Food researcher Malena Martínez of Mater Iniciativa on Peruvian food, biodiversity, culture
“You are part of a system in which you have a role. Your function is as important as the stone that is there, the water that is running, the tree that has been growing there for ages."
Malena Martínez is the Co-Director of Mater Iniciativa, an interdisciplinary gastronomic and cultural research organization dedicated to investigating, conserving, and sharing Peru’s rich biodiversity.
Malena, chefs Virgilio Martínez and Pia León, and the Mater team are behind the world-famous Central, Kjolle, Mayo, Mil, and Ichu restaurants.
This was one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve ever conducted. Malena is a genius and the work that Mater does to explore and honor Peru’s plants, and the cultures of the people who grow them, is so inspiring. Audio available on Spotify, Apple, and Stitcher.
Hi Malena! How are you?
I'm good! Oh, I hear you very well. That's surprising. So surprisingly good.
My headphones look like a dog chewed on them. Look! Cool… All right, it’s time to sip some tea and get started…
What kind of tea are you drinking?
It is... I still have no idea how to pronounce this because everyone pronounces it different, but do you know Genmaicha? The green tea with toasted rice…
It’s Japanese. With rice. Yes, I love it.
I love it. It's my favorite. It has that kind of hardiness that you wouldn't have in just... yeah it just feels like there is so much more in there than just leaves…
And it’s toasty, and it has this smoky flavor. I love it. I love it too.
…Of course you ask me about the tea that I'm drinking.
Yeah. [Laughs] So predictable.
Malena, what you do is just so f@#%ing cool - traveling to meet people, preserving culture, tasting different types of things.
In the press that I've seen about you ... looking at that, I'm just like, wow that might be the dream job, right?
Going out, talking to these amazing people, bringing ingredients to the restaurants, cultivating those relationships, preserving culture in a place that is so biodiverse.
I mean, just first and foremost, congratulations for really acting on something, and for being you in a way that it's clearly helping so many people. It also looks like it's really fun, something that's very unique and very much something that you created.
I cannot say that it's not the dream job because it is. I used to be a physician. I was an attending doctor, and I couldn't find myself in that kind of job.
But I can say that listening to people, really listening, and trying to connect with their worlds, or whatever they are living, is the thing that I'm completely into now. And I think I found the way to put all my medical training into something that was going to be more meaningful. And I can say that ‘meaningful’ is the right adjective for what we want to do.
With Mater, we wanted to create something transcendent - an organization that could really leave something for others to use, that could bring something also to the country, and to the people that we connect with. There's a lot of satisfaction in what we do, and there's a lot of gratitude as well, because yes we are in this country and yes, this is a mega diverse country.
In Peru we have everything that you could dream of if you're going to work with products, ingredients, different cultures, with people. So I think we are very lucky that we are from here, and that we realized there was an opportunity to work in the line of work that we are in right now.
You’ve said that there are 47 different registered languages in Peru, and over 4,200 different varieties of potatoes that we know about.
Crazy, huh?
So crazy, and so cool. I mean, just the biodiversity ... I totally get trying to preserve it, right? And trying to understand it, and catalog it.
Something else that I think is fascinating about what you're all up to, is that it's so interdisciplinary. In just reading the list of researchers - there's sociologists, linguists, gastronomists, you have people that are testing flavors…
I would love to learn more about the way that you've constructed your team at Mater Iniciativa and why you're choosing these different types of fields to come together in this way.
It came very naturally for us. When we started, I was a physician. My brother Virgilio Martínez is a cook.
Virgilio decided he wanted to know more about Peruvian ingredients. That was the main story. And then I came in to bring in the scientific part of it. He wanted to have the information, and I had this technical background that could add to this experience of exploring Peru and its foods.
So we started traveling around Peru, but then we realized there was a lot that we were missing, because we didn't have the language capability. We couldn't speak Quechua, Aguaruna, or any of the other languages that these ethnic groups would speak. And it's very interesting - there are some disciplines we never thought would be so important to really get the information that we wanted.
