Conceptualizing space and place through the lens of food systems in urban Amazonia Stone Center Summer Field Research Grant Terminal Report September 30, 2012 Scarlett Andrews M.A Candidate Stone Center for Latin American Studies Tulane University
The central aim of my field research was the conceptualization of changes and adaptations in food consumption due to urbanization and natural disasters amongst urban slum populations in Iquitos, Peru. A secondary objective was to explore local understandings and utilizations of peri-urban space in this Amazonian city. This site was chosen because of its unique position as one of the largest and most rapidly growing cities in the Amazon rainforest and the largest in the world that is inaccessible by road. Its position on the banks of the Amazon, Nanay, and Itaya Rivers made it an outpost for rubber boom intermediaries and barons in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Today, it is a port for ecological and natural healing tourism, and it constitutes an enormous regional agricultural market. I spent a total of eight weeks in Iquitos, and my research design consisted of two phases which I will discuss in further detail below. For the first three weeks, I dedicated my time to making contacts with local non-governmental organizations and researchers. I also began documenting the regional cuisine, agricultural products, and the different spaces in which food was transported in and out of the city and sold to the public. During the last five weeks, I continued meeting with contacts and documenting these spaces and processes but focused my energy on interviewing households in Belen. 1 During the first phase (and extending into the latter phase of my research), I met with individuals associated with the following organizations that work in Iquitos and throughout the region on development projects related to urban agriculture, regional agriculture, or public health: Project Amazonas, CONAPAC, La Restinga, and the 1 Belen is located on the periphery of Iquitos and has achieved municipality status in recent years, but most homes are not titled and the area can still be characterized as a slum because many homes do not have access to full public services. I conducted the bulk of my interviews in two districts of this municipality located on the floodbanks of the Itaya River.
Gesundheit Institute. Some of my contacts from these organizations were particularly important resources in gaining access to do interviews and be a part of the slum community in the latter phase of my research (La Restinga and the Gesundheit Institute), while others provided me with information regarding agricultural trade in the region (CONAPAC and Project Amazonas). Additionally, I interviewed an agricultural extension agent employed by the National Institute for Agrarian Innovation (INIA) 2 and two individuals who were initiating a project through the municipality of Belen to improve nutrition for mothers and children in several slum neighborhoods. Documentation of food production, consumption, and vending was carried out through video and photographs and focused on ports and markets in the city. 3 There are several large market areas in the city of Iquitos, most of which are located near port areas and sell a wide range of food items along with clothes, technology, and household items. The largest market in the city is the Mercado de Belen, located at the northeastern edge of the city, bordering the Itaya River. This part of the city is known as Belen and is home to a large slum population living on the banks of the river in homes constructed of wood that are either raised on stilts or constructed to float during flood season. 4 The Mercado de Belen was where I focused most of my observations of agricultural trade, vending, and consumption. Open every day, the market is the primary location to buy agricultural products, meat, bread, and many other non-food products in Iquitos. In addition to the 2 INIA is a government agricultural agency, and my informant also assisted an urban agriculture project coordinated by CONAPAC. 3 I also visited a few small towns and rural areas where agricultural products are produced to sell in Iquitos. These products travel by fluvial routes daily. Agriculture is mainly carried out through the practice of slash-and-burn or swidden. 4 These homes appear hastily constructed due to informal construction or frequent repairs after annual flood seasons. Most consist of one to three small rooms with little furniture besides a bed and wooden bench and/or table. The kitchen usually consists of a charcoal-burning stove. There is no running water in homes. Public latrines are located throughout the communities. Electricity is provided through a private company.
buying and selling of food products, the market is a location where vendors and their families spend a large portion of their lives eating, socializing, caring for children, and carrying out daily negotiations and interactions. Similarly, other smaller port areas or markets such as the Puerto de Productores and the Puerto de Nanay are spaces of social interaction where vendors spend every day engaged in the urban food system. Belen itself, as a residential area, is contiguous with the lower part of the Mercado de Belen, and one cannot visit the market without seeing the slum area below. These spaces, located on the urban periphery alongside the riverbanks, are intersections between natural and built environment. Upon stepping on or off a boat or crossing the riverbanks to a less populated area of Belen, one goes between the urban and rural, the city and the rainforest. I came to see these ports, markets, and slum communities on the rivers as liminal spaces in which Iquitos interacted with its larger rainforest environment not always in a mutually beneficial manner. While one could separate themselves from the rainforest in the Plaza de Armas or the center of the city, these spaces on the riverbanks were inextricably linked to the natural environment. What tie these spaces to that natural environment are the interactions of the regional food system. In recognizing this link, I proceeded to focus my interviews and observations on food access, availability and provisionality and the connections to the unpredictability of the annual flood seasons and other inevitable adaptations to the natural environment. Over the course of five weeks, I conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty-seven households in Belen. Questions and conversations focused on the adaptive strategies of the local population to the unusually high flood season this year. 5 The strategies we 5 The 2012 flood season was devastating for many populations throughout the department of Loreto. Though the river rises to cover flood plains every year, this year s water levels were several meters higher
discussed mostly concerned food consumption and peri-urban agriculture but also extended to issues of public health and changes in routine or living arrangements. Overall, my research proceeded according to the original design. Slight change in the research objectives or interview questions were made as I became more acquainted with my field site and population. As I mentioned in my research proposal and design, the data and observations gained from this research will constitute material for my Master s thesis for the Stone Center for Latin American Studies. In my thesis, I will further explore ideas related to the vulnerability of urban Amazonian slum populations to food insecurity and their transitive positions as interlocutors between the natural and built environments. than average. Recent years have also experienced low flood levels. The consequence of both situations is a loss of agricultural crops and a subsequent rise in regional food prices.