San Martín de Porres. Rudolff, B., & Raymond, S. (2013). A community convention? An analysis of free, prior and informed consent given under the 2003 Convention. International Journal of Intangible Heritage, 8, 153–164. Sammells, C. (2014). Haute traditional cuisines: How UNESCO’s list of intangible heritage links the cosmopolitan to the local. In R. Brulotte & M. Di Giovine (Eds.), Edible identities: Food as cultural heritage. Ashgate. Sciolino, E. (2008). French cuisine, exalted by chefs as a world heritage treasure. The New York Times. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://www.nytimes. com/2008/09/24/travel/24iht-­24heritage.16436516.html Silverman, H. (2010). Contested cultural heritage: A selective historiography. In H. Silverman (Ed.), Contested cultural heritage. Springer.

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7 Grassroots Gastro-Politics

Indigenous Foodways and Heritage (Counter-) Politics “The only ones who forced the Empire to give in were the cooks”, said scholar and activist Grimaldo Rengifo in a 2011 interview in his office in Lima.1 Rengifo is a founding member of the Proyecto Andino de Tecnologías Campesinas (PRATEC), a non-governmental organization that advocates for the resurgence of indigenous Andean worldviews, and which has made native foodways one of its spearhead initiatives.2 I approached PRATEC to enquire to what extent rural and peasant communities have contributed to and taken advantage of the craze over food in Peru. What Rengifo referred to in our conversation as “the Empire” are agrochemical and agricultural biotech companies, namely the now defunct Monsanto, which had been lobbying for years in Peru for legislation friendly to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). “The cooks” are the star chefs of the gastronomic boom, and from the confrontation between “the Empire” and “the cooks” came a moratorium signed in 2011 that banned GMOs until 2035.  Interview, July 20, 2011.  https://pratec.org/wpress/sample-page/

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Rengifo’s statement is inflated but not wholly devoid of truth. The negotiations over the entry of GMOs had been initiated many years before 2011 among experts appointed by the Peruvian state and biotech representatives (see Martinez & Pinzás, 2014; Dondanville & Dougherty, 2020). As small scale farmers, activists, academics, unions, and the media stood mostly at the margins of the process, it seemed that the pro-GMO camp would eventually prevail. However, from 2007 onwards, a greater participation of civil society started to redress the imbalance, with chefs and agro-ecological consortia occupying the frontlines of this response. This expanded a discussion until then held solely between scientists and politicians to a much wider audience, with the result mentioned above. Rengifo, through his statement, wanted to bring up the role of chefs, and Gastón Acurio in particular, in recruiting the media and all people concerned with the future of Peruvian cuisine to the anti-GMO cause. The relevance of food in Peru’s recent political history was also addressed by indigenous activist Tarcila Rivera. She is the director of Chirapaq, an indigenous-led association dedicated to promoting the assertion of identity and indigenous rights in Peru.3 Although Chirapaq’s overall stance on the gastronomic boom is very critical (see García, 2013), Rivera acknowledged, in a 2014 interview,4 the role of Acurio in entrenching food and cuisine, including indigenous foodways, into the collective consciousness of the country. She elaborated on this by highlighting the vindicatory tone used by Acurio and other chefs of the boom in their appearances in the media. This, in her view, contributed to an increase in self-awareness and self-esteem of Andean people who, like her, have suffered racial abuse in Lima. Interestingly, her accounts of discriminatory episodes made reference to food: Rivera recounted how Andeans were mocked for eating mote5 and insulted as people who smell like cheese. While both activists applauded how young, white chefs from privileged milieus ventured out of their comfort zone to look at the rural world, they were also careful to point out the limitations of such a  https://chirapaq.org.pe/en/  Interview, December 8, 2023. 5  Mote corn is made from dry corn that is peeled by soaking and cooking it with calcium oxide. It is mostly eaten in Andean areas. 3 4

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sensitivity. Rengifo said that for the cooks to redirect their concern from edible biodiversity to cultural diversity is “to ask too much of them”, as he considers them as culturally too removed for that. To him, addressing and embracing cultural diversity is something that the politics of food, neither through commercial promotion nor through heritagisation, cannot achieve alone. Rivera expressed a similar view by affirming that the benefits of the gastronomic boom would never reach beyond Lima unless the Peruvian state acknowledged the contribution of native cultures as something valuable and crucial to the livelihoods of rural communities. Only then, she explained, would indigenous communities stop being perceived as those who create and sustain culture only for others to extract it. Clearly, Rengifo and Rivera’s views diverge from that of the official food heritage proponents, described in the previous chapter. The following pages delve deep into the criticism expressed above. They are an attempt to do justice to the views indigenous and rural people have about their own food cultures, views that so far have received little recognition in food-related development policies and cultural heritage declarations. The argument I present here emerges from critical engagement with food heritage nominations within the framework of the CSICH established by UNESCO. As shown in Chap. 6, the CSICH is among the most powerful international instruments through which states transform their past and present cultural specificities into resources to meet contemporary demands. Food-related heritage has become one of their most publicised and controversial outcomes. Such a context is suitable to enquire beyond debates on the superiority of some cuisines over others and to understand to what extent these international nominations respond to claims of their being grounded in local management of food. The scholarly context in which I have worked is that of critical heritage studies, which calls for exploring the real consequences of heritage-­ making in people’s lives and, therefore, asks for heritage to be examined beyond “the feel-good statements of UNESCO and state heritage agencies about expressing common humanity and universal values and other empty statements” (Smith, 2012: 538). The CSICH encourages nation-states to engage and involve local communities. However, it rarely achieves this due to the difficulty of forming sound ‘heritage communities of practice’, that is, groups of individuals

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and stakeholders of diverse backgrounds cooperating for the sake of heritage interests, who also seek to capitalise on a variety of other economic, political, and social opportunities made available through heritage-­ making (Adell et al., 2015). The fact that interests are not always aligned means that despite the redistributive ethics that heritage agencies usually grant to the notion of cultural heritage, vulnerable populations such as minorities, indigenous groups, and rural communities—the supposed beneficiaries of heritage projects claiming social inclusion—may suffer from marginalisation after the implementation of heritage policies in their localities (see Giguère, 2006; Salazar, 2010; Hauser-Schäublin, 2011). Such outcomes should not come as a surprise as international organisations, and UNESCO in particular, recognise that national governments maintain sovereign rights to and control of their resources and serve as their primary and often only interlocutors. This results in “the strange policy phenomenon of states being asked to ‘apply’ ‘bottom-up approaches’ that are community-driven” (Coombe & Turcott, 2012: 296). Food heritagisation has not been exempt from these situations. On the contrary, the entry of food and culinary cultures into heritage frameworks such as the CSICH has unveiled and prompted food’s potential to convey national and private interests within the fields of entrepreneurship and public diplomacy (see Zhang, 2015). Governments’ competing interest in obtaining rewards from UNESCO—alongside the bureaucratic imperative to produce applications of fewer than 20 pages— encourages reductionist views of food cultures, which evolve towards materiality and accumulation rather than towards immateriality and transmission. As shown in the previous chapter, almost every UNESCO food heritage nomination has been supported by backstage policy-­ making aimed at marketing valuable versions of national cuisines and ethnic food products (see also Pelletier, 2012; Sammells, 2014). UNESCO nominations have also provided evidence that food cultures can hardly be appraised solely in terms of intangible heritage, which effaces much of their complexity. Food travels across categories that belong to the registers of tangibility and intangibility: Food can be defined as a dish or a recipe, an agricultural product or a ritual object, a basic need for survival or an item of social distinction, a ticket to the future or an object of nostalgia. Governments, NGOs, and individual actors have understood this, as they are keen to integrate cultural, traditional, and humanist values

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provided by heritage labels to justify their own programmes. However— and the treatment given by media to UNESCO nominations counts as a proof of this—the definitions of food heritage that prevail are those which resonate with a nation’s prestige and market agendas. Indeed, the most common idea of food heritage—exemplified by the attempt to inscribe Peru’s cebiche, presented in Chap. 6—is that of one national dish served in (upscale) restaurants. Exploring the bureaucratic fabric of food heritage mostly confirms the perspective of historian Julia Csergo (2016), who states that intangible heritage in the framework of UNESCO is a global governance tour de force. Yet, the unfolding heritagisation of food has made the food itself the site of identity and political agency, thus allowing for the emergence of a large amount of initiatives and efforts focused on conveying the cultural dimensions of food. For this reason, I seek to provide space in the discussion for indigenous views on preserving and marketing food cultures that are often omitted and misinterpreted throughout mainstream heritage making. My endeavour aligns with research which explores local and alternative understandings of the management of cultural resources. It adds to the body of critical research that takes an outsider perspective by exploring independent heritage-making activities driven by minority, ethnic, and other (sub)cultural groups and individuals, as well as to the existing literature on the ways in which culture and biological diversity intersect (see Ashley & Frank, 2016; Bigenho & Stobart, 2016; Geismar, 2013; Nazarea et al., 2013; Robertson, 2016; Throsby & Petetskaya, 2016). Furthermore, it engages with the work of globalised movements and organisations that champion food sovereignty, such as the Vía Campesina, the International Institute for the Environment and Development (IIED), and Slow Food’s Terra Madre (see Desmarais, 2007; Pimbert, 2009; Siniscalchi, 2023). This is accomplished by promoting the revitalisation of traditional food cultures, local markets, and short food supply chains as alternatives to neoliberal policies that place hope in global trade to solve the world’s food problem (Altieri & Toledo, 2011). Finally, it connects with studies exploring the way in which rural and peasant communities address claims about the definitions of traditional foods and reconfigure their agri-food systems in response to social, economic, and ecological pressures (see, for instance, Frank, 2011; Turner et al., 2016).

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To support my point, I will consider examples of fieldwork conducted in Peru among peasant communities of the Andes and the Amazon. Although the term heritage was never expressly mentioned by my field consultants, I could identify in their discourse and practices themes that bore a striking resemblance to those highlighted by heritage agencies: Issues such as memory, tradition, transmission, self-determination, knowledge, and sustainability emerged when they reflected on food. There is therefore much to be gained from bringing into focus the divergent ways in which different organised groups work to (allegedly) similar ends, and in particular how the initiatives of less-powerful groups may not always be given a voice. What follows focuses on the indigenous standpoints that have been neglected during the attempts to inscribe Peruvian culinary cultures into the ICH List. By uncovering the implicit discourses embedded within documents and application forms, Chap. 6 has shown how the process through which the initial understanding of Peruvian cuisine was transformed: We have seen that, from being considered representative of a diverse cultural heritage and thus as something that the many peoples of Peru could offer to the world as their legacy, the application procedure turned Peruvian cuisine into quite a different entity, one founded on market-oriented development, the ‘flag-waving’ of a national cuisine, and the elite’s discourses on market-based biodiversity preservation. The heritage endeavour ended up favouring market competition and the stardom of white male and mestizo chefs, while leaving traditional knowledge of food, culture, and biodiversity to fade into obscurity. Although concerned about ecosystems and the lives of fishermen as cultural bearers, the attempt which centred around cebiche still shows an imbalance between commitments to cultural diversity and commitments to economic priorities and culinary grandeur. Both candidatures therefore reflect the interplay of global imaginaries, stereotypes and hegemonies, related to what anthropologist Michael Herzfeld (2004) calls a “global hierarchy of value”, which may be understood as the expression of a neoliberal, occidentalist moral economy which asserts that heritage, as a lever for development, is intrinsically good and appears wherever we decide it may be found (Adell, 2011).

