Queso cotija. Atole de grano. Charales. Chiles chilacas. Flor de calabaza. Sopa Tarasca.  Atápakuas.  Pollo placero. Pozole. Carnitas. Uchepos. Soups, stews, sauces, chiles, cheeses, meats and fish—all foundational to the culturally-rich and diverse dishes and food staples of the Michoacán region. Located in western Mexico, Michoacán was, in pre-Hispanic times, the home of the Purépecha Empire. In 2005, Michoacán became a pivotal card in Mexico’s bid to achieve what had never been done before: inscribe its cuisine as a UNESCO “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.”

“We had the brilliant idea of creating a file and entering Mexican cuisine before UNESCO. We realized that food was a cultural legacy we had to proceed to safeguard” —Dr. Gloria López Morales (translated), The Michoacán File

The path from the first unprecedented UNESCO nomination in Paris to eventual success in Nairobi in 2010 began over twenty years ago. In his 2023 feature documentary The Michoacán File, filmmaker Bernardo Arsuaga takes audiences on the incredible journey of the unlikely team of academics, journalists, chefs, and traditional cooks whose passion and tenacity helped make history and elevated Mexican gastronomic culture to literal world-class status.

Chef Juana Bravo Lazaro

Far from the negotiations of intergovernmental committees, the camera follows Juana “Juanita” Bravo as she moves fluidly through a corn field. The late-summer crop offers a dull green backdrop for Juana’s bright turquoise-sequined skirt, embroidered lilac blouse, and cotton lavender head scarf. Another scene, in her kitchen, she pats out blue corn tortillas, frying them on a wide, shallow pan over an open fire. Later, shelves stacked with clay pots and dishes behind her, Juana strains and simmers sauces, fills and wraps tamales, turns chiles on the grill. The film’s narrator (actor Danny Trejo) intones: her knowledge of traditional cuisine was unmatched.

From the Purépecha Indigenous community of Angahuan,  Chef Juana Bravo Lazaro was part of the UNESCO delegation that included Chefs Margarita Carrillo Arronte and Abigail Mendoza and is one of the Mexican traditional cuisine experts that traveled to Paris, and later, Nairobi. Juana was key to Mexico’s UNESCO petition and to what was eventually described as the Michoacán paradigm: “traditional, contemporary, and living at the same time.”

“Juana was just what Dr. Gloria was looking for: a living embodiment of Mexico’s ancient culinary tradition.” —Danny Trejo, narrator, The Michoacán File   

Juana is also representative of how the film underscores the significance of women in the continuity of traditional cuisine, one of the themes of The Michoacán File. There is an unmistakable female or matriarchal thread woven throughout the film, one that is treated with great respect and care. When asked about this lens, filmmaker Bernardo Arsuaga chuckles: “Everybody knows in Mexico that the masters of the cuisine are the women. Everybody’s grandma, everybody’s mother are the real cooks in Mexico.”

Connecting the dots

The documentary explores multiple themes, chiefly through a historical lens that connects the dots between colonization, racism, migration, and the food fusion that resulted in Mexico’s unique gastronomic culture. Mole is given extra special treatment as a cast of chefs and the camera pay homage to the versatile and legendary sauce.  Food may be its focus, but The Michoacán File, like the filmmaker’s debut documentary The Weekend Sailor, is at its core a celebration of the indomitable Mexican spirit.

Bernardo’s 2016 The Weekend Sailor went on to win multiple awards, including one for Best Cinematography at the Madrid International Film Festival. The Michoacán File has already picked up awards at American and European film festivals. Surprising then, that Bernardo Arsuaga is in fact a lawyer, with little to no experience or training in film prior to The Weekend Sailor.

Bernardo was born in Monterrey, Mexico in a neighbourhood he describes as “developing,” a place where he “had a great time playing and going from here to there and getting in trouble.” He speaks fondly of his childhood and of being a brother sandwiched between an older and a younger sister. Bernardo was the first in his family to go to law school and practice law, and he shares that he is “thankful for being a lawyer and having had the opportunity to go to law school.”

Wait. What.

So how does a lawyer suddenly become an award-winning documentarian?

“The only experience I had was just the pictures and the clips you take with your iPhone. But I’ve always been very passionate about cinema, especially documentaries. And when I first [learned of] Ramon Carlin’s story, I was really hooked and I found a way to just make it happen. I hired a group of very talented people in Mexico and that’s how I started, learning from them. Then I had to relocate to Canada and I finished the documentary in Montreal.”

But Bernardo didn’t share much about his first film project outside of the production team. He suggests his emerging passion might have been met with skepticism. “If you tell your friends, I’m gonna make a movie about this and that and then it’s kind of a joke, you know, okay, Mr. Martin Scorsese. Like, what are you doing, you are a lawyer. So I decided just to be quiet and do it by myself. And nobody actually knew I was doing a documentary until I started screening and getting awards here and there.”

