New
Orleans:
Global Food Heritage City Endangered
But just to remind
us why New Orleans means so much to so many
people, here is our partial list, in no special
order, of this city's unique food history and
heritage.
--Fusion
of cultures and cuisines: Creole, Cajun,
French, Spanish, African-American, American;
--Restaurants
owned by generations of the same family;
--One
of the oldest continuously operated public markets
in the USA
--Largest
international grain shipping port; a quarter
of nation's coffee beans stored there
Visit the following
websites for more on New Orleans's food and
history.
Southern
Food & Beverage Museum
--Coffee
heritage
New Orleans
French Market &
Cafe du Monde: Original French Market Coffee
Stand
One of the oldest continuously
operated markets and cafes in USA New
Orleans, Louisiana
These two landmark food heritage
sites are independent operations sharing the
same building. With the unfolding story of New
Orleans' plight, we present a summary of why
we consider New Orleans to be a unique global
food heritage site.
Below is a brief history of the
French Market taken from the Cafe du Monde website.
You can read all the history by clicking
here.
The location of the French
Market and of New Orleans dates back to the
Choctaw Indians, before the Europeans settled
the New World. The Choctaw Indians used this
natural Mississippi river levee location to
trade their wares to the river traffic.
The early European settlers came by boat to
this location to sell produce and dairy products.
The City of New Orleans was established on this
location of the Mississippi River in 1718 by
Jean Baptiste LeMoyne.
The first French Market building was put up
by the Spanish in 1771. This building
was destroyed by a hurricane in 1812.
The following year it was
replaced by the building which now houses the
Cafe Du Monde. Back then it was known as The
Butcher's Hall.. In the 1930's the Works Progress
Administration renovated and added to the French
Market buildings. The French Market now comprises
of seven buildings anchored at the Jackson Square
end by the Cafe Du Monde and on the other end
by the Farmers and Flea Market sheds.
From Cafe du Monde scrapbook. Click
here for more photos.
The Global Food Heritage Project
salutes the owners of Cafe du Monde for preserving
their cafe's history and consider it to be a
model for other food heritage businesses.
Here's a powdered sugar-covered
look at Cafe du Monde's basic products. Click
here for histories of their famous chicory
coffee and beignets.
Generations have peered into the beignet operation
located around the river side from the public
seating area.The father of these kids recalled
his parents bringing him to these windows. The
busy beignet makers acknowledge bystanders by
tossing wet bits of dough and flour at the window.
Notice the beignet fry cooker in the rear and
the beignet dough-cutting wheel in the foreground.
Many of Cafe du Monde's employees are Vietnamese-Americans.
By the way, click
here for a brief summary of the on-going
debate as to whether NOLA's "French Quarter"
is really French or Spanish.
Cafe
du Monde: Original French Market Coffee
Stand
Plaza
del Cerro
Chimayo, New Mexico, USA
Aerial
view of Plaza del Cerro
Photo by Betsy Swanson, Historic
Preservation Division,
NM Office of Cultural Affairs
Plaza del Cerro, in the Northern
New Mexico village of Chimayo, is the most intact
Spanish Colonial plaza in New Mexico. Plazas
were rectangles of connected rooms surrounding
an unfenced open space used as a community vegetable
garden. Plazas were originally built for defensive
purposes to protect the colonial farmers from
raiding Comanches and other tribes.
Most plazas in New Mexico have
either disappeared altogether or been gentrified,
with old and new buildings catering to tourists.
The common garden spaces are now parks with
trees, lawn, flower beds, benches, sidewalks
and gazebos.
For a variety of reasons, Chimayo's
Plaza has made it into the 21st century untransformed.
Ownership and title disputes, along with a lack
of a unified preservation vision among the residents,
have resulted in many abandoned and decaying
adobe buildings. The common area is overgrown
with weeds and trees.
The result is an historic space
that with all its problems is still closer to
its original state than any other. That's why
we have designated Plaza del Cerro an endangered
Global Food Heritage Site.
It is indeed a food heritage site
for several reasons. First, it has one of the
oldest intact crop irrigation canals (acequias.)
The acequia was probably built by Tano Indians
prior to the coming of the Spanish and it still
flows behind one side of the Plaza. "None
of the gardens grown in the plaza could survive
the dry summrs without supplemental water, which
flowed from the Acequia de los Ortegas. This
acequia has watered the plaza gardens for some
three hundred years." (Don J. Usner wrote
in Sabino's Map: Life in Chimayo's Old Plaza).
The Spanish settlers always built
their plazas next to these canals, which had
diversion channels running into the Plaza garden.
Crops inside and outside of the plaza were watered
by raising or lowering small gates to divert
the water.
Secondly, the common area is largely
intact. There are a few buildings inside, some
pretty dilapidated. But most of the land is
filled with overgrown weeds and trees. Still,
some parts of it are under cultivation each
year.
Our best hope for this food heritage
treasure is that some day, a unified preservation
plan will be decided upon which will restore
the buildings and return the common ground to
a community garden producing fresh vegetables
and fruit for residents and visitors alike.
We then will experience an authentic Spanish
colonial plaza where food has been produced
almost continuously for more than two centuries.
Husking corn in the plaza, early
1900's.
Prudence Clark photographs, Menaul Historical
Library Collection
Stewardship of this food heritage
site is currently in the hands of the committed
and knowledgeable Board of Chimayo Museum, (
below, ) its building, the old home of the Romero
family, bordering right on the old Plaza. From
left, Aida Gonzalez, Barbara Montoya, Lorraine
Vigil, Dan Jaramillo, Brenda Romero and Andrew
Ortega.