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Yet, rather than making a political statement, I wish to address two topics. The first is that global cultural actors and indigenous communities have sought to defend their own objectives and concerns regarding food within international, trans-scalar, and interconnected networks and forums to varying degrees of success despite having evolved in parallel ontologies and epistemologies. Second, we should refrain from idealising indigenous communities as capable of managing their resources if only the development sector would stop ‘interfering’, and instead acknowledge that ‘the alternative’ intersects and sometimes entangles with the mainstream, and is affected in varying degrees by uncertainties, disagreement, and disruption. I draw data for this chapter from two sources: My own ethnographic work and that of others. The empirical research is based on a series of seven short fieldwork stays (up to one week each) between 2012 and 2016 in rural Andean and Amazon areas of Peru. They consisted of participant observation, conversations, and recorded interviews with peasant farmers as well as with members of PRATEC/Waman Wasi, Urpichallay, and ANDES, all of which are intellectual activist organisations committed to promoting cultural resurgence through the valorisation of traditional agricultural practices. These NGOs have criticised and adapted the language of global cultural policy to (re)articulate international objectives and norms in a fashion that serves the production of indigenous, social, political, and economic imaginaries. The following sections present an overview of the context of the increasing yet fragile recognition of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), some initiatives to preserve less mainstream food cultures in rural Peru, and the challenges these pose to both local organisations and communities.

Indigenous Appropriations of Global Cultural and Environmental Agendas Peru’s economy continues to be shaped by two historical trends: The transfer of European technology and social organisation and a deep-­ seated disdain for indigenous populations, as exists in most societies with

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ancient civilisations, ecological diversity, and colonial pasts. This has resulted in instrumental and extractive approaches to the land, which are characterised by the neglect of indigenous people’s knowledge and institutions and by considering only the traditional ecological knowledge that facilitates the collection of goods for export (Agrawal, 2002). Such approaches, although challenged by over four decades of global dissemination of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, are still dominant or at least pervasive. In this vein, Rosemary Coombe suggests that the early framing of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), today recognised as one of the more holistic and ‘progressive’ multilateral treaties, attempted to posit biological diversity as a ‘resource’ whose conservation is better achieved by first making it accessible to others before converting it into goods and services with monetary value: Material transfer and access and benefit-sharing agreements, community mapping exercises, TEK databases, germplasm banks, species inventories, participatory monitoring of subsistence activities, and biocultural protocols were all neoliberal ‘technologies’ forged to render local socioecological life legible to a greater range of actors (universities, scientists, anthropologists, supportive NGOs, and their donors). (Coombe, 2016: 259)

Though useful and critical in many regards, these technologies have stimulated market transactions as well as mechanisms of dispossession such as the corporate sequestration of traditional ecological knowledge and thus represent the risk of undermining the world-views, autonomy and sovereignty of indigenous communities. However, since the late 1980s CBD negotiations relating to TEK have evolved into a global platform for insisting upon alternative understandings of biodiversity rooted in basic ways of seeing, feeling, and perceiving the natural world and its inhabited ecosystems. Scientists in alliance with indigenous and peasant representatives have increasingly criticised the Western metrics used to represent biodiversity as failing to adequately grasp the differences in perception that TEK should encompass (Coombe, 2016). Ultimately, these actors succeeded in incorporating biocultural perspectives comprising “the dynamic, interdependent complex of relationships linking human populations, ecosystems, non-human species

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and their environments” (Turner et al., 2016: 3). The term biocultural stresses the inseparable links between cultural and biological diversity so as to enhance livelihood opportunities and promote community-­ conserved areas, ethical codes for research, culturally appropriate forms of knowledge documentation, indicators for impact assessment, specific regimes drawing upon customary law, and cultural resurgence agendas (Buergin, 2015). Biocultural relationships are manifest in local and traditional food systems, as they endure through a mixture of management practices that rely on the linkages between biodiversity, culture, memory, spirituality and livelihoods, and develop in relation to local environmental fluctuations throughout millennia (Barthel et al., 2013). The late 1990s saw the consolidation of what Reiner Buergin (2015) termed the “biocultural turn” in environment and development discourses: Biocultural diversity and biocultural heritage became well-­ established conservation approaches within development policy and practice circles. Since then, institutions with globally framed interests in the conservation, management, and use of natural resources on the one hand, and local communities claiming lands, local resources, particular identities, and different ways of living on the other hand, share stages and platforms to express, defend, and negotiate their views on conservation, development, and control of resources. The biocultural turn implies indigenous communities have to face both new opportunities and threats as such forums may not always provide the degree of political autonomy that these groups seek. Garrett Graddy, for instance, indicates that protections such as the CBD are tools of international, environmental governance which are subject to national legislation. Consequently, such mechanisms “often exclude indigenous groups such as those in Peru who have historically been and, in many places, continue to be, ideologically and politically at odds with their government” (Graddy, 2014: 20). Irène Bellier (2013) points out that the participatory model within the United Nations’ resolutions provides indigenous people with instruments, such as the right to consultation, and a voice in decision-making processes while at the same time they transform indigenous leaders into “convenient interlocutors”, thus restraining their potential for contestation. Further criticism argues that neither the emergence of

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indigenous movements and networks nor that of global legal frameworks can guarantee the principle of self-­determination that bestows the rights of indigenous people to decide how to use and benefit from their knowledge. It suggests that indigenous people’s capacity to secure land and knowledge systems relies on their political skill at the national level and the support they are able to receive from civil society organisations, international NGOs, and local elites orientated towards the achievement of equality (Bellier & Préaud, 2012). If most of these global governance mechanisms were originally designed to provide transparent information to support eventual market transactions, they were soon re-articulated as a means to assert local rights and responsibilities, enable reflexivity of goods, values and norms, and express new aspirations and desires. Evidence from throughout the world suggests that the propagation of global instruments for heritage protection and promotion has encouraged communities to understand both local biodiversity and their traditional agricultural knowledge as a form of biocultural heritage and to develop unique regulatory protocols (Coombe, 2016; Forsyth, 2015; IIED, 2013; Turner et  al., 2016). Articulations of global governance toolkits and community self-determination combine in alternative eco-centred, sustainable, intercultural initiatives, and paradigms to revitalise indigenous communities (Apgar et al., 2009; Delgado & Escobar, 2006). The next sections address the collective work between peasant communities and the NGOs PRATEC/Waman Wasi, Urpichallay, and ANDES. Their activities have developed in the context of neoliberal agriculture (Brannstrom, 2009) and the erosion of biological and cultural diversity, with the goal of providing alternatives to the multiple pressures affecting rural populations in Peru, such as the aggressive commercialisation of ‘improved’ seeds and agrochemicals, bio-piracy, and top-down strategies of technology transfer. Although they appear to work in a similar manner and share the same objectives, ideological differences exist in the way these organisations approach the transformations occurring in rural communities and in their strategies to secure the vitality and inventiveness of indigenous food cultures.

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F ood, Memory, and Politics in the Peruvian Western Amazon Despite comprising more than half of the country and an enormous amount of biodiversity, Amazonian foods are still struggling to become part of Peru’s cosmopolitan food imaginary. Tourists and local urbanites alike may praise renowned dishes such as cebiche and lomo saltado, from the country’s coastal zone, and pachamanca, from the Andes, but know much less about food from the Amazon. However, efforts to raise awareness are occurring at the very local level. During my visits to the region, I was hosted by members of the NGO Waman Wasi (‘the home of the falcon’ in Quechua) who took me to villages with Quechua-Lamista populations. Quechua-Lamistas form the third-largest Amazonian ethno-­ linguistic group in Peru, composed of around 30,000 individuals who mostly inhabit the province of Lamas. Ninety percent are peasants who produce coffee, cocoa, beans, manioc and plantains in small plots called chacras. Their second most profitable activity is subsistence hunting (INEI, 2010). Since 2002, Waman Wasi has supported the cultural affirmation of Quechua-Lamistas from Lamas with an emphasis in biodiversity, small-­ scale agriculture, intercultural education, and ancestral practices. The NGO is a smaller, sister organisation of Lima-based PRATEC, which, since 1987, has promoted decolonial thought and a radical critique of Western epistemologies. Supported by progressive and culturally sensitive European and North American funding institutions as well as critical scholarly and activist networks (Apffel-Marglin, 1995; Gonzales, 2015), PRATEC/Waman Wasi advocates cultural resurgence and affirmation through accompaniment of Andean communities to simultaneously weaken ‘development’ (seen as an external top-down imposition) and strengthen indigenous life (Apffel-Marglin, 2002; Ishizawa, 2009). The upper part of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest has had a hectic history, wrought with pressing social issues. Due to the region having an ecosystem favourable to agricultural development, political and productive elites have long treated it as an economic colony suited to the extraction and provision of food. The area has gone through a succession of

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economic cycles based on extractive and predatory activities (the harvesting of rubber and wood) and monoculture agriculture (the production of barbasco, cotton, tobacco). These cycles have proved to be profitably unsustainable, leading farmers to abandon the cultivation of food crops in the 1980s and to concentrate on coca leaf cultivation, which has brought money but also organised crime and violence. The armed guerrilla groups Sendero Luminoso and MRTA were active in the area and involved with drug trafficking. Many local peasants enlisted in the army to fight these groups. By the end of the 1990s, when the violence abated, international organisations such as the North American Development Agency (USAID), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) supported a substitution programme to replace coca crops with palm, coffee, sugar cane, musk, and cacao destined for export (Cabieses, 2010). The programme was successful in eradicating coca plantations but has failed in addressing the problems of poverty and environmental degradation. By prioritising extensive mono-cultivation in areas not ecologically suitable for large-scale production, the peasants’ economy has become dependent on international demand and subject to the fluctuating prices of commodities (Rengifo, 2008; Cabieses, 2010). The traditional subsistence agriculture based on diversity, the reading of nature’s “signs” (Van Kessel & Larraín, 2010), and intercropping (a technique that imitates the pre-­ existing forest structure) has diminished under the pressure of political and commercial interests and the increasing willingness of local populations to migrate to cities to achieve modern standards of quality of life. Quechua-Lamista communities, the poorest in the region, are particularly vulnerable: Not only has their historical way of subsistence languished, but their population growth rate has also decreased in the last two decades (INEI, 2010: 33). Waman Wasi’s work places a strong focus on crop diversification and the consumption of said crops as a means to recover traditional farming and to achieve food security. As I was told by director Luis Romero and other comuneros6 who collaborate with the association, the main objectives are to counter the tendency of commodity-oriented agriculture to  I use the vernacular term comunero/a to refer to the inhabitants of communities.

