Preserving Cuban Culture through Food Education

Vilda and Pepe sat side by side in a small room equipped with a sink and kitchen counter, that has become the headquarters for their Food Conservation Project on the west side of Havana. The eight of us sat around them in a circle, as they spoke of their adventures together in creating and managing an organization that promotes small home gardens to teach people the importance of food quality. They instruct anyone with an interest how to grow vegetables and fruits organically in their backyard, how to preserve their homegrown produce and how to prepare whole meals as a nourishing result of this process. Their project offers a holistic approach to the food system challenge.

Surrounded by transparent jars filled with mysterious jams and concoctions, they explained that their main objective is actually to promote food culture. According to Vilda, the preservation of food never became popular in Cuba because of the colonization by Spain and the resulting plantation economy, which was based on one million slaves. Preservation was limited because the slaves were kept in barracks with few supplies. Vilda and Pepe feel that by introducing preservation into the Cuban food culture, and encouraging it to be passed on to the next generations, they are empowering families with more nourishment and income options. For instance, rather than being content to enjoy mango only when it is offered at the market, anyone can learn how to preserve it whole or in chutney, which they can consume or sell in the off-season. It seems a very natural step in a food economy striving to give local farms precedence over imported produce.

In the beginning of their project about fifteen years ago, Pepe transformed their house into a laboratory with experiments constantly boiling, steaming and stacking up in glass jars. They went door-to-door around their neighborhood without any literature, spreading the message that families should not wait for the government to give them everything but rather take control of their own knowledge to preserve and grow food for their families. As the project grew, communication and education was set up through the neighborhood CDRs (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution) and people began to comprehend the need for food preservation. Pepe offered instructions to make 96 products at first and that list has grown to a catalogue of 350 recipes!

Their techniques include drying, canning, pickling and fermentation. The fermentation is either based on lactic acid (to process things like sauerkraut, peppers, green mangoes, carrots and tomatoes) or alcoholic fermentation (to make vinegar, wine, tea, pru, star fruit and acerol cherries preserves). They also find it very important to teach folks how to dry herbs. According to Vilda, twenty five per cent of energy used by Cubans is obtained from sugar consumption, and that is too much, so they try to use little sugar (and little salt for that matter) in their recipes. Dry herbs replace much of the need for sugar and salt and add another healthy element to the project. As a result of Vilda and Pepe’s efforts, two institutions are now preserving what they grow and selling to their communities. They like to say if each family preserves just two liters of tomatoes it makes an industry; by replacing their need to purchase tomato products from the store.

It turns out that the Food Conservation Project receives no money from the government, nor from the communities it helps. It makes profit only from TV and radio shows, which they recently began producing as the popularity of their efforts has grown to a national level. They use mass media (radio, TV and a national publishing house) for educational material distribution. It is estimated that they reach 1.5 million Cubans annually through television and radio. Print material is the most expensive piece of their organization, and they sell these at subsidized prices at several international book fairs. One major factor that keeps their operating costs low is that the government does not make them pay for their modest headquarters as long as the building is used specifically for the project.

Vilda and Pepe say they are allied with non-governmental and governmental organizations around the world at this point and have plenty of community promoters spreading the word and holding workshops around Cuba. Promoters are community members who have attended a workshop by Vilda and Pepe and become facilitators in their own communities. Workshop attendees pay only for the couples’ transport and training materials. They feel it makes sense for the attendees to pay these costs because they have the most financial resources and will be the producers (those implementing a garden and preserving their produce, perhaps for profit); making them the most direct recipients of the project’s benefits. Kids get free workshops twice monthly and seniors get free workshops monthly. These workshops are conducted all over Cuba, reaching 15,000 attendees per year. The selfless efforts of this energetic couple are absolutely inspiring, and their enthusiasm for creating positive change by educating their community is delightfully contagious.

For more information on The Food Conservation Project check out their website at www.alimentacioncomunitaria.org.