Identification, collection and consumption of weeds and wild vegetables in Mexican communities: institutionalized local ancestral indigenous knowledge as ecological literacy, place and identity

This paper sets forth the idea that a critical aspect of the socialization process of Mexican communities is to maintain and carry-out traditional knowledge passed down from generations of indigenous ancestors. The relationship between Mexican communities and the land creates a window through which we can see how traditional indigenous knowledge has been institutionalized and is practiced today. Accordingly, we use the concept of an inhabited place as the macro unit of analysis. Inhabited places are considered as primary artifacts of culture as they are more than a physical space and a location. As such, inhabited places are products of human organization. Inhabited places accumulate and reflect evidence of the different people who have occupied and transformed a place making it a historical and emotive legacy. In addition, we associate the concept of inhabited places with two focal points: (a) place as a producer of food and (b) the traditional indigenous practices of collection and consumption of natural edible vegetation. Associating the concept of inhabited place along with our two focal points of production and consumption, helps us to frame ways in which our Mexican ancestral humans constructed and developed their sense of place as well as the importance of sharing a legacy of knowledge that contributed to the survival and health of humans yesterday and today. We use the term natural edible vegetation instead of wild vegetables because we recognize that the notion of wild vegetables is a conceptual term developed by today’s science disciplines and as a discrete flora category was not, per se, part of the indigenous ancestral knowledge base. As such, using the term natural edible vegetation helps us, as authors, to engage in a reflexive and comparative analysis between agricultural endeavors of yesterday and today. Thus, using ancestral knowledge as an analytical lens allows us to identify a network of relationships between humans, and localized natural edible vegetation. Specifically, analyzing cultural manifestations associated with the socialization and the relationship between survival and natural edible vegetation is a way to access the knowledge and literacy of individuals and to strengthen institutionalized ancestral knowledge that has been passed on and still in practice today.