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gradually push back the borders of the land historically farmed for subsistence, and to decrease the dependence on foods provided by this market among communities. Because of its opposition to the expansion of coffee, cacao, and, more recently, sacha inchi,7 local authorities and private actors call Waman Wasi dismissively as institución del atraso (institution of backwardness). One additional goal of the association is to lessen the competitive relationships between farmers. This competitiveness is prompted by the, allegedly, sustainable initiatives established by the government and other NGOs, such as prizes and ecological certifications for agricultural produce. Among the actions Waman Wasi promotes to achieve these goals are food events called mikunas. Mikunas (which simply means meals in Quechua) are exercises in food remembrance and transmission performed twice a year since 2005  in Quechua-Lamista communities. They are part of the Waman Wasi programme Warmikuna Tarpudora (women seeders), aimed at bringing awareness to and reinforcing the central role women play in maintaining the diversity of crops and foods, as well as in ensuring family health. Mikunas can be considered to belong to the realm of heritage-making as they involve practices of identification and classification of food items, intergenerational transmission of culinary skills, and socio-political claims at the local level. In April 2012 and 2016, I attended mikunas in two communities (Mishkiyaquillo de Shapumba and Naranjal, respectively). Mikunas are similar to many culinary festivals in that participants exhibit their food and ingredients and cook their specialties in real time. Mikunas usually start at midday around the main community square. As participants arrive, women deploy large tarps on the ground and display the food items they have harvested, collected or hunted. Among them are wild fruits, forest rodents—majaz (Cuniculus paca) and the Amazon bamboo rat (Dactylomys dactylinus)—giant snails, game birds, maize, river fish—carachama (Psendorinelepis genibarbis) and cachama (Colossama macropomum)—plantains, beans, manioc, macambo (wild cacao) seeds, and local vegetables. Waman Wasi assists the communities with the event logistics and organisation and offers economic support to buy food  Plukenetia volubilis, a plant whose seeds produce an oil now sold as super-food.

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essential to the preparation of meals that cannot be produced in the chacras (e.g., rice). Although I had made journeys in the Amazon region before my participation in mikunas, much of the food was unknown to me. Additionally, none of it corresponded to the sumptuous images and representations that Peruvian cuisine and heritage agents aim to promote in restaurants for global foodies. Once all the food is on display, the women regroup in intergenerational teams. Then each team sits on the ground forming a circle and starts to cook. Older women start by teaching the younger ones. The grinding of manioc appears to be the most challenging skill to transfer. Despite the considerable size of the grinding stones, old women prove to be more precise and faster: After leaving their apprentices manoeuvring the stones for a moment, they retake their position to finish the task. Yet, techniques and recipes also renew within generations: Older women exchange knowledge, experiences, and opinions with each other, while young ones do the same. These observations clearly reveal that women are the guarantors of the transmission of farming and culinary knowledge (Faiffer & Belaunde, 2016). Men remain apart from the fire pits and food preparation; some help to manufacture the wood skewers used to hold macambo seeds and suri worms (the grubs of the beetle Rhynchophorus palmarum) over the fire. When all the food is ready, the participants place samples of their dishes in long lines on a table or, when no table is available, on the tarps (Fig. 7.1). Then a member of Waman Wasi counts and annotates each of the samples in a notebook. The counting is fundamental as the results are discussed among the community members, allowing them to reflect on the reasons why they sometimes cook more dishes and why they cook less dishes at some other times. It also allows them to consider, in cases of shortages, whether the causes are circumstantial (an incidental weather episode), lasting (involving transitory changes in the soils) or chronic (loss of biodiversity, substantial changes in eating patterns). The event ends with the sharing of dishes and dancing to traditional music played by local musicians on drums and flutes. According to Waman Wasi’s director, mikunas contribute to establishing community-shared notions of food (in)security and cultural autonomy that build on existing historical ways of living.

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Fig. 7.1  Waman Wasi’s Mikuna in Lamas, 2012

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The recovery of dishes based on indigenous knowledge, agricultural products and local food from forest plantations and the river is very important to us […] What we do at mikunas is to dynamise, regenerate, and remember what good eating is about; just like it has always been, because we consider that the children of the communities still eat very well. All this needs to be preserved and maintained, but always on the basis of their own agricultural knowledge.8

The following remarks of Rosario (pseudonym), a woman actively involved in the mikunas of Mishkiyaquillo de Shapumba, suggest that these notions have been incorporated and have become meaningful in the discourse of communities: Inhabitants express their understanding of food security through the prism of health and healthy lifestyles, and express their understanding of cultural autonomy in terms of conflictual relationships to the market. The preparation of the dishes at mikunas has been taught to us by our grandparents, and also by our parents, because they have never looked at the market. Everything came from their plantations, as they have always told us. Today we are all looking at the market, yet, in their time, they never went there; they worked the forest to feed us. That’s why they lived in good health. But today, when we eat junk food we get sick all the time. Our grandparents, I remember, my grandfather died at 85 but he never got sick. As we say, “the illness only came to pick him up” … It’s not necessary for us to be fat, but only to be in good health and not being sick all the time … Here we all live very close to the forest; we have our lands a bit farther away and it is there that we find the food. But I think that all this is a bit complicated for you. How could you find food like these that we bring from the chacras to the pot? You first go to the market and only then you can cook.9

As mikunas nurture sceptical attitudes towards food markets and development programmes, and develop within a scope limited to the communities of Lamas, they can be considered a thoroughly local and radical food heritage initiative.  Luis Romero, interview, April 21, 2012 in Lamas.  Interview, April 21, 2012 in Mishkiyaquillo de Shapumba, Lamas.

8 9

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Of course, the aforementioned narratives must be taken with a grain of salt, as processes of dietary change and modernisation in rural Peru have increased rapidly since the aftermath of the 1970s’ agrarian reform (Leonard & Thomas, 1988). What these narratives show is that individuals have acknowledged the NGO’s political standpoints and that this affects the ways they choose to remember the past in light of the present. By reporting on mikunas, neither did I intend to idealise Waman Wasi achievements nor describe communities as totally receptive of the association’s progressive and bold rationale. Some fieldwork episodes have revealed that Waman Wasi programmes can stir tensions among comuneros. In 2016, a couple of days after a mikuna event in Naranjal, I attended a wedding party in a neighbouring community. While dancing took place inside a house, the gatherings around food and drinks took place outdoors in the area surrounding the house where, similar to mikunas, people divided themselves by gender. Women kept an eye on the food and the service while most of the men were drinking beer and chatting amongst themselves. As I joined one of the circles of men, I noticed that the conversations between comuneros revolved around coffee and cacao cultivation. When a Waman Wasi staff, a man in his mid-forties, joined the group, the conversation shifted to lighter, less controversial topics. What caught my attention most was how comuneros began to tease the man, suggesting he was pisado in a joking tone. While the term, insinuating he was dominated by his wife and therefore emasculated, seemed light-hearted and trivial at the beginning, it became less so, at least in my perception, after several repetitions. The situation became somewhat uneasy to observe. The pisado treatment given to the man contained the subversive potential anthropologist Mary Douglas (1968) identified in jokes. Its goal was to make the Waman Wasi staff, to them a figure with potential influence, lose face in an informal context outside of the association’s activities, and with an external actor (myself ) as a witness. The joking became thus “a victorious tilting of uncontrol against control … an image of the levelling of hierarchy, the triumph of intimacy over formality, of unofficial values over official ones” (Douglas, 1968: 366). Later, after taking some distance from the episode, I interpreted it as criticism towards mikunas. This programme promotes non-capitalist approaches to agriculture, places women at the forefront of

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community agriculture, and stresses values associated with femininity such as care and reproduction. Therefore, it diminishes the role of money in the economy of communities, which is nonetheless crucial in the lives of people, and associated to the stereotypical role of men as breadwinners. The emphasis on women’s roles and what they represent within communities may have brought to the minds of some men the idea of institución del atraso, and therefore made them consider the association’s male members as pisados.

F ood and Rituality as Vehicles of Cultural Affirmation The use of food to stimulate collective memory and strengthen community is also crucial to organisations working in the Peruvian Andes. Unlike PRATEC/Waman Wasi’s strong critique of market rationalities, the approach developed by the NGO Urpichallay (‘small dove’ in Quechua) recognises agricultural practices—both traditional and non-traditional— and market relationships as fundamental to economic exchange and sustainable living in regions with a more limited spectrum of biodiversity. Since 1992, Urpichallay has worked with peasant communities in the region of Ancash in northern Peru, and more particularly with communities in the district of Marcará. The association promotes the recovery and conservation of biodiversity, knowledge, and the environment through the respect and reinforcement of the Andean holistic cosmovision. Although the association is not overtly opposed to rural development policies and projects, Urpichallay members advocate for development strategies that do not favour external knowledge but rather incorporate indigenous knowledge, thus seeking to create a dialogue between the Andean and the Western cultures (Rojas, 1999; Llorca, 2014). The Ancash valleys have a long history of external development intervention as their soils provide crucial staples, namely tubers (potato, oca, mashua), quinoa, and kiwicha (amaranth). One of the best-known development initiatives occurred in Marcará, more specifically in the Vicos community. The Cornell-Peru Project (Holmberg, 1959) was an applied

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anthropology experiment conducted by Cornell University between 1952 and 1966 with the aim of challenging (post)colonial relationships of domination in the Andes by modernising and integrating the peasantry into the state (Stein, 2000). Although indicators showed some improvements in nutrition, education, and material prosperity at the end of the project, the introduction of the ‘Green Revolution package’ and the subsequent change in Vico’s power structure resulted in two major consequences: First, the community’s upper classes received more benefits and, second, trade-offs of economic relationships and agricultural practices (Greaves et  al., 2010; Stein, 2000). Traditional agricultural knowledge, and, in particular, the knowledge associated with the cultivation of native potato varieties, have weakened with the implementation of corporate agriculture management and the adoption of papas mejoradas, hybrid high-yield potatoes. Due to the spread of the Green Revolution, these transformations have impacted the entire Peruvian Andean region. The low profit obtained from the mass sale of papas mejoradas, along with the effects of globalisation in Andean cultures, has led to a loss of interest in rural life among younger generations and their subsequent migration to urban centres (Ponce Romero, 2016). The northern Peruvian Andes have since been facing abandonment and a negatively associated self-identity. Governmental food assistance policies have further deepened the neglect of the Andean traditional way of life. Even the School Breakfast Programme (desayunos escolares), which is intended to fight anaemia, and thereby improve educational achievement (Cueto & Chinen, 2008), has been blamed by local communities for going against traditional and healthier eating habits. As Urpichallay’s director Karina Costilla explained to me,10 the breakfast, which consists of a cup of a milk-like beverage and six small iron-fortified biscuits, has provoked, if not a dependency, at least a strong desire to eat (and buy) sweets among children. This is an important downside as the communities of the Ancash Valley, she explained, are fully capable of looking after their foods. Costilla’s criticism towards public health policies need to be understood from both a nutritional and an anthropological perspective. Rural 10

 Interview, June 17, 2015.

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communities in Peru and in other Andean countries are the target of food assistance programmes designed by urban experts who do not consider these populations as heterogeneous groups with different characteristics, perceptions, and needs. In the eyes of the state, they are all poor and undernourished. Without denying the fact that malnutrition—and in particular iron deficiency anaemia—is widespread in rural areas, it is important to note that some communities have access to a diversity of foods grown locally while other communities have much less. Those with access are proud of their food habits and culture, and feel denigrated by the state when it treats them as poor and deficient. The rejection of nutrient-­enriched foods provided by the state in the Peruvian Andes and Amazon is not a matter of taste, culture, or beliefs, but a way to resist and reassert autonomy against the symbolic violence contained in policies that stigmatise indigenous people by categorising them as extremely poor (see Gillespie, 2017; Ricaud Oneto, 2019). Let me refer back to the example of the breakfast to illustrate the tensions between the distinct views on nutrition of local populations and state authorities. The consumption of breakfast or the absence of it is a strong determining factor for assessing the nutrition status of individuals. However, in Andean culture, the notion of breakfast (or even the term) as a specific meal, distinguished from other meals by particular foods, does not exist. That is why, as Costilla explained to me (an explanation confirmed by three teenagers present at our meeting), when students are asked to fill forms with details of the meals they have had during the day, the boxes assigned to breakfast are often empty or almost empty. Kids list only the items that match the external notion of breakfast they have learnt and internalised. While they mention foods that correspond to Western light breakfasts, such as mate (herbal infusion), cancha (toasted chulpe corn), or cachanga (a light, fried bread without yeast), they omit the foods that have preceded the consumption of those items, which typically consist of soup, picante (boiled potatoes with chili sauce), and ponche de habas (hot drink made of fava beans). This kind of occurrence has led Costilla and other activists and researchers to see public health policies as disregarding the habits and needs of Andean populations, and to consider them as reinforcing relations of domination and dependency.

