Home gardens in Latin America: wild foods in the mesoamerican ekuaro of P'urépechas, Mexico and the Andean Chakra of Kichwas, Ecuador

Abstract

Agroforestry systems comprise important spaces for biodiversity involving traditional ecological knowledge in their management. In Latin America, within Mesoamerican region as well as Andean exists a prominent kind of agroforestry system called home gardens, distinguished by the presence of domesticated plants and animals, coexisting with wild foods. In this paper, we addressed a comparative view on home gardens between p’urhépecha ekuaro and kichwa chakra to document qualitatively the relationship between diversity of wild food and food sovereignty in Mesoamerica and Andean regions, within a context of cultural change, and to contribute to the discussion of wild-domesticated continuum related to plants in different home gardens. The ethnographic research shows three main elements: 1) that the diversity of forms of lives domesticated and wild that coexist in the home gardens form part of a food sovereignty system; 2) cultural change does not just affect home gardens in negative ways; 3) wild foods are in a very complex process of domestication in which it is difficult to define the lines between wild and domesticated. Wild food studies have to consider a broad approach to how wild food relates to human cultures.