Contra viento y marea

Finding a way to ‘make it happen’ is also a central theme in The Weekend Sailor, a true story about Ramon Carlin, his family, and the “unexpected victory of the Mexican yacht Sayula II in the first crewed sailing race around the world in 1974.” Ramon Carlin, not unlike Bernardo, had only casual experience with the skill set required to be successful—and in Ramon and his family’s case, not only to be successful, but to survive.

And this is where the budding, accomplished filmmaker and his works collide: unapologetically triumphant stories of Mexican achievement. As Bernardo says about The Weekend Sailor: “What is a Mexican doing here?”

What is a Mexican family doing in the first crewed sailing race around the world? What is an amateur Mexican filmmaker doing winning international awards? What are Mexican culinary champions and chefs doing presenting at UNESCO?

Changing narratives

Bernardo is quick to react when asked if he feels like a champion of Mexican stories: “There are great films and many, many talented filmmakers in my country.  I will never be the champion of Mexican stories. These guys are real players. And their films are everywhere in the world and on all platforms.”

But the question is not about the level of perceived success or exposure, it is about the mission.  To this, Bernardo responds, “Most of the documentaries and films in Mexico—not all of them of course—I see, I feel, they’re related to tragedies, drug dealers, narcos, migration, and all sorts of tragedies that my country suffers everyday. And I find it hard to find feel-good stories. Another image of Mexico, a positive image of Mexico.”

Paris, 2005

From her kitchen in Angahuan, Juana Bravo is adamant she is not going to Paris. Not to the Bristol Hotel. Not to UNESCO headquarters. Until she is. And bringing everything she—and the culinary team—needs with her. Corn, the clay griddle. Fortitude. At first, the kitchen staff at the hotel refuse to facilitate their needs or shift the hotel’s internal protocols. Our narrator reminds us that “this isn’t the first time the French and the Mexicans had different ideas in the kitchen.” But in this campaign of winning hearts and stomachs, eventually the “French kitchen staff [become] fascinated with what these exotic cooks were doing and, even more, with the exotic ingredients.”

“The French ate everything. We brought huitlacoche, escamoles. We served a lot of food that day. And it went out and out and out.” —The Michoacan File

The UNESCO delegates proffer enthusiastic applause for the bountiful tastings— particularly for Juana Bravo—and genuine appreciation. At the end of the presentation, Mexico’s application is denied.

“Their legends proclaim that Aztec food was so enticing it could actually subdue their enemies.” —Danny Trejo, narrator, The Michoacán File 

Doubling down

Dr. Gloria López is heartbroken, but undeterred. In her own words, “Mexicans have been eating the same tortillas they ate six millennia before Christ.” It seems impossible that the Mexican team can’t successfully make their case. And the collective of culinary protectors are determined to do so: “We’re going to continue fighting. We have to fight, we have to make another effort.” With this indefatigable force behind her, Dr. Gloria undertakes a second application to UNESCO.

(Nairobi, 2010) Decision of the Intergovernmental Committee: Inscribes traditional Mexican cuisine – ancestral, ongoing community culture, the Michoacán paradigm on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.  —UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage

By digging a little deeper and shoring up their flanks with the addition of traditional chef Antonina González Leandro, from the village of Tarerio, the Mexican delegation at last achieves what it set out to do ten years prior, and makes history doing it. To date, no other country has had its entire cuisine declared an intangible cultural heritage.

Everyday heroes

Reflecting on the notion of the ‘everyman hero,’ Bernardo is animated: “I think that the regular person, or everyday heroes are more surprising than heroes of fiction, and that the everyday, or the stories that happen in real life are more heroic. Ramon Carlin [from The Weekend Sailor] never doubted himself. And what these ladies did—to take Mexican food to UNESCO and get a food culture [elevated] to the same level as art, architecture or the pyramids, or the Eiffel Tower or the Great Wall of China? I think it’s something beautiful.”

Bernardo, who currently splits his time between Montréal, Canada and Monterrey, Mexico, has put his law practice on hold while he embarks upon new ventures in the film industry.

Juana Bravo and Antonina González are now official UNESCO delegates “charged with ensuring the continued preservation of Mexican cuisine.”

Read more: Behind the Lens: 8 Questions with Bernardo Arsuaga

Watch the trailer for The Michoacán File

The Michoacán File is being screened during the 14th Latin American and Spanish Film Week at the University of Victoria, Cinecenta on Saturday, September 22, 2024 at 7 PM . Spanish-English. hispfilmvic.ca

Article illustrated collage by Salchipulpo