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With the aim of mitigating this situation, Urpichallay promotes traditional farming and local consumption of native potatoes and other crops, in the hope to raise awareness of healthy and traditional eating habits. The farming of native potatoes occurs in the higher lands of the region. Moving seeds from the middle altitudes to the higher altitudes, and cultivating them through simple, human-powered tillage methods allow the seeds to be “refreshed”, that is, to begin a new life when they get “tired” (Rojas, 1999; Shepherd, 2017). In April 2012, I accompanied the Evaristo family to their chacras, located around the stream called Quebrada Honda. The Evaristo family is reputed in Vicos for its work with native seeds, and is open to collaboration with non-profit organisations such as Urpichallay and The Mountain Institute. At an altitude of approximately 3500 meters above sea level, Quebrada Honda is an area of dark soils, home to the greatest diversity of tubers in the entire area. The chacras are delimited by fences made of stone and bushes, and the seeds are sown randomly: The plots are not parcelled out according to potato landrace varieties, but according to crop type. Consequently, in each division one can find different varieties of native potatoes. It is difficult to identify the variety of potato that is being harvested before pulling it up from the soil by hand. The more savvy farmers are able to predict the variety by looking at the colour of the plant’s flower or the appearance of the stem. The crop varieties that are grown in the least accessible lands are held in much higher esteem than those grown in the middle altitudes, which are destined to be traded. Farmers see the former as having an appealing taste and being palatable even after long periods of storage, while the latter are seen as insipid and watery. They also consider native potatoes as more viable in the long term, as they observe that papas mejoradas tend to degenerate and lose yield rapidly (Brush et al., 1981). I was told that the cooperation between Urpichallay and Vicos made possible the recovery of 80 native potato varieties. Other actions supported by Urpichallay include non-monetary exchanges of tubers, seeds, and grains. Barter is one of the various strategies Andean pre-Columbian societies used to obtain products from multiple ecological zones. This practice has persisted in the region alongside the monetary economy introduced by Spanish conquerors (Corr, 2016). Alejandro Argumedo and Michel Pimbert suggest that barter reflects the

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basic economic value of Andean cosmovision: Solidarity, expressed as ayni or sacred reciprocity. This means that when Quechua communities cannot find the goods they need, “they can resort to a variety of reciprocal arrangements with neighbours and kin based on obligation, loyalty, social and ritual debts” (Argumedo & Pimbert, 2010: 344). The yearly barter meetings organised by Urpichallay draw on this logic: They are conceived as tools for strengthening sociability, promoting indigenous markets, and enhancing food (re)distribution among people of the villages and towns spread through the Callejón de Huaylas valley. The Red de Docentes Interculturales (the Intercultural Educators Network, hereafter the IE) supports Urpichallay in organising these barter events. Interculturalism emerges in the context of global agendas which highlight the importance of providing culturally and linguistically affirming education to indigenous children and other marginalised minorities, as shown in the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights from 1996) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from 2007 (Valdiviezo, 2010). The recent proliferation of policies and programs focusing on multilingual and intercultural education seems to correspond to shifting paradigms (outlined above in this chapter) that see diversity as vital to the contestation of the inequalities burdening societies where assimilationist ideologies have historically defined the social order. Despite its limitations, such as an implementation socially bounded within indigenous and oppressed populations (Gasché, 2010), interculturalism has found wide acceptance in Latin America not only as an alternative model for marginalised people but also as a new and engaging approach to development that advocates cultural diversity, respect differences, and promotes a harmonious coexistence and exchange among the diverse cultures in the world (see García, 2005; Walsh, 2008; Valdiviezo, 2010). On June 30, 2015, I attended a fair in the province of Yungay, on a high-altitude lacustrine plain. Urpichallay and the IE rented vans and school buses to offer free transportation to participants coming from communities of the Huaylas valley. The small barter groups were of diverse composition. Some groups were made up of family members, others of members of the same community, but most of them were under the umbrella of local public schools, which speaks clearly of the status of

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the IE with regard to these events. Barter fairs in Ancash are indeed institutional, although not of the same order as those studied by Olivia Angé in the Argentinean Andes, which she describes as “a means to structure civil society and affirm ethnic identities, according to the global agenda on international development” (Angé, 2016: 160). The promoters of the Ancash gatherings are, in contrast, quite distrustful of external intervention in the name of development. The event started with the display of seeds and food items on tarps. The organisers asked the participants not to barter before the opening ceremony, so that visitors and other participants could appreciate the diversity of foods. The ceremony opened with welcoming words from Urpichallay’s director. Dressed in traditional Andean costume, she recalled the importance of maintaining the bartering of seeds, which she described as “a legacy from our ancestors”. Then, wearing similar clothing, the representative of the Marcará delegation of IE elaborated on the same topic and highlighted the idea of “valuing our culture”. She then invited all attendees to form a semicircle around a ritual altar while male educators played seashell horns. The IE delegate for the Ancash region approached the altar to give the final and main speech. In a loud, confident tone, he addressed cultural diversity as “our way of life” to be preserved through “pertinent educational programmes” that is, adequate to “our reality”. He also emphasised the event’s main objective, “to ensure that our children, our young people, value what they have”. “Why can foreign visitors value what we have and why can we not”, he asked. The opening ended with a re-enactment of a pago a la tierra, an offering to the Mother Earth that can be done in various ways. On this occasion, it consisted of offering different kinds of ornaments and ceramics, cooking utensils, local herbs, traditional beverages such as chicha and aguardiente, a mix of real fruits and fake plastic fruits (pears, apples, grapes, oranges, avocados, and pineapples), and bread. Curiously, potatoes and local tubers were not among the items offered. Male educators wearing Inca-like costumes hosted the pago. They addressed prayers to the Mother Earth and apus (the spirits of the local mountains) in Spanish and Quechua. The bartering started right after the ritual. Those who wanted to barter moved between the different groups with handfuls of seeds to be traded,

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while visitors mainly observed and asked about the seeds and tubers unknown to them. The native potatoes brought by the peasants of the community of Vicos particularly attracted the attention of visitors, who overtly praised their variety, colours and irregular shapes (Fig. 7.2). In the Andes, cultivating potatoes “is a value-loaded activity, where the quantity and quality of the harvest reflects on the cultivators’ fame within the community”. Biodiversity is central to the appreciation of human qualities and as Angé (2018: 35) notes, “those peasants who can cultivate an array of potatoes in their fields are famous among their neighbours, and in some cases renowned beyond their own communities”. Over the years, Vicos has received strong support from associations such as Urpichallay to recover native potato landraces. This fact, coupled with the community’s fertile high-altitude soils and the visibility obtained as the subject of Cornell University’s experiment, has granted Vicos a good reputation in terms of the preservation of food biodiversity.

Fig. 7.2  Barter fair in Yungay, 2015

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It is perhaps this reputation that caused an unexpected situation. Not long after the event started, visitors reported to the organisers that the comuneros of Vicos were not exchanging their potatoes and seeds, but were selling them instead. I was able to confirm and observe that the farmers assigned a price of one Peruvian Nuevo Sol (about US$0.30) to the more ‘common’ native varieties—single-coloured and of more uniform surface—and a price of 2 PEN to the most coloured, paw-like, complicated-shaped ones. This indicated that the farmers were probably well aware of both their standing before the other communities participating at the fair and of the role they could play in the global trend of valuing native local food items. But to the public and the organisers, the comuneros of Vicos were lacking the moral obligation of exchanging. When interpellated upon their decision, the comuneros explained that their own land provided them with all the crops made available at the event. Put simply, they were selling potatoes because they did not need seeds. The terms of Vicos’ participation in the fair were renegotiated and resulted in them selling the rarest native varieties at 2 PEN and exchanging the other varieties for quinoa, maize, and barley. The closing of the event consisted of a massive sharing of meals and the presentation of traditional dances performed by the schoolchildren. Urpichallay and IE financially and logistically support the purchase and transportation of the food shared. The children’s mothers offered typical Andean dishes from the region such as picante de cuy (guinea pig stew cooked in panca chili), patasca (boiled corn soup with mutton meat), llunqa cashqui (wheat soup with potatoes and vegetables), and different kinds of mazamorras (thick puddings made of corn or potatoes).

 he Potato Park: Between Cultural Re-creation T and Market Repositioning The Potato Park is located in the department of Cusco, above the Sacred Valley and the village of Pisac. It is a conglomerate of six Andean communities (Sacaca, Pampallacta, Chawaytire, Amaru, Paru Paru, and Cuyo Grande) who, since 2001, have aimed at building sustainable livelihoods

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by recovering and enhancing traditional knowledge and encouraging cultural self-determination. The communities merged nearly 10,000 hectares of their lands for growing, selling, and exhibiting native varieties of potatoes and other local crops. Over the years, the Park has become an international reference in the fields of biodiversity management, empowerment of indigenous people, and food sovereignty (Grey, 2011; Asensio & Cavero, 2013). It is also considered the most successful project of this nature in Peru. The success of the Park as a biodiversity conservation area relies on the articulation of the goods produced by the comuneros and the expertise provided by its founding organisation, the NGO ANDES (Asociación para la naturaleza y el desarrollo sostenible). Created in 1995 and funded by grants from the FAO, the Treaty Benefit-Fund, and international NGOs (Graddy, 2014), ANDES is dedicated to the protection of the environmental and cultural rights of Andean populations. The central figure behind the NGO’s consolidation, and by extension of the Park, is its director Alejandro Argumedo. Argumedo presents himself as indigenous Quechua and possesses an agronomy degree from McGill University. He has achieved wide recognition in the international cooperation field as a specialist on indigenous-rights-related topics. The close cooperation between Argumedo and the UK-based IIED has been crucial to developing the core concept of ANDES’ work: Collective bio-cultural heritage. Collective bio-cultural heritage is defined as “(k)nowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities which are collectively held and inextricably linked to traditional resources and territories, local economies, the diversity of genes, varieties, species and ecosystems, cultural and spiritual values, and customary laws shaped within the socio-­ ecological context of communities” (Swiderska, 2006: 3). In more operational terms, indigenous knowledge must be recognised and appreciated as a powerful resource and as complementary to Western scientific knowledge. ANDES draws on the notion of Sumak Kawsay—‘good living’ based on the inherent Andean relationship of reciprocal nurturing between humans and nature (Macas, 2010)—to re-establish indigenous ethics of sharing, care, and respect, seen as being eroded by modernity. Work on native potato conservation and production is the NGO’s benchmark. In