It's very cool because at the beginning we didn't know exactly what we were looking for. We knew we wanted to know more about the ingredients, but that's very ethereal when you think about it. You want to know more. But you don't know exactly what you're looking for, and the information that you want.
At the beginning, Virgilio said, "I want to know more about the possibilities. I want to know more about how they use their ingredients, the way they grow, and how they think of them. How important are they?"
And then when you go to the places where these products exist and grow, you get the idea of the story behind them by talking with people. So then you realize there's a linguistic part of it, because they think of it in their own language, and the relevance of the food is very much linked to the way they talk about it - the way they speak of it and relate to it. And so, in anthropology, we understood there were social dynamics about food that were very interesting too, like the huatia, which is this oven made with clay or with the remains of the harvest or the pachamanca which is cooking underground.
So these traditional cooking techniques were also very much linked to these social dynamics and social systems.
And then we thought, “we have to know about ecology and how everything works.” It’s very circular.
If you go to the Amazon, we have to know about biology and ethnobotany because we are in the middle of nowhere. If you want to know about one ingredient, it makes no sense. You have to know about everything that is around.
So the interdisciplinary nature of it all was on our minds. But then, in the middle of the process of making this Mater method, we realized how necessary these conversations are, because it's not like you call an anthropologist, and you ask one question, and you have the answer and that's it.
It's like, come in and let's have some coffee or tea, and let's talk about the same thing that we are looking at so that we can see more from your eyes, and share what we see.
So yeah, it's incredible…. I'm probably talking more than I should about this…
Please talk more! Something that you've said is that Mater is a translator of sorts, that the organization functions to translate. I think that is a very interesting word to use.
In what ways do you think you're translating? Obviously, you could look at food as a translation of culture, right? I'm just curious about that specific word because you're talking about a research organization, right? That's translating?
Translating is making something accessible, right? It's making something understandable, and I think our job is to present something that is there, but that hasn't been presented in the right way before, so that people can actually grasp the concept of it.
We have this restaurant in the altitudes, Mil. It's 3600 meters above sea level, which is very high, and you get the sensation of the low oxygen. So physically you know it, but you have to be there and experience everything around it in order to understand the idea of being in the altitudes.
So at Mil, when you are eating something very meaningful like a huatia, the potatoes are cooked within the same materials and soil that cultivated them. In that experience you connect with the people that are in contact with this crop, and you get an understanding of the different varieties that you are trying - their different textures and colors. You are getting a lot of information from that one experience.
I think that is the translating part, making it accessible. It’s a job that consists of getting involved so that you can make it easy for people to get engaged. I think if we can successfully do that after having somebody in one of our restaurants, or having somebody visiting Mater, then we have done our job.
I'm wondering if there's a line here. Are you only researching that which we can eat? Is it only gastronomic, or have you found yourselves cataloging different types of plants that have other uses? You're opening a quite a big box here, right? You're looking at an entire ecosystem. So I'm curious what your lines of delineation are. Does it have to be something that you can eat for it to be something that you focus on at Mater?
It is very interesting because of course, at the beginning, we were one branch of a restaurant (Central). So it was very much about food, and everything edible. We would take a trip somewhere in the Amazon, in the Andes, in the coast, and we would focus on everything that we could eat in that place.
But then we realized there was a lot of materials and a lot of other things that were around that, that were as important as the thing that you would you eat. I'm talking about the things that you wouldn't consume, but that would help you get across the message of the place and the importance of this ecosystem.
So for instance, when Virgilio would back from a trip, it was his moment to start and compose these dishes. Each dish would recreate one ecosystem. For instance, it would be not only an Amazonian fish, but also the Amazonian algae, and the stones, and the fruit that would come from the tree that would be feeding the fish, or even the other species that were around.
