Maestra Cristina Barros is known across Mexico as writer, teacher and leading proponent of traditional Mexican cuisine and its links to history and culture. She has worked to highlight the plight of traditional corn varieties from the pressures of industrial agriculture and to help "save the traditional tortilla". She was also a driving force behind the UNESCO decision to list Mexico's traditional cuisine to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
In this interview with Maestra Barros, she highlights the importance of food as a key part of our identities, communities and histories. She reflects on the rapid loss of traditional tomato varieties, pushed by commercial production. She diagnoses that "the struggle of our time is against uniformity", and mourns the loss of tomato taste and the exploitation of Mexican farmer labourers by industrial tomato agriculture.
She expresses her hopes that the 2019 Mexican Native and Ancestral Tomato Fair will be the first of many. "A traditional tomato from the milpa is planted by the family.. the seeds are passed down from generation to generation. The message that we get when we eat one of those tomatoes is completely different (from eating an industrially-produced tomato). I think that not only reaches our stomach, it also reaches our heart."
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