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2004, ANDES signed an agreement with the International Potato Center (CIP) to repatriate part of the centre’s native potatoes and seeds collection for in situ cultivation, reproduction, and monitoring. Founded in 1971 and with its headquarters in Lima, the CIP emerged in the context of the ‘Green Revolution’. While initially committed to the use of hard science in conservation and improvement of potato seeds, it has progressively included social orientations in their work—such as food security, well-being, and gender equity—and has become more sympathetic to locally-based approaches to conservation. Today, the Potato Park counts around 1300 potato varieties. This success has opened up avenues for becoming an agro-eco-tourism centre and developing new indigenous markets in accordance with the notion of collective bio-cultural heritage. The Potato Park management relies on both the principles of sustainable tourism and the obligations of reciprocity and mutualism dictated by the ayni. Tourist-orientated services are not yet fully developed but, as shown later, efforts are being made in this direction. Individuals and small groups of visitors are welcome to the Park. In June 2015, I signed up for the three-day guided tour option, which included trekking throughout the area, meetings with the inhabitants (the comuneros), sharing meals, first-hand experience of the agricultural activity, and sleeping in a local family’s house. While walking at altitudes between 3500 and 5000 meters, local guides provided me with an overview of the dynamics of Andean potato cultivation and consumption. I learned, for instance, that common varieties or papas mejoradas are a cash crop, native varieties are for community subsistence, and very high-altitude ‘bitter potatoes’ are dehydrated for food stock (chuño). I had the opportunity to appreciate dozens of native varieties, each more surprisingly different than the next. I also received palatable instruction. I ate potatoes and other curious tubers three times a day: For breakfast and dinner in the company of my hosts, and for lunch in the company of the Park’s guides. One day, Gregorio (pseudonym), one of the guides, proudly showed me two big native potatoes. Besides the slightly blue tone of their peel, they looked rather ordinary to me. Their round, almost polished form and their size made me think of them as papas mejoradas, the modern, though insipid, varieties available in supermarkets. I had expected to see

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Gregorio more proud of the beautifully amorphous, small, and coloured potatoes that he had showed me previously. However, he presented the big and less graceful ones as the best kept secret in the Park. The “improved native potato”, he explained, “is the perfect encounter between tradition and science” (Fig. 7.3). He affirmed that these varieties are “clean”, which means that they are more resistant to plagues and diseases, and contain the same nutritional and palatable properties as typical native potatoes. When I asked Fausto (pseudonym), the main tour guide, about the size of the potatoes he answered: “I don’t know exactly why, but the market always prefers big sizes of… everything”. So, unlike the smaller native potato varieties, the big ones are not products of subsistence agriculture; by all appearances they are on their way to entering the market as not just weight- but also value-added produce. But these potatoes are much more than this. They are the materialisation of the collaborative work between the Park’s peasants and genetic scientists of the CIP. That is, they are the

Fig. 7.3.  The big potatoes of the Potato Park in Cusco, 2015

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result of an attempt to give equal credence to scientific and traditional crop management—two kinds of knowledge that have always existed but, at the same time, have ignored each other. The big potatoes are consciously conceived as hybrids, both biologically and conceptually. They should also be understood as hybrids in terms of “disruptive” and “productive” categories (see Bhabha, 1994; Appadurai, 1996) as they have a potential for both subversion and the creation of new ways of knowing. Indeed, to my eyes, they represent the crucial issue at stake for peasant and indigenous populations: To build a better life for themselves without losing their values and traditions. Next to the buildings dedicated to the conservation and reproduction of potatoes (the potato reproduction centre, the seed bank, the research centre, and several greenhouses), new structures have been erected, such as a traditional food restaurant (Mikuna Wasi) kept by the women of the Park, stores for selling goods produced locally, and houses serving as eco-­ lodges. Some of the latter have been built as extensions to comuneros’ houses, while others are independent buildings. Besides the hospitality on offer, visitors can learn about and buy traditional healing products, toiletries made of potato (potato shampoo and potato liquid soap) and of other local plants and herbs, crafts, and mystical services (such as participation in ritual enactments). The production of all these goods is distributed into specialised colectivos económicos (economic working groups), each involving about a dozen members from the different communities. In addition, a job rotation system and a principle of profit distribution in harmony with the ayni ensure that all members of the colectivos económicos receive benefits. The fact that this functions is due to ANDES’ aptitude for innovating its discourse and prospects and articulating new, ideologically consistent initiatives. Indeed, the Park’s productive diversification is not merely an opening up to market forces. Most importantly, it is conceived as a crucial step towards a business model committed to generating income without clashing with cultural and spiritual values or with long-established customary norms (Argumedo, 2013). Such conceptualisation is possible due to Argumedo and IIED collaborators’ extensive involvement in multilateral, activist, and scholarly spheres, in which they have contributed to the debates on the use of intellectual property rights (IPR) for the

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protection and promotion of indigenous knowledge (Argumedo & Pimbert, 2006; Grey, 2011). The Park is, in this sense, a fertile ground for experimentation. The most recent outcome is the creation of the collective trademark Parque de la Papa to commercialise the Park’s new goods and services. The trademark draws on the concept of “bio-cultural heritage indication” (Argumedo, 2013), which in turn, draws extensively on Geographical Indications and other allegedly ‘soft’ and ‘indigenous-­ friendly’ IPR tools. In this particular context, the bio-cultural heritage indication is an instrument intended to bypass the bureaucratic constraints imposed by the Peruvian state’s intellectual property regulations (e.g. the Parque de la Papa trademark is in use but is not yet formally registered, as it does not fit in any IPR category). It is meant to protect the Park’s novel products and the production processes and associated biological and cultural diversity, to reinforce communities’ collective rights and local world-views, and to enable comuneros to exercise control over market development. In summary, the Park, with an initial focus on potato diversity conservation, is now devoted to broader objectives which are still in accordance with its critical tenets of development. As might be expected, and despite the solid concepts on which ANDES builds its new mission, the Park’s recent evolution has prompted challenges in terms of social cohesion and governance. As the discourse and production of goods have increased and become more technical and sophisticated, so have the needs for productive skills and management (potato knowledge, reading, mathematics, business, Internet literacy) (Asensio & Cavero, 2013). Personal qualities, such as being thoughtful, hard-working and reliable, although appreciated in the Andes (see Angé, 2018), appear not to be anymore sufficient to attain technician or representative positions. This has led to the strengthening of the decisionmakers and skilled workers’ positions and, consequently, to sentiments of exclusion among the less-­resourced comuneros (Asensio & Cavero, 2013). Uncertainties related to the distribution of benefits have also arisen and have created an environment conducive to the temptation to diverge from the Park’s procedures. The most striking example of this occurred in 2011, when the community of Cuyo Grande decided to separate from the conglomerate and to manage, by itself, the flux of visitors coming within its borders. In this way it was able to benefit exclusively from its

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proximity to the Park. Since their secession, the desire to act independently has spread and become a tendency. The following anecdote made me think of this: Before leaving the Park, my host handed me a coloured business card. One side of the card showed images of the Park’s landscapes, women doing traditional weaving, and my host’s kitchen table ready for a traditional breakfast. The other side of the card showed four contact mobile phone numbers, a list of offered services (experiential tourism, trekking, crafts, gastronomy, and horse riding), and the name of the business. My host asked me to contact her directly for my next visit, so that I could enjoy the same services offered by the Park, but for a lower price. She also informed me that she did not conduct the business alone but together with her cousin, who happened to be one of my trekking guides.

To Ensure a Dignified Survival While nation-states increasingly draw on the notion of cultural heritage as a resource to serve their political, economic, and cultural agendas, indigenous and vulnerable groups have developed their own culturally-­ rooted strategies to ensure some control of their lives. Indigenous groups of the Peruvian Andes and Amazon, in partnership with the intellectual-­ activist sphere, make sense of their food cultures and put them on display to address, discuss, and resolve issues that might keep them from living in accordance with their cultural and spiritual values. This involves a number of actors who participate in processes of identification, (re)contextualisation, interpretation, and transmission of food knowledge (culinary, agricultural, and ritual). Accordingly, such initiatives may fall into the realms of cultural and food heritage. Even more, they stress issues similar to those addressed by mainstream heritage institutions. Indeed, raising awareness of the importance of protecting their culture, biodiversity, and worldviews among younger generations can rightly be seen as a common goal of very distinct entities and mechanisms such as Waman Wasi’s mikunas, Urpichallay and IEs’ barter fairs, the Potato Park’s recreation of ayni, UNESCO’s CSICH, or the FAO’s programme for the conservation of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems.

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The intention of this chapter has been to highlight the centrality of food cultures in the world-views of indigenous people from the Andes and the Amazon. Food reveals the symbiotic relationship between nature and culture in these indigenous worlds and, in doing so, provides fertile ground for cultural resurgence strategies. The initiatives outlined above have developed within transnational networks of partners and interlocutors but outside of the universalist pretensions of global heritage governance, thus benefiting little from state policies. They constitute food heritage approaches that differ from that of UNESCO by addressing only pressing issues of peasant and indigenous communities. Globally nurtured but locally implemented, these initiatives seek out and take advantage of opportunities in strategic, proactive fashions. In this regard, the big native potatoes of the Potato Park may be seen as a counter-metaphor for the ‘national dish’ imagined as food heritage. While the latter builds on the aim of states and global cultural actors to obtain prestige and revenues, the former builds on the necessity of indigenous people to adapt their ways of living as a condition for continuing to exist. Of course, as in any action devoted to enhancing indigenous agency and worldviews, the aforementioned cases are not devoid of conflicts and tensions, nor free of hierarchical power relations and competition. The account of each of these initiatives has shown either that they are not unanimously welcome or that they may be at the source of frictions. In this regard, the influence of NGOs working in the field of cultural affirmation still needs to be addressed. Further research is required to better understand to what extent the NGOs’ ideological approaches may have an effect on the decisions to engage (or not) in activities and practices that members of communities can see as beneficial or detrimental. Waman Wasi’s critique of markets and trade mechanisms as well as Urpichallay and ANDES’ commitment to promoting traditional, but somehow idealised, views of Andean culture raise important questions on this point. Recognising the complexities and interconnections that come into play when different worldviews converge concurs with the inventiveness and vitality of indigenous agency to secure dignified ways of living.

