On March 11 students, faculty, and community members gathered in Viking Theater for “Comal y Tortilla: On the Culinary Alchemy of a Nation, Food Sovereignty, and the Predicament of Good Intentions,” an event hosted by the Romance Languages Department. The event featured a lecture by Dr. Constanza Ocampo‑Raeder, a professor of anthropology at Carleton College.
Ocampo-Raeder’s talk introduced a book she is currently writing. At the center of her project is the thesis that we, as consumers, are “profoundly uncritical, even simplistic, about the socio-cultural and environmental attributes — plus historical legacies — we assign to the foods we eat and the bodies that produce and prepare our foods.”
Her lecture explored how contemporary food culture, especially in the age of social media, encourages a search for new, authentic cuisines. While curiosity about global foods can be positive, Ocampo-Raeder argued that it can also obscure the labor systems and cultural contexts behind those foods. She discussed a framework called the “anthropology of hands,” examining the fascination with items made by hand. According to Ocampo-Raeder, many consumers value the idea of handmade foods, particularly those made by “brown hands,” without considering the labor conditions of the people producing them.
To illustrate this tension, she focuses on la tortilla, a food with deep cultural significance across Mesoamerica. La tortilla is closely tied to el comal, the traditional griddle used to cook it. Both of which are found at the center of families and communities. Ocampo-Raeder explained that producing tortillas involves a complex social and economic system, often sustained by women, whose labor supports families, markets, and local economies. The popular demand for “authentic” handmade tortillas, she argued, romanticizes this work while overlooking the multiple responsibilities carried by the women who perform it.
Following the lecture, attendees gathered for a reception where they continued discussing the themes raised in the talk. The event also featured an exhibition of final projects created by students in “SPAN 399: Food Studies in Latin America,” a course taught by Professor of Spanish Ariel Strichartz in the fall of 2025. The projects explored the cultural, historical, and linguistic significance of food in connection to Latin America.
The event was made possible through support from the Leraas Fund, the Latin American Studies Program, and the Sociology & Anthropology Department. Together, the lecture and reception provided an opportunity for the campus community to reflect on the relationships between food, culture, sustainability, economic systems, and the global community.
