Colombia embraces gastronomy as force for change

From a blue plastic tank, Alexander Guzman takes a handful of intensely red coffee beans and, with a viscous liquid running through his fingers, proudly shows them off like Rafiki holding tiny Simba over Pride Rock. "They've been fermenting for 120 hours, and now they're ready to go into the cup," he smiles. "A coffee 100% produced, fermented and roasted in Medellín.” Guzman is one of the coffee producers from Renacer Urban Coffee Project, a collective micro-processing farm-to-cup facility located in La Sierra, a neighbourhood 2000 metres above sea level in the Aburrá Valley on the outskirts of Colombia's second largest city.

Guzman has reason to be proud: a few years ago, La Sierra was a barrio ruled by paramilitaries and wrecked by constant land conflict, which turned it into one of the most violent regions of Medellín, the “city of eternal spring” and the capital of Antioquia, the birthplace of the Colombian coffee industry. Thanks to projects like Renacer, La Sierra has gradually returned to coffee-growing with a significant decrease in violence. "It was almost impossible to think about producing quality coffee here seven years ago, when we started the project", explains Juan Molina, one of the founders. "It was an area taken over by paramilitary groups. Today there are more than 45 families dedicated to coffee, around 15 of them associated with Renacer, and we already export the coffee we produce to many parts of the world," he says.

As well as creating a coffee shop (called Rituales) in the centre of Medellín serving the project’s coffees (some old varieties, which come from 25-year-old trees abandoned during the conflicts), Molina also supplies beans to the city’s restaurants. "It is an important move because they are a gateway for people from the country and from abroad to get to know the quality of our coffee and the work we are doing to rescue the plantations," he says.

_{Washing the beans at Renacer}

One of the first people interested in his coffee was chef and businesswoman Carmen Angel, co-founder of an eponymous restaurant group between Medellín and the coastal city of Cartagena. After visiting the project, Angel decided to serve Renacer coffee in all her venues, not only because it is a local, high-quality product, as she explains, but because maintaining commercial relations with such a project supports the Colombian food scene itself.

"Colombia has a recent history of weapons and wars over territory. Agriculture represents a possibility for a different future that surpasses drugs and violence," she says. “Food plays a key role in our lives and in our society, which is why it is an excellent starting point for promoting changes,” adds the chef, who also works with local producers to highlight traditional techniques and products (such as viche, an African-Colombian moonshine distilled from raw sugar cane) and runs a foundation helping to preserve the culinary traditions of female cooks.

Angel is part of a growing group of Colombian restaurant professionals who see food as a force for social change. They are chefs, bartenders, businesspersons and restaurateurs who believe that improving the country's gastronomy promotes structural changes that permeate the entire food supply chain, from producer to consumer, leaving behind a troubled past that defined the nation for generations and promoting the use of land formerly controlled by guerrilla groups, paramilitaries and drug cartels. The war in Colombia has been a predominantly rural phenomenon.

_{Carmen Angel}

For years, everyday life was marked by bombings, kidnappings and assassinations – nearly half a million people were killed over five decades in Colombia's bloody civil war. "It was almost impossible to develop the consumption of local products in gastronomy, for example, when crossing the country's roads to reach rural areas could result in kidnapping or having your vehicle burned down," explains Jaime Rodriguez, chef of Celele, in Cartagena, an award-winning restaurant focused on Caribbean cuisine. Much land was given over to coca cultivation, and the farmers who insisted on harvesting other products such as sugar cane or cocoa, were coerced to pay bribes (locally called ‘vacuna’ or vaccine) to the guerrillas. At the time, many chose to abandon their lands. Less than a decade ago, when the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the government signed a representative peace deal, the path gradually opened to a new development perspective for Colombians and their rich gastronomy.

Little by little, farmers are returning to the interior to grow herbs and vegetables, in land restitution programs that are helping shape the food scene. This comeback is allowing Colombian chefs to develop their cuisines more authentically, mainly by taking advantage of one of the richest biodiversities in the world (ranging from rainforests, rivers and two oceans, encompassing native products such as green pepper from the Putumayo River to the borojó fruit from the Pacific wilds). These products are changing how cooks understand their country's biological endowment.

In Montes de María, 150 kilometres from Cartagena, Rodriguez works with the cooperative of rural producers Asocoman (Asociación Agropecuaria Comunidad del Mango), working with 30 families to improve their quality of life through agroecology, taking care of the tropical dry forest with fruit trees and other products to provide them with income. Cocoa, avocado, eggplant, mamey, pineapple, okra, mamoncillo and much more: everything nature gives for free – they only need to collect.

_{Yarys Ortiz on her patio}

In this landscape, women lead the work in the field, helping to highlight native species that were forgotten or neglected. There are dozens of mangoes and criollo corn, 40 types of beans yet to reach the market, and other species of fruits and vegetables that supply more than 20 restaurants nationwide. In addition to Rodriguez's Celele, farmers provide other renowned venues in the Colombian gastronomy scene, such as El Chato, Leo and Mérito (in Bogotá), and the Carmen group. Entering the restaurant sector allowed farmers to sell products that previously didn't reach the table, earning women and their families up to six times the monthly minimum wage in Colombia (around USD 240).

"Everybody wins: the women who benefit from the environment to transform a social and economic reality, and nature, with guardians who take care of it in a sustainable process," explains Miguel Durango, an agronomist and agroecological engineer who consults and is an agent of change for Asocoman and other organisations.

Rodriguez started working with Asocoman a few years ago when he co-created Proyecto Caribe Lab, a research project that seeks to highlight the gastronomic culture and diversity of the Colombian Caribbean by travelling the region in search of products and traditional cooking knowledge. Among the ingredients he buys are currants and marañon, which he uses in the restaurant's kitchen and in cocktails. "We cannot talk about the development of Colombian cuisine without looking at the ingredients that define us, without supporting the farmers who harvest them," Rodriguez points out. The chef believes in the social role that a restaurant needs to play (especially in a country with such a particular scenario). If food is capable of transforming realities, cooks must spearhead this movement. "There is no gastronomy without valuing the producers," he adds.