So when you present this plate that is not exactly a plate but a rock or something, you may not actually eat some of these elements, but you are going to be able to connect with the place. It's amazing, and it's something that you're going to remember.
It is so important for us to make memorable things, for people to connect with the idea, and to understand the message.
With gastronomy it's very easy to convey really important, powerful messages. But the challenging part is to present something that you're not going to be able to eat. It's going to be stuck in your mind because it's impressive, or because it's something that just ... completely out of your comfort zone.
That is something that it's also our specialty - we want to bring you out of your comfort zone. We want to put you in a position of not knowing, of not understanding very well at the beginning, of awakening your curiosity so that you can really get involved with it, and you can want to know more. And if you don't, then you’re going to be left confused.
Peru is just teeming with biodiversity, right? And I think it's interesting because biodiversity is a concept a lot of people don't understand. It's easy to be detached from it. When you get in your car, if you have a car, and go to your apartment, you're not really connected with nature.
I think something that's so beautiful about what you guys are doing is that you're working to connect people with nature, through the relationships and research that you conduct in tandem with people who are connected with nature. I think that's just so cool.
I'm wondering if you could give some examples of the ways that Peru is biodiverse? How is the country biodiverse? Let's unpack that scientific term for a second. I may get it as a scientific concept, but what does it mean when you're in the Amazon? What does biodiversity actually look like in practice?
Like I said before, you can get very confused with the amount of things that there are around you. But in order to understand Peru’s biodiversity -
Peru is 60% Amazon rainforest. We have a mountain range that is crossing through from the north to the south. We have the Pacific Ocean to the west. We have different varieties of just about everything, and so many microclimates that can host so many species of flora and fauna.
But there are so many different ecosystems, little ecosystems. And the incredible part of it is that most of these systems are also connected to ethnic groups that directly made these systems to be even more diverse.
If you go to the north Amazon, for instance, you're going to find the Aguaruna, and you're going to find the Quechua-Lamistas which are ethnic groups that are growing their own things, and creating their own universes.
These different cultures are all connected to nature in different ways.
For instance, the Aguaruna have created a dictionary of medicinal plants, because they use them a lot, and they have all this wisdom around them. They use all the resources they have around to cure themselves, to be healthy, to be powerful, and to be actually grounded.
I could talk about Amazonian culture so much because it's so just out there. It's amazing. The way they connect is something that is you have to see, to be able to see, to watch there, to actually understand.
It's not only that they can touch everything because they're there, but it's also that they understand how plants work, what they mean, and what their functions are.
That’s the beauty of it - to understand that you are part of a whole. You are part of a system in which you have a role. And your function is as important as the function of the stone that is there, and the water that is running down, the tree that has been growing there for ages.
This violence that humans have created… This violence is creating so much chaos, because it’s exactly going in the other direction, away from everything harmonious.
In the Andes it's not about the forest like in the Amazon, it's about the altitudes. So you connect with the mountain gods up high, and you connect with the things that are growing down that have deep roots. Down there are where your ancestors are. That is the Pachamama. The ground, the soil is so... it's another god.
That makes you wonder, that kind of connection. Wow. I wouldn't get that kind of connection with the plants that I have in my apartment. [Laughs]
“That’s the beauty of it - to understand that you are part of a whole. You are part of a system in which you have a role. And your function is as important as the function of the stone that is there, and the water that is running down, the tree that has been growing there for ages.”
It's so difficult because in the city you're accustomed to another life. So you get connected with the pavement, the traffic, but it's just not that easy to be connected with nature. You have to be there. We urge people all the time to just take a trip, and see for themselves. Take a trip and get the time to talk with these people. If you don't know the language, of course a translator would be necessary, but still you're going to get so much more than you're getting in your everyday life in your city, as interesting and cosmopolitan as your city can be.
