Coastal cooking in Costa Chica tells stories of Afro-Mexican history and tradition
As a child born into a West African immigrant household, the concept of being of both and of neither has always held significant weight.
Costa Chica, a sparkling coastal crown on the Pacific, also symbolises this duality. Extending south from Acapulco to the bioluminescent lagoons of Chacahua, Oaxaca, this land is now witnessing severe loss of biodiversity, dried-up fishing communities, and land grabs by foreigners and wealthy white Mexicans. It is also a treasured place known for sovereign birds that dart through mangroves, and seaside settlements of self-emancipated Afro-descendants. I have watched terracotta-brown fishers, elders and swimmers moving through water with textured hair coils, recalling those who escaped colonial ships to create new life in Mexico.
After immigrating to Mexico 10 years ago, my sense of belonging has finally rooted in the ways I trace pieces of my West African ancestry to everyday life. Being raised on stews rich in red palm oil and goat, I can smell and taste natal flavours that bind me to this new home.
In Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City, vestiges of Costa Chica and Guerrero’s roots are manifested in the Michelin-starred Expendio de Maíz. Chef and owner Jesús Salas Tornés operates the kitchen as a collective, refusing hierarchy or dictatorship – a likely reverence to the cyclical societies of Afro-Indigenous traditions that endured entrapment and erasure. There is no menu, no head chef, no reservations and zero arrogance. Despite its high-grade culinary concepts, this is a restaurant grounded in fair pricing for patrons and investment in a microeconomy of hyper-local farmers and providers. On my first visit with a girlfriend and her daughter, we started with pig-shaped blue tortillas and queso de campo rolled into tiny hands. I was served the most divine maize-wrapped barbacoa, piled high with flowering coriander, and sitting in a rich bath of sauce.
The term barabicu – translated to ‘fire pit’ in Taíno, an ancient language of the Caribbean’s first nations – is a technique reflected in Central and West Africa, when food is wrapped with flame-resistant foliage like agave and palm leaves, and later braised in the earth for harvest ceremonies and communal eating. Traditional Guerrero and Costa Chica-style barbacoa starts with sirloin cap or goat (a meat with a smaller carbon footprint), smothered in tomatoes and chillies, and fragranced with aromatics like clove and cinnamon, wrapped and cooked in banana leaves. The cooking process renders the most tender meat in a slick, spicy sauce and ready to be gently tucked into tortillas.
Every time I take a small savoury bite into barbacoa, fried plantains or even okra, I’m reminded of all the Afro-descendants that brought over their heritage of foodways to Mexico: slim seeds of rice and black-eyed peas secretly braided into hair; centuries’ worth of recipes kept safely stored behind the cloudy eyes of great-grandmothers who made the voyage to Latin America, all just to whisper that ‘I belong everywhere’. That we are everywhere.
Photography David Hanes-Gonzalez, shot on location at Mercado Jamaica in Mexico City
This article is taken from Port issue 37. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here
