This inspiring dialogue brought together leaders and matriarchs from the Museo Gastronómico del Chocó, Museo de las Tejedoras de Mampuján, and the Museo de Oficios – Fuerte de San Fernando, to exchange knowledge about the traditional cuisines of their territories and engage in the documentation of selected objects from the Chocó collection at the British Museum. Thanks to a collaboration between the Escuela Taller Cartagena de Indias and the Santo Domingo Centre of Excellence for Latin American Research (SDCELAR), this workshop bridged the collective experience of women at the forefront of these local museums and shed light on Afro-descendant collections from the Colombian Chocó spread across museums in the Global North.
The dialogues were celebrated through a series of workshops in Cartagena, Colombia. Here, different traditions were put into conversation highlighting the ancestral knowledge present in each territory’s culinary practices. The gathering of the leaders was followed by other activities and visits to the Museo de Arte y Memoria de Mampuján, the Museo Histórico de Cartagena (MUHCA), and the Mercado Santa Rita. This opportunity allowed new discussions and cultivated affinities within the local communities and the museums involved.
More specifically, these workshops enabled the structuring of new networks of shared experiences, where participants recognised that gastronomy carries a long history related to the tools used, food collection, the knowledge and transmission of recipes, its role within the economy, and the important connection between these aspects and the community. As Diana Mosquera, head and director of the Museo Gastronómico del Chocó pointed out: “Black people did not come naked from Africa.” Enslaved people carried and kept alive culinary, cultural, and material traditions for centuries, encountering and merging with Indigenous knowledge, enabling a shared and interethnic construction that continues to be practiced today and is palpable in the British Museum’s Chocó collection.
As the participants identified, tools acquire meaning and life when they are used and thus respond to an intrinsic need to position ourselves from a performative rather than a purely aesthetic perspective. This point, central to the development of this project, allows us to move away from a cataloguing perspective and approach the collection from a perspective where the ethnographic materials and instruments require agency, one that cannot be disconnected from the personal stories of their bearers.
Another point worth highlighting from this encounter is the therapeutic value of cooking and its use as a catalyst for peace. According to Elizabeth Villarreal Ruiz, a young local interpreter from the Mampuján Museum of Art and Memory, this project was established to reconcile and generate a space of peace using gastronomy as a productive activity, impacting the body and emotions. This demonstrates strategies linked not only to the preservation of culinary knowledge but also to empowering it as a scenario for social construction and governance of care within the communities affected by the armed conflict.
Chocó Collection from the British Museum. Photo: Astrid González.
Learn more about the community spaces involved in this project, and meet the leaders and matriarchs that spearhead these dialogues:
Museo Gastronómico del Chocó:
A cultural entity that revitalises, exhibits, investigates, and promotes the intangible cultural heritage of the department of Chocó (Colombia) associated with traditional cuisine, culinary practices and its instruments.
Museo de Arte y Memoria de Mampuján:
The museum houses the Mampuján Weavers’ Workshop. This is an autonomous workspace coordinated by the weavers, functioning as a meeting space for the community. The museum provides psychosocial care to locals and visitors, weaving workshops, and explores the history of the territory through an exhibition space.
Museo de Oficios – Fuerte de San Fernando:
Created by the Bocachica community to promote and enhance their traditions, trades, and knowledge passed down from generation to generation. The museum aims to become a starting point for visitors to explore the territory, and its traditions, allowing the development of community initiatives based on cultural tourism and experiential tourism.
Publications related to women’s and maternal health with Wixárika communities by the author of this exhibition
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2013)
Shame as a barrier to health seeking among indigenous Huichol migrant labourers: An interpretive approach of the “violence continuum” and “authoritative knowledge”
Social Science and Medicine 97 75-81
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2023)
Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism: An Ontological Proposal for Health in the Anthropocene
Medical Anthropology Theory 10 (2) 1-26
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2020)
“You see, we women, we can’t talk, we can’t have an opinion…”. The coloniality of gender and childbirth practices in Indigenous Wixárika families
Social Science and Medicine 252, 112912
Jennie Gamlin and David Osrin (2020)
Preventable infant deaths, lone births and lack of registration in Mexican indigenous communities: health care services and the afterlife of colonialism
Ethnicity and Health 25 (7)
Jennie Gamlin and Seth Holmes (2018)
Preventable perinatal deaths in indigenous Wixárika communities: an ethnographic study of pregnancy, childbirth and structural violence BMC
Pregnancy and Childbirth 18 (Article number 243) 2018
Gamlin, Jennie B. and Sarah J Hawkes (2015)
Pregnancy and birth in an Indigenous Huichol community: from structural violence to structural policy responses
Culture, health and sexuality 17 (1)
