Blog #6

Betsey Walsh

Professor Santos

ENGL 102_037

02 March 2018

Blog Post #6

This week in class, we were asked to finish reading the book “Eating the Landscape,” by Enrique Salmón. The last chapter of the book, “The Whole Enchilada,” the author talks about how he is “a member of a small group of fortunate scholars, writers, activists, meditation instructors, and nonprofit leaders that comprises the faculty for the Center for Whole Communities.” The faculty was debating whether or not to change the name of the center, and a woman named Helen “suggested the phrase ‘whole enchilada’ as a way to tell what the Center is all about; it’s about including everything in how we approach environmental justice, social justice, ecological protection, economic concerns, and all the rest of the human and natural world issues that are being attacked, threatened, and oppressed” (155 Salmón). In the beginning of the chapter, he talks about his Rarámuri heritage and how they work together in a process called iwígara, which is the interconnectedness and cycling of all there is. “If one aspect of the lasso is removed, the integrity of the circle is threatened, and all other aspects are weakened. In iwígara, all is bound, connected, and affected by a sharing breath.” While reading, I came across the author talking about David Abram and how he “simplified a description of the phenomenon when he wrote in The Spell of the Sensuous that ‘we are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human’” (157 Salmón). I thought this was interesting because today, we as people seem to be having less and less contact with other humans. With social media and technology, it is so much quicker and easier to just send someone a text or a snap, or even call them. This way, people will not have to talk to someone face to face. This can also relate to food and agriculture. For example, the Rarámuri, they make sure that they take care of the crops and protect them like they are their own child. With just an average person, they usually do not care where the food came from or what it took to get the food. They only care about how long it will take for the food to get to them and what they are going to make using that crop.