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8 Final Considerations and ‘Reality Check’

Peru’s gastro-political project has given a contemporary twist to the function of food as a “total social fact” (Mauss, 1967) within the nation, as it added to and updated its cohesive strength. Food assuredly holds implications throughout all spheres of society: economic, legal, political, domestic, and enters the domain of beliefs. The processes of identification, social image construction, and belonging that took place in the realm of food provided the national cuisine of Peru with new meaning, new coherence and prominence, and with the ability to communicate what was important for Peruvians in a particular historical moment. Peruvian cuisine enabled the ‘towing power’ of the narrative that describes Peru as a country not only recovered from the economic and war-time stagnation from the 1980s and 1990s, but also turned into a successful, contemporary society. Indeed, the idea of nation that emerged in the first two decades of the twentieth-first century corresponds and matches the newly identified values the government and culinary elites have ascribed to Peruvian cuisine and foodways. In that story, Peruvian society is multicultural in the same way that the national cuisine reflects harmoniously the various cultures within the territory. Peruvians are portrayed as open, tolerant, and inclusive, in the same way that culinary traditions introduced by immigrants encountered, intertwined, and fused (‘magically’) © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Matta, From the Plate to Gastro-Politics, Food and Identity in a Globalising World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46657-1_8

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with those of locals to give birth, first, to cocina criolla and, later, to modern interpretations by skilled chefs. Peru is an economically viable and future-­oriented country, in the same way Peruvian cuisine is an economic force within the country and a sensorial experience capable of capturing the hearts and wallets of the world. In sum, Peruvian cuisine has been constructed as a tableau depicting a nation reconciled with a traumatic past, which has brought itself forth into the future. Official and trustable data contradicts this view by providing a rather grave scenario: one in which discrimination and social exclusion do not abate and in which the inequality gap is still extremely wide. Peru’s ombudsman’s office, Defensoría del Pueblo, reported about 12,600 protests in the country between 2008 and 2023, of which at least one quarter involved violent action. Most of these conflicts took place in impoverished Andean and Amazonian areas and in opposition to resource-­ extractive practices that generate negative social and environmental impacts. As I write these final remarks, Peru is still mourning the 66 persons who lost their lives between December 2022 and February 2023, in the most recent escalation of social conflicts in Southern rural areas, following an attempted governmental coup and ensuing political unrest. This is the result of decades of misrule, corruption, and armed conflict which, combined, have left rural Peruvians disenfranchised and forgotten by the political establishment in Lima. In light of this, one could only think that the livelihoods of rural populations are under permanent threat. By focusing on the turning points during food’s transition from being culinarily-centred to being instrumentalised as a potential social weapon, and highlighting the ways in which claims of unity and reconciliation smooth over ongoing inequalities, this books delivers a similar conclusion. Indeed, it seems difficult to envisage a better future for peasants and small producers when hopes to redress structural disparities begin and end with the flow of private capital and pleas for market-oriented modernisation. It is not surprising, therefore, to see the transformative force of food outlined in these chapters begin to stagnate, despite the efforts of progressive actors across the culinary field and beyond to turn good intentions into reality through their own limited means.

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Although awareness exists among chefs, restaurateurs, and peasant farmers regarding the shared benefits to be gained through partnerships (Fajardo-Escoffié, 2022; Kollenda, 2019), the government has not sufficiently supported measures to reduce the distance between producers and consumers, or guaranteed regulations through which to materialise the inclusive rhetoric. The efforts by the state seek mainly to capitalise on the gastronomic boom in monetary and imagistic terms through nation branding campaigns depicting Peru as an entrepreneurial and economically viable nation. Early proponents of the gastronomic boom have expressed concern on this, yet their voices have not been heard. Isabel Alvarez, a sociologist, chef, and restaurant owner, argued in an interview that, despite its impressive rise and initial deployment, the gastronomic boom could not keep its most important promises (Matta, 2019b). As a founder member of APEGA, she wished for the association to decentralise from Lima and establish cooperation with universities to conduct interdisciplinary and intersectoral research to achieve food sustainability and local development through the promotion of regional cuisines. Alvarez explained that a strong implication of the main actors in the domain of food was necessary to accomplish these goals, and lamented that this never occurred. She particularly directed her criticism to the state, whose support she described as almost non-existent, and to the celebrated chefs of the boom, who she considered as self-absorbed and not generous enough to share their knowledge with other chefs in less prominent positions, especially outside of Lima. The state’s partial withdrawal also affected a pillar of the gastronomic revolution, revealing clear signs that the phenomenon has lost momentum: The festival Mistura, as previously mentioned, the largest food festival of its kind in Latin America, ceased operations in 2018 in the midst of controversies related to corporate interests and disagreements between the organisers. For Alvarez, the festival was victim of its own success, with the organisers spending more time in counting the visitors by thousands and hundreds of thousands than infusing the event with meaning which could further commitment to the many food cultures of Peru and resultingly improve the lives of rural populations. How well the gastronomic boom can survive without its most visible fingerprint is uncertain.

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Also impactful was the discovery by journalists that renowned restaurants in Lima were either employing unpaid interns or underpaying their payroll workers (Yun, 2014; Yun & Guzmán, 2014). Facing the undeniable facts, the chefs of the boom, instead of delivering apologies or expressing concern to redress the situation, justified these practices by arguing that they have endured similar work conditions during their European journeys, gladly taking any opportunity to work in top-rated restaurants without complaint. Virgilio Martínez (Central restaurant), one of the main personalities affected by the investigation, explained that he had a waiting list of young cooks from across the world willing to join his restaurant solely for the prestige that the experience would add to their resumes. Other prominent Peruvian chefs replied on TV to the accusations by arguing that apprentices should be willing to work extra hours, just as they themselves had done. Mitsuharu Tsumura (Maido restaurant) affirmed that individuals work in kitchens “not six or eight hours, but sometimes 12, 14, 16 hours because they want to”. Rafael Piqueras (Maras restaurant), added by saying that if young people “do not want to work in a restaurant for more than eight hours, they should not be studying cooking”.1 The position of Gastón Acurio against the journalists’ findings was ambivalent. On the one hand, he backed the defence of his colleagues by saying that employing unpaid interns is a common practice in restaurants that are striving to keep a position among the best of the world. On the other hand, he recognised that exploitation in Peruvian restaurants is widespread and goes beyond the fine-dining scene, commenting, however, on the futility of blaming any individual, when the entire restaurant industry has a propensity towards informality (Yun & Guzmán, 2014). Unlike the accomplishments of celebrated chefs, the results of that investigation were not intensely relayed by the media. Nonetheless, they were sufficient to spark the first criticisms of the once untouchable gastronomic boom. Epics evolve around heroes and their acts of heroism. When heroes become less heroic and more like ordinary people, the epic becomes  See, https://lamula.pe/2015/05/01/feliz-dia-del-trabajo-en-los-tiempos-del-boom-­ gastronomico/_delosrios_/and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_RUXFtXW2Q&t=3s&ab_ channel=AndyLivise, Accessed May 21, 2023. 1

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compromised. In 2014, shortly after the above-mentioned controversy broke out, Gastón Acurio announced his retirement as a chef and passed on the leadership of his iconic Astrid & Gastón to one of his protégés. Acurio’s focus shifted towards his business group, which, as of 2023, counts about 50 restaurants in a dozen of countries. Although he still is the great ambassador of Peruvian cuisine, his involvement in gastro-­ politics at the national level has become less palpable, especially (and paradoxically) after being regarded by public opinion as a viable candidate for the 2016s general presidential election (Matta, 2019a). In a 2019 interview with the conservative news website Lampadia, Acurio explained that the task that history laid upon him was now accomplished: The word had “fallen in love” with Peruvian cuisine, gastronomy had added to the country’s attractions, Peruvian produce has become commercialised throughout the world, thousands have found in gastronomy an opportunity to achieve better lives and, most importantly to him, Peruvians are now proud of their identity. Acurio believes that the transformative power of food now lies in “new protagonists, and new generations that are going to surpass what we have done”.2 Virgilio Martínez, the new face of the gastronomic boom, would, logically, be the one called to take over the task. Yet, the epic of Peruvian cuisine, although supported and heralded by an army of chefs, more truly gravitated around the intellect and will of Acurio, making him practically irreplaceable. Here I concur with Mirko Lauer (Matta, 2019c) who sees the gastronomic boom losing momentum as it became headless. For Lauer, Acurio’s ‘magic’ was to connect and, in some way, combine the high end of the market with the low end. He describes this communion around Peruvian cuisine as an “inclusive gastronomic revolution”, which is something that perhaps no other Peruvian chef has the ability nor the intention to sustain, let alone to replicate. And clearly not Virgilio Martínez. For instance, the imperio Acurio3 while operating always at the upper-­ middle and high end of the market is firmly established in an identifiable  See https://www.lampadia.com/opiniones/gaston-acurio/mi-tarea-esta-cumplida/, Accessed May 18, 2023. 3  As the media calls the business conglomerate built by the chef.

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Peruvian tradition. Most of the items in the menus of its restaurants are fancy, gentrified versions of classic seafood and criollo dishes, which can be found widely, and at any price range, across Peru. As Robert Bradley (2023) indicates, the interpretations Acurio makes of “common” Peruvian dishes such as chicharrones (at Chicha) and cebiche de maracuyá (at La Mar) are “nothing common”, surely not the price, but the eaters will know they are grounded in Peru. In the case of chicharrones, the elevation consists of making the pork rinds look homogeneous in size and less fatty than those prepared the traditional way, in the case of cebiche de maracuyá, the substitution of lime as a cooking agent is not unreasonable since passion fruit (maracuyá) is endemic to South America and a favourite fruit in Peru. Acurio’s cooking style clearly reflects his professional commitment with the food cultures (and the people) of Peru, which he has regularly pronounced to the press: “I decided to break the cord that united me with France to hold on definitively to the cord that united me to my country”.4 Lauer is, therefore, within reason when he describes Acurio as inclusive. I would add that he is inclusive not only because his cooking includes and encompasses the culinary traditions and edible biodiversity of Peru, but also because from his persona emanates a spirit of reconciliation with the country, which applies both to his individual narrative as well as those of fellow Peruvians touched by his message. For Lauer, the shift in the interest of the media and the public towards Virgilio Martínez is also a move towards a “dis-inclusion” (des-inclusión), a term which evokes disconnection, restriction, and class barriers. Again, Lauer is correct. Whereas the work of Acurio relies on a kind of magical suspension of the antagonisms that shape Peruvian society, that of Martínez relies on an individual ‘genius’ that actually benefits from these antagonisms. Described as “unapologetically elitist” (García, 2021: 63), Martínez builds his work upon Andean biodiversity as much as upon existing social and ethnic cleavages. The result is an edible representation of Peru that educated elites and foodies could appreciate, but which the majority of Peruvians could perceive as foreign and distant, totally extraneous to their eating and culinary repertoire, and completely 4  See https://www.lavanguardia.com/comer/de-carne-hueso/20180909/451677962103/gaston-­ acurio-­entrevista.html, Accessed May 21, 2023.