I noticed the dried flowers that are on the wall behind you. A long time ago, I lived in New York City and I went to the New York Botanical Garden often. They have this amazing library of dried plants, where you can look at these plants that were taped onto sheets of paper back in the 1800s. There's something beautiful about that, because those researchers paved the way for a lot of what we're doing today in terms of research and understanding our environment.
I'm curious, what your process is? Let's say you find an amazing herb that tastes like almonds, and is spicy. What do you do from that point? And there's got to be a lot of supply chain questions as well because how do you harvest that if it's in the mountains, right?
Number one, in what ways have you tried to conduct research but have it be more applicable than a dried something on a piece of paper? And the second question is, how do you then bring that plant or that thing into your world?
Most of the time people think that when we are on a trip, we kind of grab everything and everything is going to be edible, and that everything is going to be in a dish. It's completely not like that, because, as you can see, we have all these samples of plants that we gather from around. They aren’t edible all the time. Sometimes they are just used as medicine, or it's not something you can consume. Perhaps you can put it in contact with your skin, make a preparation of it, or apply it somewhere near the heart, or near your lungs.
We still have to gather these plants because they mean something to the community that we pick them from.
There are a lot of elements that we decide are interesting or are important. Virgilio would grasp for instance, branches of some trees of Andean forest in the high altitudes. These branches are completely non-edible, but then Virgilio would decide that it would make the perfect element for the dish that he was going to create. There’s applicability. Even if it cannot be eaten, maybe it can be used for something else.
I think right now I am responding to one previous question that you made - we decided that gastronomy wasn't going to be the only way that we could convey the message and talk about biodiversity. So we created this other line of work in Mater that would be about art, and creating other platforms for our message.
For instance, we have guest artists who work with us who are developing some other projects that deal with, for instance, vegetal fibers and with botanics that are dyes. And so we have plants that are used to color materials like alpaca yarns.
This is a twist from the work that we would normally do around foods. But it makes sense. It doesn't have much to do with food, but with products, people, communities, culture, and identity.
At Mater we not only work to preserve cooking techniques. We do not only preserve products like varieties of roots and tubers. We also preserve some things that are very much linked to social groups - our artists, the crafts that they make, how they use botanics to dye, and those things. These things could be applied to cooking or not, but they still make a great story to tell. Their world is part of our world now, but it can only ever be one representation of it. It will not be like the real thing. That's another angle of it too, because we have to be very respectful that we are working with techniques that have around for so much time. It is an amazing thing to do. They can preserve their own thing the way they want it to be preserved.
I read that you also grow some of the things that you've found, like growing certain potatoes. So let's talk about that. You bring the seeds, and you grow them. 100 years from now, what would you love for Mater to be? Is it a farm that people can go to? Is it this giant library where you can learn about all these different plants and Peruvian biodiversity? I would love to know a little bit more about the north star that you're driving towards with what you're all doing.
The important thing to be doing is to replicate our method. Mater Iniciativa is a philosophy. It’s a philosophy about connecting to nature, connecting to people, being involved, being grounded.
That philosophy works for your life and works for restaurants, for any business, or whatever you want to do. But the replicability is that you can make this in Peru, or anywhere in the world, because it is connected to nature. It is not something that you cannot perform anywhere else. You can also choose the platforms in which you want to showcase the work that you are doing.
“The important thing to be doing is to replicate our method. Mater Iniciativa is a philosophy. It’s a philosophy about connecting to nature, connecting to people, being involved, being grounded.”
That’s the interesting part, that you can apply our same method and make it yours, and make it about your place. And the individuality is also something incredible, because all places are different, and people are different. And it's supposed to be like that, it's supposed to remain like that.
If you go to one particular ecosystem in, I don't know, any other place in the world, it's going to be unique because it's there. And it's not only because the GPS says so, but because it's in some other part of the world, connecting to some other people and it's viewed by some other people too. But you can connect with that and you can also talk about that and create art around that.
Can you expand a bit on your projects in 2019, and different sites throughout Peru that you've been focusing on? For instance, your work with certain Incan ruins that happened to be laboratories where they used to test similar ingredients?
