At the age of 13, one of Kalymaracaya’s favorite pastimes was to watch culinary programs in front of the television. When it came to indigenous cuisine, however, she felt uncomfortable.
“The chefs said things that didn’t make sense and I asked myself: ‘Isn’t there any indigenous chef to represent us?'”, says the Mato Grosso do Sul native.
She even tried to look for them, but found no one. “That’s when I made the decision to study gastronomy and be that representative,” she says.
Today, at 41, she is one of the main references in traditional cuisine in Brazil and joins the movement of indigenous people who use gastronomy to value their roots.
Kalymaracaya recalls that, during the technical cooking course, there were no disciplines on indigenous cuisine and that he received suspicious looks from the professors when he tried to introduce the subject.
“I tried to pass on my knowledge, but they didn’t want to. The teachers had techniques that contradicted my indigenous knowledge”, says she, who is part of the Terena people.
The mishaps continued even after it established itself in the market. She says that a large brewery invited her this year to participate in a project to value female chefs.
The idea was for the professional to create a dish and offer it to a restaurant, since she still does not have her own space due to lack of resources. In return, the establishment would gain publicity on the company’s networks. “I went to ten restaurants in Campo Grande. All I got was no and the door slammed in my face.”
The chef believes that the refusals happened because Mato Grosso do Sul has a conflicting relationship with the indigenous people. This year, a Guarani-Kaiowá leader was assassinated in the midst of disputes over land.
“Our customs and food are rich, but they are being forgotten in the country,” he says.
Professor of anthropology at Furg (Federal University of Rio Grande), Martin César Tempass says that indigenous cuisine was fundamental for the Portuguese to settle in Brazil.
He explains that, in colonization, there was a division of labor in which it was up to women to cook. As the ships that docked in Brazil mostly brought men, the Portuguese resorted to indigenous women to get meals.
“Later, when there were European women, there was a lack of European ingredients. So, the dishes were adapted with indigenous ingredients that are still present in our food today”, he says, who specializes in indigenous food symbolism.
Foods such as cornmeal cake, paçoca, tapioca and açaí are legacies of the indigenous people. Very popular among the gauchos, chimarrão is also another legacy of the original peoples. Despite this, Tempass says that the contribution of these groups has been made invisible.
“We don’t just eat food. We eat symbols. And indigenous food came to symbolize an identity that was not desired by the local elites”, he says.
According to chef Kalymaracaya, spreading this cuisine is a way to break with this stigma. One of the most traditional dishes of its people is hî-hî, a cassava dumpling wrapped in a banana leaf.
She says that the recipe was created during the Paraguayan War (1864-1870), when members of the Terena people participated in the conflict and took hî-hî to feed the soldiers on the Brazilian border.
As the natives dehydrated the dumpling, it resisted the long days of travel without spoiling. “Food is a first step for people to get to know the indigenous culture better”, she says.
For Clarinda Maria Ramos, 53, gastronomy is also a way of telling the story of the Sateré-Mawé people, of which she is a part. In 2020, the pedagogue founded, alongside anthropologist João Paulo Tukano, the Biatüwi restaurant, the first dedicated to traditional food in Manaus.
Clarinda says that, more than a restaurant, the space is an indigenous food house.
“At a restaurant, you arrive and eat without worrying about getting to know the culture of the place. Here, we convey to customers the knowledge of our culture through each ingredient”, says she, who will participate in Fartura de São Paulo in the spaces Knowledge and Interactive.
The flagship of the establishment is biatüwi, the dish that gives the name to the house and whose translation reveals what it is about — in the Tukana language, the word means fish in a spicy broth.
Pepper is one of the main spices in space. “It’s not just there to spice up the dish. It’s also there to protect, nourish and purify your body.”
Another important element is the sauva ant, which is present in the puquecado fish. In this preparation, the meat is wrapped in cocoa leaf and roasted on the moquém, a grill used to smoke food. Despite being important in the Sateré-Mawé culture, consumption of the insect has already been the target of prejudice, says Ramos.
“The oppression made me stop speaking my language and eating my food. The food house seeks to rebuild what we stopped practicing”, she says.
60 km from Manaus, overlooking the Cuieiras River, one of the tributaries of the Negro River, is the Sumimi restaurant, which has been in existence for almost 11 years in the Três Unidos community.
There, visitors can try fani, a typical dish of the Kambeba people made with grated cassava and pirarucu wrapped in a banana leaf.
The owner, Neurilene Cruz, known as Miskui, says that serving this preparation is a way of preserving the memories of her ancestors. “We are not the indigenous people of the 1500s, but we haven’t abandoned our customs and traditions,” she says.
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