Cooking Classes in Oaxaca
If you want to take a cooking class in Oaxaca, I have a list of recommendations here at the end of this page. I used to teach them myself but I decided to leave that business behind after reflecting about the knowledge I’ve learned throughout 5 years of teaching and working on tourism.
I decided to update this page to be a post about all of this experience and anechdotes, and the chats and mutual learning from hundreds of people. As I mentioned above, you can still book a class with the friends I’ve been collaborating with over community efforts but also learn about the reality of Oaxaca from my perspective. You can skip to the recommendations if you prefer.
How Taking Cooking Classes Abroad Became a Thing?
According to this text I found from John Mulcahy and his sources, Gastronomic Tourism is as old as people started to travel. It just has been mutating according to the types of promotion of destinations and economic capabilities of travelers as mass consumption of it. There’s also not a lot of studies around this, at least academic ones. But one thing is for sure; the explosion of social media as a tool to demonstrate people’s social and cultural capital, as Mulcahy mentions, is something that has made a boom in the tourism industry.
I prefer to take a non-academic approach to this topic. I consider that approach slow and obtuse. Reality and the dynamics of an industry that is quickly changing happen faster than a paper can be approved or published. Especially if we focus on the colonial aspect of traveling. Speaking of which, if you haven’t read or heard of Bani Amor, and you’re planning to travel from the global north to the global south, I really recommend you to give them a good read and listen to their interviews.
Big players like tripadvisor, airbnb, lonelyplanet, zagat, and so on, have actually been profiting from traveling in a very subtle way; in a desirable way. This subtleness is possible because of the status quo and how people are perceived, and expected to play a role in certain positions: Of service, of facilitator, of consumer, and all of them are expected to be fulfilled in a system that we all accept. As Mulcahy mentions and, I repeat, our food inspired travels are to increasing our social and cultural capital, either through our social media, our cooking repertoire. Basically, knowledge we can capitalize later in any possible way: Opening a restaurant, networking, starting a podcast, writing a cookbook. you name it.
In this capitalistic system everything can be converted into a product. Traveling too. I don’t need to cite here how much money has been spent by travelers in the last decade, we know it’s been increasing, especially after the lockdown measures of the ongoing pandemic.
What’s Behind Traveling like a Local?
After five years of running cooking classes here in Oaxaca, I’ve noticed dynamics that made me feel uncomfortable at times, hopeful at others. I appreciate that I was able to find many nuances on the many topics that surround those activities and all the players that participate on this industry; myself included.
My point, and criticism, about tourism and how so-called experiences have shaped the life of local people to serve a population that has been told and encouraged by influencers (digital and analog,) and a system that the desirable thing to do is to travel abroad and consume a product. The product is our lives, our daily lives, our trips to the market where we enjoy not only choosing our produce and groceries for cooking our breakfast, lunch, and dinner; also to gossip and talk to our regular vendors about the week. We open our kitchens, our dinning rooms, our bathrooms, our lives so all of them can taste what it feels like to participate and be part of it for a day. Think deeply about the story you’ve been told by joining those activities; think about the narrative behind the “exotic”, behind the “deep Oaxaca”, behind the “authentic”, behind the “live like a local”, behind the “traveler-not-tourist mentality”.
Don’t get me wrong, if you have been to my kitchen (which by the way I don’t have anymore) and have been welcomed by me, it was real honest and warm as 100% of my clients told me they felt. We shared and cooked together and I also learned a lot. I’m not complaining of you. I’m criticizing the system that put us there in the first place. It’s also true that, as me, many people that live in a place like Oaxaca, have limited options to make a decent living with dignity. Which takes me to the next point: Class.
My experience of life is shaped my migration, like many of us. One chapter of my life took me to live to the United States. I’m a great language learner and speak four languages fluenlty. The cultural capital I obtained from coming from a big city and have a degree on graphic design and experience on programming, web design, marketing, photography, arts, and yes, also traveling. All of that gave me the opportunity to start a business like this by myself with a website, SEO techniques, photographies, and of course, my passion for cooking and hosting parties and friends at home.