I would love to know just about your projects spread and specifically what those projects are aiming to do.
We have all these disciplines and all these different guests coming over to do different projects, but right now you’re mentioning our project with the Moray ruins. We have the Moray ruins right next our Mil restaurant. Peruvians know about moray, but it's not Machu Picchu, right? It's not like the best, well-known ruin in Cusco.
The Moray ruins were supposed to be the agricultural research center of the Incas, but we didn't quite exactly know how it worked. So we had an archeologist come in, and he stayed four or five months in Cusco and talked to a lot of people there. He made a review of every text that had been written about Moray. He conducted interviews with people that had been living around there for quite a while. It was incredible because at a certain point, we actually achieved a better understanding of what Moray was. We looked at it from other angle, and we could appreciate it more. It's breathtaking when you're there at Moray because there are these circular terraces. It’s a system, and you can get an idea of how immense and magnificent it was. But you don't actually know how it worked.
Moray is an ancient tool where you don’t have the manual.
This archeologist made a full review. He got all this information about the crops that were cultivated there, and the position of the sun, and the temperature that would decrease or increase from one terrace to the other.
It was incredible. It made us think about how we could recreate it, and make a garden in our place that would have a circular system, a place where we could maybe experiment a little bit.
And so we did.
We worked with one organization that would make experimental gardens. We made a circular system. And now we have lettuce and tomatoes growing 3,600 meters [11811 feet] above sea level, which is amazing because you wouldn't think that anything could grow at that altitude. I mean, there's no way that you can grow lettuce or spinach or something like that at that altitude. And still, you can. You can make a circular system, and make the water run very efficiently within that system.
And so, Moray came to mind first because you mentioned the ruins.
But then we had other visitors at Mater Iniciativa doing work with communities around vegetal fibers. They created textiles out of corn husk. We also had a previous project about the botanic dyeing, so they would collect all these husks and create textiles with them. These materials would make incredible fibers. Now they’re something that we are actually selling to support the workshop that we created. It’s incredible to have artist come over and show what they know, and then other people can experience it and learn something that they didn’t know before, that is very much about the local communities and what they can do.
They create something completely new from both sides. The women in the local community didn't know about using the corn husk, but they did know about dyeing and coloring, and this artist has no idea about which botanics could dye. It was a learning process for everyone. The actual item that they created was the result of their conversation. It’s amazing - it's a dialogue that keeps on going.
From there we can create some other projects about vegetal fibers, botanics, dyeing, stuff like that. And we will now have another artist doing that of course.
It's so inspiring. Our problem right now during COVID-19 is not “what is going to come next?” but rather, “how soon we can do it?” We are all dying to just be out there and return to our normal lives.
Something I would love to ask you about: I would *love* to know your thoughts on the different ways of knowing. How scientific tradition differs from that much more tactile, practical way of acquiring knowledge. I would love to know your thoughts on all the different ways that one can know or one can discover something.
Of course, there's the knowing that you achieve with a scientific approach, where you can actually check out one really good book and get a lot of information. That experience is going to be completely different to actually being in a place where you can understand something and you can actually even practice it, or hear from a person who is performing an activity.
I would say that it's more about the way you want to learn. And it's very much about your personality too. There are people that are very, very sensible when it comes to getting involved, and trying to understand something that is completely new, completely out there. And there are people who are more practical, who just want to have the information in hand, and that's it.
It comes down to: What kind of person are you, what kind of person do you want to be?
It's not that it's bad to be practical, or that it's something negative. It's just the way you are, and that’s okay too. It's just about the amount of information you want to handle, how interested you are in what kind of things you want to learn.
It's also very much about hospitality too. When we have people come over to the restaurants, there some people who ask a lot of questions and want to know the why behind everything that they’re eating. “What is this? Can I know more? Can I have see the fruit? I’d like to know how it looks?” They ask a lot, and they are given a lot.