Another effective friend of the
Plaza del Cerro is cultural geographer, Don
J. Usner, author of Sabino's Map: Life in
Chimayo's Old Plaza. Usner's mother grew
up in Chimayo. The author, who lives nearby,
has spent many years recording the stories of
his relatives and neighbors. The title refers
to a remarkable map made by Sabino Trujillo
in the 1950's and preserved by Usner's grandmother
Amada.
Here are a few excerpts from Sabino's
Map that explain some of the food traditions
in the plaza.
On the importance plazas
to the Spanish Empire:
"Chimayo was one of the strategic
hamlets of the Spanish Empire, maintaining a
precarious foothold at the very base of the
cerros (hills) from which the enemy Comanches
attacked. The Crown long regarded these small,
struggling outposts as the redoubts of the northern
frontier, which Spain feared losing not only
to the raiding Indians but also to the French,
already encroaching from the Louisiana Territory."
"The Plaza del Cerro preserves
the remnants of a fortified plaza structure
better than any other plaza in New Mexico. There
were originally no windows on the outside, and
adobe watchtowers probably stood outside each
of the walls. The two small entrances, (described
as no wider than an ox) on the north and south
could be easily and quickly closed to keep out
attackers, and the residents could have survived
for some time in the plaza interior, although
enemies would have had an easy time cutting
off their water supply."
How the residents supported
the plaza's chapel (oratorio) with produce from
the communal garden:
"A paper shown to me (the
author) by Melita Ortega lists some forty-four
people who contributed to the upkeep of the
oratorio on the plaza in 1878....But money was
still scarce, and most people proffered more
humble contributions. Maria Guadalupe Trujillo
gave a half of a ristra of chile, Santos Coris
and Maria Teodora Trujillo each offered two
bunches of "punche" (homegrown tobacco)
while Jose Ortega gave two "almures"
(an archaic measure equal to about a half bushel)
of garbanzo beans."
Description of the affection
people had for the plaza communal garden:
"Many older Chimayosos reminisce
about the days when all they needed to buy was
"coffee and sugar, " describing a
time when people were able to survive almost
entirely off of their farms and gardens.....All
plaza residents farmed---ricos and pobres, weavers
and businessmen, men and women---and everyone
over the age of 50 years remembers the verdure
of the plaza they cultivated. These older Chimayosos
love such well-tended, "clean" land---by
which they mean land that is free of weeds,
trees, and organic debris---and they lament
the overrun condition of most of the plaza today.
They talk in glowing terms when they describe
the old plaza gardens. It seems that of all
the plaza memories that the people hold onto,
the image of children playing around cultivated
gardens is the most vivid."
On what they grew in the
plaza garden:
"And then the gardens inside
the plaza---clean, hoed, irrigated, flowers
all over. They grew squash, corn, chile, pazote
(Mexican tea), yerba buena (spearmint), cilantro.
They also planted onions, garlic, chickpeas
and cow peas. In those days people had to work
hard, so they had to eat good. In the summertime,
everything was from the garden. Oh, we had corn
and peas and string beans, garbanzos, carrots,
and melons, watermelons. Nectarines and a lot
of fruits grew in the orchards outside: apples,
apricots, peaches and pears."
On a healthy life:
"It wasn't only the good
nutrition of homegrown vegetables that kept
the people in Chimayo healthy; the physical
labor of farming life kept Chimayosos fit and
granted most a longevity that remains legendary---and
for this they owed no dept to modern medicine."
On communal corn shucking,
atole and Chimayo's famous chiles:
"To shuck corn, people would
get together at night, by the light of the moon
and maybe a lantern that cast a little light......they
would tell stories and riddles and then they
would hide a watermelon in the pile, so we all
hurried to get to the watermelon. As soon as
we got to the watermelon, we could eat it---but
the piles were big."
"They leached some corn kernels
with lime to make posole or ground them to a
coarse flour for atole ( a corn meal drink)."
Barbara Montoya
(Chimayo Museum board member) continues the
traditions of her family—she grows blue
corn, harvests and grinds it, and makes atole
(photo above), a delicious grainy porridge-style
drink often served warm, usually sweetened with
sugar and thinned with milk. She served some
at the museum after our presentation, along
with chocolate-dipped strawberries.
"Atole was the only drink
that pregnant women were allowed to drink, for
people believed it was soothing and nutritious
and that it would create a calm, stable mood
for the expectant mother."
"Of all the crops grown in
and around the plaza, none was more important
than chile. Everyone who owned a piece of irrigable
land grew chile, both inside and outside of
the plaza. Chile was not only a food but also
a folk medicine prescribed for colds and sore
throats....For dietary purposes, many people
preferred the milder varieties, and Chimayo
is best known for its mild but extremely flavorful
peppers. Chimayosos watched their huertas (chile
fields) closely, not only because they appreciated
the sweet flavor and subtle physiological effects
of the chiles, but also because they could trade
dried chiles for merchandise at mercantile stores
in Espanola. No other crop had this kind of
barter value."
Cleaning chiles in the plaza, circa 1910.
Prudence Clark photographs, Menaul Historical
Library Collections
For more information:
Don J. Usner Sabino's
Map: Life in Chimayo's Old Plaza
Santa Fe, Museum of New Mexico Press, 1995
Chimayo
Museum
Rancho
Manzano Bed & Breakfast
Chimayo
Links
Spanish
Colonial Arts Society
For more on the importance of
children and community gardens see our special
report:
School Lunch
Reform
Top of Page
Return
to Home Page
Single subject
Culinary arts museums
Food origin heritage sites
Agricultural heritage sites
Virtual food museums