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unattainable in terms of cost. Indeed, the cuisine of Central and MIL can be fairly labeled as a combination of Western science and avant-garde art with Peruvian roots (the latter sometimes in the most literal sense), and therefore is inaccessible, even illegible, to many. Lauer also offers a musical analogy to refer to Martínez’s persona: He says he is the Erik Satie or the Claude Debussy of Peruvian cuisine. The analogy to visionary Satie was obvious to me for the creative imagination and experimental skill of the chef. The likening to Debussy was much less obvious, until I found an account of Debussy’s personality by musician and scholar Georg Predota (2022). He writes: “Claude Debussy was considered unsociable and reserved … he frequently distanced himself from most musicians and tended to mingle with writers and artists, believing he had more things in common with them. Debussy never felt the need to please anyone, which was often interpreted as a lack of friendliness”. Although I am not in a position to comment on or judge the personality of Virgilio Martínez, it is clear that his culinary persona is at odds to that of Acurio, just as a democratising cuisine is conceptually at odds with dining-as-art. In his media appearances, which most often occur in the workplace (in a kitchen, an office, or alone in an Andean landscape), the chef of Central is assured, cerebral, and distant in a way that could be perceived as arrogance. While Acurio has been close enough to the public to be regarded as presidential material, one can easily imagine Martínez most comfortable among an intimate circle of friends composed of artists, scientists, and scholars. Virgilio Martínez represents therefore the des-inclusión mentioned by Lauer, as his cuisine and persona are carefully crafted for the global elite (Bradley, 2023). Exit, then, the popular appeal and democratic openness of the gastronomic boom, which gave it most of its power. However, there is not only bad news. The more-open attitude expressed by newer elites towards the rural world represents an encouraging outcome of the gastronomic boom. A shift in mindset was already visible during the peak of the boom, when white male chefs were proclaiming the moral responsibility of thinking about the wellbeing of indigenous producers as crucial to their businesses, fitting in with the global phenomenon of ‘green’, local, and organic trends. Admitting and acknowledging peasants as valuable partners in the food value chain was a novel

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discursive halt to long-lasting denigration and exclusion of indigenous and rural farmers from productive structures and related ideas of progress. Such a shift is the first but most important step to pursuing socially and environmentally responsible standards in the sector. The experience of the Covid-19 pandemic added an additional layer to the concerns mentioned above, as it forced celebrated chefs to face the consequences of the business model they themselves have created. Throughout the confinement, many restaurants had to cease operations or adapt their offer to delivery and take-away formats to avoid the bankruptcy for chefs and their business associates. This meant either the termination or the suspension of relations with providers, and the presence of dine-in tourists. In an interview for the Spanish journal El País, chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino stated that it was an error to direct all the energies that converged in the gastronomic boom to satisfy affluent tourists (Medina, 2020). Following the closing of his restaurants Malabar and ÁmaZ, Schiaffino now centres his efforts on small-scale business to connect with local customers and producers in more direct and sustainable ways, and hopes that other chefs and restaurateurs will follow suit. Other initiatives under the sign of social and environmental sustainability have also come to light. The social venture of chef Palmiro Ocampo called Ccori-Cocina Optima5 is an example.6 Through alliances with public, private, and research partners, the association designs products, services, and strategies to promote the sustainable use of Peruvian edible biodiversity among general and vulnerable populations. Although more a reaction to the gastronomic boom than an expected product of it, its existence nevertheless originated in this context. The gastronomic boom has also reinvigorated the presence of food in the urban public space through fairs, festivals, and itinerant markets of local produce, a dynamic which owes to the success garnered by Mistura in its years of apogee. The most visible manifestation of this is the increasing number and frequency of bio-ferias (organic food fairs) in Lima and other cities across the country (see Higuchi, 2015; Girard, 2020), in which producers and consumers become closer, circumventing the paths  https://ccori.org.pe/  See also García (2021).

5 6

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of the food chain. Celebrating and promoting local foods has the potential to make Peruvian urbanites consider how they can help peasants and farmers to have better lives and, therefore, contribute to enabling a virtuous circle of consumption. Whether the skills, knowledge, and determination of small producers will find lasting commercial rewards and genuine social recognition remains thus far unclear, but the support local governments and municipalities are showing towards bio-ferias is auspicious. The effects of the gastronomic boom have also reached other levels of society, distant from Lima and even Peru. The international acclaim of Acurio and his cohort, together with the efforts the government has made to promote Peruvian cuisine beyond the country’s borders, has prompted a sense of pride and culinary competency among Peruvian immigrants. In countries such as Chile, the United States, and Argentina, Peruvians do not only conceive of ‘their’ food as a breadwinner but also as a powerful identity marker through which they can claim distinctiveness, reclaim integrity, create belonging, and negotiate inclusion into host societies (see Corrales-Øverlid, 2023; Imilan, 2014; Oliver Málaga & Rotbaum, 2015; Sammartino, 2010). Rural and indigenous actors are taking part in the epic of the culinary nation today in a different manner, by opposing simplistic interpretations of the country’s unity. As seen, in Chap. 7, Indigenous cultural affirmation organisations such as Chirapaq, PRATEC, and ANDES, among others, fight against the negative implications of the gastronomic boom and its culinary nationalism on various fronts. On the front of food sovereignty and security, they denounce the commodification of local foods and the global fashion of superfoods that made crops such as quinoa expensive in local markets and less accessible to communities who consumed them regularly. On the front of culture, they denounce the exclusion of indigenous voices and worldviews from national accounts of culinary greatness. More generally, they challenge the forces that support the national project imagined by culinary elites and dispute the narrative that the second part of this book has sought to unpack. Maybe it is these kinds of initiatives that carry improved seeds for social change, one built not upon triumphalism but upon a real triumph to be proud of.

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Index1

A

Acculturation, 34 Acurio, Gastón, 3, 11, 16, 17, 40, 55, 71–74, 76, 83, 83n12, 84, 105, 106, 116, 117, 122, 142–144, 143n4, 148, 156, 159–169, 186, 190, 191n12, 193, 194, 196, 216, 256–259, 261 Adrià, Ferran, 108, 118n20, 166–169 Alvarez, Isabel, 35, 53, 68, 69, 255 ÁmaZ, 109, 110, 260 Amazonian, 5, 15, 32, 100, 105, 109–112, 116, 124, 124n22, 126, 130, 189, 225, 254 Ancash, 232, 237 Andean, 5, 15, 22, 34, 37, 59, 100, 103, 104, 108, 110, 114,

116–122, 124–126, 128, 129, 145, 156, 166, 188, 189, 194, 194n14, 215, 216, 216n5, 221, 225, 232–237, 239–241, 246, 254, 258, 259 Andes, 14, 34, 105, 107, 114, 117, 120–122, 220, 225, 233, 238, 244, 246 ANDES, 221, 224, 240, 241, 243, 244, 246, 261 Angé, Olivia, 21, 237, 238 APEGA, 21, 22, 191–194, 196, 199, 200, 205, 255 Appadurai, Arjun, 17, 41, 43, 52, 56, 101, 126n24, 177, 243 Arequipa, 5, 143, 195, 203, 204 Argumedo, Alejandro, 19, 235, 236, 240, 243, 244 Aron, Jean-Paul, 68

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Matta, From the Plate to Gastro-Politics, Food and Identity in a Globalising World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46657-1

293

294 Index

Arracacha, 116, 118, 124–126 Art, 4–6, 15, 54, 55, 79–87, 92, 94, 126n24, 143n4, 259 Artists, 4, 15, 58, 79–82, 88, 92, 94, 259 Astrid & Gastón, restaurant, 11, 76, 105, 106, 127, 144, 166, 257 Atala, Alex, 124, 124n22 Authenticity, 12, 18, 102, 108, 109, 131, 149 Ayora-Díaz, Steffan Igor, 33, 42, 100 B

Barter, 25, 235–238, 245 Becker, Howard, 19, 82, 86 Bedoya, Jaime, 148 Bellier, Irene, 223, 224 Belonging, 4, 8, 10, 18, 20, 21, 23, 35, 39, 41, 50, 56, 149, 150, 177, 200, 253, 261 Biocultural turn, 223 Biodiversity, 14, 22, 41, 102, 108, 111, 130, 144, 164, 167, 191, 192, 194, 207, 217, 220, 222–225, 228, 232, 238, 240, 245, 258, 260 Bortolotto, Chiara, 178, 184, 185 Bradley, Robert, 258, 259 Brubaker, Rogers, 150 Buergin, Reiner, 223 C

Cabellos, Ernesto, 159–162, 169 Candidature, 24, 154, 183, 187–197, 200, 203, 205–209, 220

Cánepa, Gisela, 31, 32, 35, 140, 147, 152, 154, 169, 186, 189n9 Cavenecia, Sebastián, 43–46, 50, 51, 80, 82, 84, 88, 89, 107 Cebiche, 3, 36, 48, 81, 81n9, 84, 106, 108, 115, 143n4, 154, 156, 177, 177n1, 201–209, 219, 220, 225 Cebicherías, 4, 84, 143, 144, 206 Celebrity chefs, 19, 86, 140, 190 Central, restaurant, 11, 107, 113, 116, 117, 119–121, 127, 256, 259 Chauvinism, 12 Chef ’s Table, 117 Chicken, 30n2, 35, 37, 57, 104, 110, 143 Chirapaq, 216, 261 Cholo, 34, 37, 70, 122 Cocina criolla, 31–33, 143, 144, 254 Coloniality, 15, 117n18, 126–131 Commodification, 16, 99–101, 180, 261 Competition, 11, 17, 20, 24, 54, 71, 82, 85, 129, 155, 157, 184, 220, 246 Competitiveness, 8, 157, 170, 181, 227 Conos, 34, 36, 37 Conroy, Rodrigo, 108 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (CSICH), 183, 184, 197, 201, 203, 217, 218, 245 Conventions, 15, 67–95, 184, 202n18 Cookbooks, 42, 47, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 70, 99, 140, 158

 Index 

Coombe, Rosemary, 222 Córdova, Pedro, 36 Cosmopolitan, 15, 18, 77, 83, 84, 90, 99, 102, 103, 106, 108, 112, 126, 158, 190, 208, 225 Costilla, Karina, 233, 234 Cox Hall, Amy, 94, 158, 205 Criollo, 31, 32, 38, 258 Csergo, Julia, 182, 219 CSICH, see Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage Cuisines, 3, 29, 68, 97–131, 139, 180, 186–197, 216, 253 Culinary elites, 17, 24, 36, 141, 142, 144, 167, 200, 201, 253, 261 Culinary field, 14, 37, 254 Culinary gentrification, 15, 100, 113, 126, 141 Culinary nationalism, 11, 150, 170, 261 Culinary schools, 3, 9, 42, 69, 74, 85–88, 90n16, 124, 129, 140, 160, 167, 191 Culinary writing, 15, 52–60 Cultural appropriation, 124n22, 128, 166 Cultural diplomacy, 20, 149, 181, 186, 191, 202 Cultural diversity, 24, 60, 142, 143, 149, 158, 200, 206, 217, 220, 224, 237, 244 Cultural field, 13, 29, 33, 54, 77, 78, 85, 93 Cultural heritage, 20, 143n4, 184, 187, 188, 191, 195, 200, 201, 205, 217, 218, 220, 245 Cushuro, 126, 127, 129

295

Custer, Tony, 55, 60 Cuy, 114, 115, 120–122, 125, 126 D

De Ferrari, Gabriella, 37, 46, 47, 50, 57, 59 Debussy, Claude, 259 Demetry, Daphne, 109 DeSoucey, Michaela, 20, 109 Diderot, Denis, 116 Discrimination, 4, 5, 34, 254 Distinction, 7, 13, 14, 18, 41, 67, 69, 86, 99, 178, 182, 188, 218 D.O.M, 124 Douglas, Mary, 231 E

Eateries, 10, 34, 38, 84, 143, 203, 205 Elites, 13–15, 17, 23, 24, 31–34, 36, 41, 52–60, 72, 85, 86, 88, 90–92, 94, 99, 100, 103, 105, 111–113, 122, 126, 128, 130, 131, 139–142, 144, 146, 147, 152, 157, 158, 160, 161, 167, 181, 186, 200, 201, 220, 224, 225, 253, 258, 259, 261 Entrepreneurship, 10, 24, 78, 153, 154, 161, 166–170, 218 Ethnicity, 8, 37, 43, 140, 149, 150, 152 Exoticism, 108, 109, 113–115, 143, 143n3