If you want it, you can have a lot. But if you don't, you can come here and have an eating experience. And that's fine too. You're still going to be surprised. And you're still going to be able to find things that you never found before.
I don't think it's necessarily one method or the other. It's just the way you are, and how you want to know things.
If you ask me of course, I’ll say that the best learning method is just putting your hands in there and doing it yourself, or seeing how the others are doing it. And it's also about the kind of information that you want to have.
If you want to have information about food, like what we do at Mater Iniciativa, then you're going to have to go out there. There's no other way. There's nothing that a book can can teach you about that. You have to actually be able to see how the tree goes and everything that…
Look, a lot of people talk about right now chocolate and coffee, they have become these big things - “From tree to bar.” It’s an amazing thing.
But it's very difficult to go to one of these places where they grow cocoa and grow coffee and not been amazed by everything that is just going on you. So it's not about the cocoa tree, it’s actually the least relevant thing when you actually get close to it. It's the whole forest, the whole forest. It’s all the people, elements, and components that are there. It’s the water, and the soil, and the dry leaves that are on the ground, and every other tree that is growing there.
That is a concept that is not talked about very much. And I understand, because it's a lot of information.
Could you tell me about someone that you met in your research in the field that really struck a chord with you? That was very ... just someone that was really inspiring or lived life in a completely different way than you do in Lima?
That is so difficult to answer. There are a lot of people that have amazed me in different ways.
I think about one of the first families that we visited in Cusco, about seven years ago. We connected with this Sierra Productiva Organization, and these people were completely open to working with us. The only thing that we said was,
"We want to get to the places where things grow. So could you allow us the entrance to farm fields?" And they said,
"Of course, where do you want to go in the region of Cusco, north or south?"
We started making these trips one hour, two hours, three hours away from from Cusco city. People would open their homes to us, just because we wanted to know about products. We were so very surprised about how open these people would be, just opening in their homes to some strangers who were asking about products.
It's was just confusing.
And then we would go there and we would see how people were so proud of what they had. They were incredibly happy to share that with anyone that was interested. What they wanted from us in return had nothing to do with money, but rather would be something like asking your opinion about it, or your input about how to make it better.
We met this family, Francisco and Trinidad. They are the most amazing people. Trinidad is one of the most amazing women I've ever met. She is the leader of the community we were in. She has fought alcoholism, which is very high in Andean communities. She is a feminist even if she doesn't know she is. She is very “you should take care of the things that you want to take care of, and you shouldn't wait for a man to tell you to do it.”
That was something that she self taught herself throughout her life. Her experience was so powerful, because she decided to be this leader - to take care of things herself. And because she was part of the Sierra Productiva program, she became one of the teachers. Now she travels from one community to the other, and tells them about the program.
The program she was involved with focuses on people who know a lot about their crops, farm fields, and growing animals, and helping them to build better structures for their farms so that they can be more efficient. The problem that they are trying to tackle is that they want to stop people from migrating to the big cities with the hopes of making better life for themselves. "Let's stop that," they said, because the best thing that you can do is do what you can do best, which is being a farmer, which is important which is valuable, which is something that your ancestors have been doing. And you have the farm fields right there. You can make them more efficient, we can help you.
That program was incredible. Trinidad was incredible, in the way she understood everything. And she made everything work beautifully. She had these farms of everything you could need in one acre. She had so many products, in one acre.
Trinidad was also the leader of a community effort to harvest medicinal plants, which happens twice a year. It's like going to the pharmacy for them. So they will take a hike of three or four hours up to the top of a mountain to collect all the plants that they planned to use all year long in order to cure different diseases.
When we were there, you could see how she would be followed by everyone. Everyone was so respectful of her role. She has all these animals too, cows that she would name, and guinea pigs.
