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Food in the Public Square: Moravian University Professor, Student Help Unite Latino Community

Sandra Aguilar-Rodriguez Velvet Alvarez Food in the Public Square Moravian University

Food in the Public Square: Moravian University professor, student bring Lehigh Valley Latino voices to the forefront

A project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities created discussion through cooking workshops, community forums, film screenings, gardening, and more.

By: Kaytlyn Gordon ‘19

If the old adage “the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach,” is true, then we certainly believe a very good education about a culture can be had through its food. The Latino population of the Lehigh Valley was given a voice through the Food in the Public Square project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Sandra Aguilar-Rodriguez, assistant professor of history at Moravian University, was asked to collaborate on the project based on her expertise on food, women, and daily life in Mexico. 

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“I have a passion for food and history. I have had experience interviewing women and exploring issues about class through food,” says Aguilar-Rodriguez. “Food in the Public Square was a very interesting project to work with, it was not historical, but it allowed me to bring my expertise to engage with the local Latino community.”

The project was created by Kelly Allen from Northampton Community College to increase the participation of minority groups in community discussion. She involved faculty from other colleges and universities, along with non-profit organizations in the region to help create discussion about the human relationship with food, as well as ensure adequate, safe, and appropriate food supply for the Lehigh Valley community. 

“I was in charge of My Grandparents' Kitchen, which included five cooking workshops in which we explored cooking traditions and eating practices among Latinos in the Lehigh Valley,” says Aguilar-Rodriguez. “We met at the kitchen of the Hispanic Center located in the South Side of Bethlehem where participants shared their recipes, cooked in groups, and ate together.”

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The workshops involved collecting oral history material and producing a cookbook. Aguilar-Rodriguez invited student Velvet Alvarez ’18 for her expertise in both the Spanish and English language to assist in her project. “My role was to help host and organize the workshops. I was in charge of keeping track of the participants, gathering the recipes they had, purchasing ingredients for the workshops, performing follow up interviews with participants about their personal lives, and compiling all the information into a database,” says Alvarez. 

The community cookbook that Alvarez and Aguilar-Rodriguez are working to publish will be given to all participants and to regional food banks, libraries, local non-profits, and housed electronically on the Food in the Public Square’s website and social media outlets.

When asked about the overall success of the endowment, Aguilar-Rodriguez said, “It was a success because we were able to create a safe environment for participants to share their life stories and their concerns, however we also realized that it is really difficult to engage with the Latino population due to several reasons. Latinos are not a homogeneous block, so it is very important to identify community leaders within each nationality to bring them on board.” 

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Food in the Public Square strived to create discussion and break the barrier with the Latino community by holding three community conversations that involved keynote speakers, discussion forums, poetry workshops, film screenings, along with gardening workshops.

“Together we learned about our food system and the challenges we face. We were able to discuss food from various perspectives, from sustainability to food justice,” says Aguilar-Rodriguez.