296 Index

Farmers, 16, 21, 22, 107, 110, 129, 130, 144–146, 163, 166, 180, 186, 189, 194, 199, 200, 207, 216, 221, 226, 227, 235, 239, 255, 260, 261 Ferguson, Priscilla, 40, 52, 68, 78, 140n1, 193 Fish, 35–37, 44, 44n7, 45, 48, 49, 49n10, 98, 105, 107, 111, 112, 118, 144, 206, 208, 209, 227 Foodies, 14, 36, 38, 80, 102, 113, 125, 126, 129, 131, 190, 228, 258 Food nation, 12, 14, 17, 177 Foodscapes, 14, 40–51, 56, 199 Food system, 18, 25, 127, 128, 141, 147, 186, 219, 223 Foodways, 14, 18, 24, 29–39, 41, 53, 60, 102, 127, 130, 146, 177–209, 215, 253 French chefs, 75, 184 French cuisine, 33, 47, 52, 68, 70, 184 Fujimori, Alberto, 6, 73, 150

Gastronomic boom, 12–14, 16, 21, 23, 29, 60, 67, 69, 75, 78, 83, 89, 90n16, 93, 117, 124, 125, 130, 150, 164, 166, 167, 169, 182, 190, 193, 195, 215–217, 255–257, 259–261 Gastronomic field, 14, 15, 36, 37, 58, 77–79, 94, 98, 99, 106, 107 Gastronomy, 10, 12–14, 29–60, 68, 69, 76–79, 81–83, 85–87, 93, 95, 103, 104, 108, 113, 118, 126, 128, 129, 140n1, 147, 160, 185, 191, 192, 194, 196, 245, 257 Gastro-politics, 15–25, 139–170, 215–246 Gender, 8, 43, 52, 91, 158, 182, 198, 199, 205, 231, 241 Genetically modified organisms (GMO), 215, 216 Geyzen, Anneke, 182 GMO, see Genetically modified organisms Goody, Jack, 51 Graddy, Garrett, 21, 223, 240 Grey, Sam, 127, 128, 166, 240, 244 Guinea pig, 35, 114, 115, 120–126, 129, 239

G

H

F

García, Alan, 179, 187, 190, 191 García, María Elena, 8, 17, 18, 107, 131, 140, 158, 161, 164, 166, 190, 193, 194, 199, 200, 216, 236, 258 Gastro-diplomacy, 164, 181

Hale, Charles, 158, 160 Hernández, Miguel, 205, 207 Herzfeld, Michael, 220 Hinostroza, Gloria, 68, 69 Hinostroza, Rodolfo, 30, 53, 55, 68, 70, 75 Huariques, 38, 48

 Index  I

ICH, see Intangible cultural heritage Ichijo, Atsuko, 8, 149, 177 Identification, 18–22, 91, 139, 168, 227, 245, 253 Inca Kola, 114, 178, 178n2 Indigenism, 146, 147, 150 Indigenous, 4–6, 15, 21–25, 31, 56, 59, 99, 103, 105, 113, 117, 120, 121, 124, 126–128, 130, 131, 141, 144, 146, 147, 158, 161, 162, 165, 169, 181, 183, 189, 190, 196, 197, 200, 215–225, 230, 232, 234, 236, 240, 241, 243–246, 259–261 cuisine, 23 knowledge, 15, 130, 189, 200, 230, 232, 240, 244 Inequalities, 4, 6, 8, 15, 19, 51, 78, 131, 140, 141, 159, 164, 168, 182, 236, 254 Intangible cultural heritage (ICH), 24, 182–190, 196, 200–203, 205, 208, 209, 220

297

Latin America, 22, 54, 112, 143n4, 158, 181, 199, 236, 255 Lauer, Mirko, 4, 14, 33, 36, 38, 40, 53, 55, 57, 74, 75, 79, 81, 82, 86, 87, 89, 92–94, 103–106, 142, 143, 147, 164, 257–259 Le Cordon Bleu, 73–75, 89 Lima, 4–9, 13, 14, 29, 31–39, 43–45, 48–50, 58, 67, 69–76, 79, 85–89, 93, 94, 103, 105, 107, 110, 112–117, 119, 121–124, 127, 129, 142, 144, 146, 147, 160, 166, 178, 215–217, 241, 254–256, 260, 261 Limeño, 4–8, 32, 33, 35–37, 51, 107, 115, 122 Lossio, Félix, 147, 152, 157 Ludic approach to cooking, 14, 40–51 Lyotard, François, 154 M

J

Janer, Zilkia, 40, 128, 129 K

Kaneva, Nadia, 151 Konishi, Toshiro, 36, 37 L

La Gloria, 74, 89, 122 La Rosa, Cucho, 92–94, 104, 105 Lamas, 225, 229, 230

Madrid Fusión, 111, 112 Madueño, Marilú, 75 Maido, restaurant, 11, 127, 256 Malabar, restaurant, 74, 89, 91, 107, 109, 110, 112, 260 Marca Perú, 152, 153, 155, 169 Marcará, 232, 237 Martínez, Virgilio, 11, 55, 107, 108, 113, 114, 116–120, 117n18, 124, 125, 131, 216, 256–259 Matos Mar, José, 34 Mayta, restaurant, 11, 113, 120–127 McDonell, Emma, 107, 110, 111, 128, 129, 181

298 Index

Media, 6, 10–12, 14–16, 19, 21, 22, 43, 52, 68, 69, 79–85, 101, 103, 117, 124n22, 139–142, 147, 151, 153, 155, 161, 161n11, 164, 182, 191, 199, 202, 216, 219, 256, 257n3, 258, 259 Méndez, Cecilia, 147, 161 Mennell, Stephen, 52 Mestizaje, 157–161, 163, 170 Migrants, 34–37, 35n3, 68, 103, 114, 122, 169 Mikunas, 227, 228, 230, 231, 245 Ministry of Culture, 177n1, 183, 186–191, 187n7, 197, 202, 203, 205–207 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 191 Mistura, 22, 22n3, 153, 153n7, 166, 193, 255, 260 Monsanto, 215 Moore, Jason, 129 MRTA, 6, 226 Multiculturalism, 16

National pride, 10, 15, 23, 139, 140, 147, 154, 155 Nation-branding, 20 Native food, 15, 21, 104, 106, 108, 113, 128, 190 Neoliberal, 6, 139–170, 190, 219, 220, 222, 224 Neoliberalism, 153n8, 168 Newman, Lenore, 127, 128, 166 NGOs, 130, 218, 221, 222, 224, 225, 227, 231, 240, 246 Nikkei, 35, 36, 143 Nomination, 24, 183–189, 192, 193, 196–198, 201, 202, 204, 205, 217–219 Nouvelle cuisine, 13, 68, 73, 98, 102, 105, 128 O

Ocampo, Palmiro, 260 Ossio, Jorge, 74 Ossio, Juan, 191, 196 Osterling, Rafael, 73, 79, 82–84, 83n12, 105

N

Narrative, 8, 18, 20, 24, 25, 40, 60, 85, 99, 100, 107, 128, 139–141, 143, 146, 147, 149, 150, 154, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 166, 167, 169, 170, 181, 183, 184, 231, 253, 258, 261 Nation branding, 140, 151, 152, 155, 156, 164, 255 National identity, 39, 141, 148, 151, 158, 167, 177, 184, 192, 197, 202, 203 Nationalism, 11, 12, 148, 150, 151, 157, 170, 261

P

Paiche, 111, 126 Parasecoli, Fabio, 19, 20, 149, 181 Passidomo, Catarina, 52, 158 Peppers, 30, 31, 46, 108, 115, 115n17, 122, 125, 205, 206, 208 Pérez, Patricia, 163–165 Perret, Adolfo, 206, 207 Peruvian chefs, 14–16, 67, 77, 78, 91, 103, 109, 122, 124, 126, 128, 158, 161n11, 186, 256, 257

 Index 

Pesaque, Jaime, 11, 108, 113, 114, 122, 124–126, 129 Picantería, 143, 203–205 Pimbert, Michel, 235, 236 Piqueras, Rafael, 74, 105, 108, 256 Pisco, 144, 178, 179 Pollo a la brasa, 3, 35, 177, 177n1 Potatoes, 30, 31, 46, 47, 98, 114–116, 118–120, 145, 156, 165, 166, 195, 232–235, 237–246 Potato Park, 239–246 Power, 6, 8, 14, 16, 17, 20, 22, 24, 35, 42, 77, 79, 117n18, 128, 131, 142, 147, 150, 154, 164, 165, 170, 180, 181, 186, 188, 193, 198–201, 233, 246, 257, 259 PRATEC, see Proyecto Andino de Tecnologías Campesinas Predota, Georg, 259 Prestige, 13, 24, 31, 43, 49, 50, 69, 74, 86, 88, 92, 184, 219, 246, 256 PromPerú, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 159, 163 Proyecto Andino de Tecnologías Campesinas (PRATEC), 21, 215, 221, 224, 225, 232, 261 Public diplomacy, 151, 152, 159, 164, 186, 218

R

Ranta, Ronald, 8, 131, 149, 177 Ray, Krishnendu, 33, 78, 86, 88 Regional cuisines, 32, 35, 53, 197, 255 Rengifo, Grimaldo, 215–217, 226 Restaurants, 4, 32, 68, 98, 140, 181, 219, 255 Rey, Rafael, 179 Rivera, Tarcila, 216, 217 Roca Rey, Bernardo, 68, 69, 93, 103–105, 164, 165, 191, 196 Rockower, Paul, 20, 152, 164, 181 Rodríguez Cuadros, Manuel, 208 Romero, Luis, 32, 34, 226 S

Santos, Jesús, 166, 167 Satie, Erik, 259 Schiaffino, Pedro Miguel, 74, 87, 105–107, 109–113, 117, 130, 131, 260 Seafood, 4, 35, 38, 45, 48, 84, 107, 258 Shining Path, 6 Sison Porras de la Guerra, Josie, 56, 57, 59 Social class, 10, 32, 43, 73, 88, 91, 92 Social image, 18–22, 253 Sociedad Picantera de Arequipa, 202 Sweet potato, 31, 114–116, 119, 120, 145

Q

Quechua, 225, 227, 232, 236, 237, 240 Quijano, Anibal, 34 Quinoa, 22, 23, 104, 105, 108, 232, 239, 261

299

T

TEK, see Traditional ecological knowledge Thays, Iván, 11

300 Index

Tradition, 18, 35, 39, 40, 47, 48, 50, 68, 97, 98, 117, 125, 128, 144–146, 161, 180–182, 188, 190, 199, 202–204, 220, 242, 243, 253, 258 Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), 221, 222 Tsing, Anna, 129 Tsumura, Mitsuharu, 11, 256 Tubers, 30, 108, 114–121, 232, 235, 237, 238, 241 U

Ubertazzi, Benedetta, 178, 184, 185 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 16, 24, 177–209, 217–219, 245, 246 Upper-class, 7, 13, 22, 34, 50, 69–71, 73–75, 90, 94, 97, 121, 233

Upscale, 40, 71, 99, 100, 103, 122, 144, 189, 219 Urpichallay, 221, 224, 232, 233, 235–239, 245, 246 V

Valderrama, Mariano, 40, 142, 193, 194, 196 Valencia, Rogers, 202 Veblen, Thorstein, 71 Velarde, Oscar, 74, 89, 122 Vicos, 232, 233, 235, 238, 239 Villarán, Fernando, 142, 145 W

Waman Wasi, 221, 224–229, 231, 232, 245, 246 Wilk, Richard, 99, 118, 149, 181