Trinidad had everything structured and compartmentalized very well. She understood that was happiness, and that got stuck in my mind. I would ask her,
"What do you think is missing? Do you want anything else?" And she said,
"Why would I need anything else? I have everything here, everything. I have food. I have my family, I have health. And I have this amazing community and look, I have my plants that are my babies. I have this amazing lake. The view is incredible. I have clean air. What else do I need?"
And I was like, what else does she need? What else would anybody need? She was the most inspiring person.
Thank you. I know answering interview questions is like a marathon, and I just really appreciate you. You were on it the entire time...
Okay, wait, I do have one more question.
What are the ways that you see climate change happening in Peru on a local level? The concept itself is this global concept, right? But I'm sure Trinidad and others would be noticing these subtle changes over time and just ... are you seeing climate change throughout Peru? Are you hearing about it from people?
We noticed a long time ago that local people who are very connected to nature have known about climate change for so long. You feel ignorant and silly when you ask about it. If you go to the altitudes and you tell people,
"Have you noticed something different about the snow caps in the mountains?" They will say,
"Come on, what are you talking about? It has been happening like 20 years ago. And the level of the lake is not any more the way it used to be. And the plants that are growing are not growing at the same level, they are growing 100 meters higher right now.”
For instance, potato farmers have climbed their fields up 150 meters the last 20 years, and they’ll tell you that they know something is happening and that they have to adapt.
The message that I got from the beginning was that we have an incredible capacity for adapting. This versatility comes with knowledge. So if you have knowledge of the things that you are growing, you definitely have clues for how to make it sustainable and to continue.
The amount of wisdom that these growers have in the Andes and in the Amazon about the products that they're working with is just incredible. And they won't have a problem around continuing to grow them, because they would make it work. They know these plants so well. It's like your child, you're going to know exactly what he's going to be doing in an hour because you know them. I know it's a crazy analogy, but it is what it is, so when you talk to the potato growers, they'll say,
“The message that I got from the beginning was that we have an incredible capacity for adapting. This versatility comes with knowledge. So if you have knowledge of the things that you are growing, you definitely have clues for how to make it sustainable and to continue.”
"Yeah, I have climbed up the mountain, and eventually I won't have anywhere else to go. So I will have to find other roots and tubers and I will have to work with other varieties."
And right now they're doing so. They created so many varieties that are more resistant that can grow at a lower level. They are already adapting. They don't have a problem with that. And it's not something that they question as much as we do, because for us it is a problem. We won't have access to so many things. We are not in touch with the solution so much. I think that is very interesting because we hear a lot about the problem, but we don't make the time to actually listen to the guys that could have the clues of everything. They could have the solution right in their hands. And if we took more time to just listen, this would all be so much easier.
We’re in a time of mass extinction, right? Where biodiversity is something that everyone's wants to care for. This lends a certain urgency to the work that you're doing, right?
Completely. There are these Amazonian groups that respect our system very much, because otherwise if you are damage the system, you are damaging yourself. That's the way they think. You will be ill at some point, if you are do something wrong to the earth, to the environment, to the balance of everything.
Something that they practice as a community, given that they are in the middle of apparently nowhere, is that they know exactly the limits of their place. Not because there are geographical limits, but the limits are defined by how many resources they can take advantage of. So they know exactly how many fruits they can harvest, how many animals they can hunt, and how many things they can harvest, because those are the supplies for the community. And that's it. You don't take more.
That’s another concept that was really striking for me. I think that's the problem, that we just take too much. We are in communities that could know exactly how much we need.
It’s oversupplying. It’s like what people did pre-quarantine. You don't need that much water, you don't need that much. You are supplying yourself now for how many years? That is something that we should start to change.
I couldn't agree more. Wow, thank you so much. Really.
No, thank you. It has been so ... I think it's a good thing that we can have these conversations with people from other places. It's so enriching for me. I love it, I really do. •
By Jenna Matecki
Photo of the Mater Iniciativa Mil team from Malena Martínez’s Instagram.
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