This takes me to the next thing for you to consider. Who you want to hire to learn from? What platform are you using to do so? As I mentioned before, some of us decided to start making a living out of this. Some of us would consider the ethical implications and decide to inhabit the contradictions that come along; some wouldn’t. Cultural appropriation, gentrification, colonialism, racism, and similar ones. Personally, I’ve tried not to share recipes that were shared with me in the confidence of a kitchen in Oaxaca. I just came up with my own recipes and family knowledge in the kitchen together with local ingredients.
But also, on the other hand, which industry is clean and not full of dirty contexts? As I wrote in the past about why I left my work in IT, certainly tourism is not exempt of people and practices that would make me leave as well. Again, the systems that run how we relate and how we consider mostly everything a commodity, makes our capital (monetary, social, cultural, etc.) who we are in terms of capital value, instead of human value.
So, from Here, What’s Next?
I don’t have a universal solution to fix the issues that predatory industries like tourism have caused in destinations like Oaxaca or similar ones around the world. I believe that is more of a collective effort. Dropping my reflections and experience working on daily basis on it is my way to add to the conversation.
People of the rest of Mexico look down upon the states of the south of Mexico, and in general everything that is south of the capital. This is a colonial idea caused by the racist ideas and narratives that native people are lazy and prefer rather to be maintained by the government. Whereas, if you’ve ever been to a place like here, the people of Oaxaca, but I’m not talking about the rich settlers of Oaxaca that are mostly descendants of colonizers. I’m talking about the people that live in the rural areas and are actually connected to the land; they are the most hard-working people you’ll find in here. Those are the people the knowledge is being taken from; how many people brag about corn as a staple food of Mexico and even organize experiences and workshops while not having a single clue or connection of how corn is harvested or even knowledge of how preserving the native seeds is at stake by the push of the US government to introduce GMO corn in Mexico. Even worse, the stigma and racism that the actual indigenous farmers face when they have to go to the big cities of Mexico.
That being said, my recommendation is try to find a cooking class that is run by people like them. Avoid the restaurants and big quintas. Also, those usually try to get as many people as they can in a single group to stretch their profits but you will end up in a restaurant station in a less personalized setup.
I’ve heard a lot of people saying, I want to support local businesses by buying directly to them. While this statement is very conscious and thoughtful, it’s also a tricky one. It’s great that you’re selective of how do you spend your money and who you drive business to; in dynamics like this, is something that is good for you, and also if there’s a tendency of more and more people doing this, the big players and monopolies get less business. Until here, everything seems fine. However, there’s something we need to detach from it. We are consumers, who we bring business to is a great way of conscious decision making and small scale support of dismantling and boycotting corporations; we’re not doing any favor or saving anyone by doing so. By feeling or believing this, we are following white-savior behaviors by putting ourselves in a certain position of superiority and acknowledging our actions are saving people from something.
So, in a greater scale it’s amazing we spend our money selectively and consciously, but my advice would be: Let’s not utilize it as a mechanism of how we are some sort of hero that is saving the other we consider, by default, is in a lower position, and rather challenge and question what have historically driven people to make a living out of their traditions and culture and having to direct it to a certain target who, also systematically, holds more power in their currency, nationality, or class.
For now, it’s all I have to add, but I’ll be working on a single text about corn and native seeds. If you want to support this content creation, I invite you to join my Patreon account where I reflect about these topics and the brainchilds are generated, as well as drafts for early access to the written content of this website.
Where Do I Recommend you to Take a Cooking Class in Oaxaca?
These recommendations are based on my personal network and community building. I know their ethics and political views. We have collaborated together and I would highly recommend you learning from them.
References
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340183656_Historical_Evolution_of_Gastronomic_Tourism
- https://geezmagazine.org/magazine/article/decolonizing-travel-an-interview-with-bani-amor/
- Bani Amor on Tourism and the Colonial Project https://forthewild.world/listen/bani-amor-on-tourism-and-the-colonial-project-234
