Recetario para la memoria (Guanajuato)
Zahara Gómez Lucini

During the Colonial era, the lands now known as Guanajuato served as Mexico's granary. A vast and sunny valley on the northern edge of Mesoamerica was inhabited by nomads, commonly referred to as Chichimecas, but also including the Pames, Guamares, Zacatecos, and Guachihiles, who traversed it in rhythm with the seasons. Armed foreigners arriving in our lands saw immense potential for food production in these expansive valleys bathed by rivers and seasonal rains, now known as Guanajuato, Silao, Lerma.

From here came the corn, wheat, and beans that nourished the bodies toiling the land; from here came the sorghum that fed the pigs and cattle providing protein to the colonizers; from here, the alfalfa that sustained the horses pulling carts laden with minerals. «Colonization lays the groundwork for subsequent migrations», warned American historian Aviva Chomsky, 500 years later, in her books on undocumented migrants.

New dynamics uprooted small farmers who sought fortune on the other side of the border or in emerging maquiladora industries. This transformation was evident in the landscape: the once green or golden fields, depending on the alfalfa, corn, sorghum, or wheat season, gave way to a uniform gray of industrial warehouses and automobile assembly plants. The fertile land cracked, and where fruits and vegetables once thrived, bodies of missing persons began to be harvested as well.

Published by Daniela Rea, Clarisa Moura and Zahara Gómez Lucini
Designed by Clarisa Moura
Texts by Daniela Rea, Mayra Lopineda, Jessica Chantal Alcázar Romero, Cinthya Cecilia Alvarado Rivera, Fabrizio Lorusso, Zahara Gómez Lucini and Alejandra Díaz
Photography by Zahara Gómez Lucini
230 x 166 mm
272 pages
2022
American dust jacket
Spanish
ISBN9786078861040