The inspiration for the book emerged while Linda J. Seligmann was working on a project documenting changes in the livelihood of market women in Cuzco, Peru. It was a time when tourism was booming and businesses were celebrating Indigenous Quechua music, dress, and foods, including assorted snacks made from quinoa. It was also the time quinoa was being heralded as a great food for all sorts of reasons in the United States.
As an anthropologist, Seligmann examines the role of the superfood quinoa in and on a local Andean community. During her journeys to the Huanoquite region of Peru, she explores gender relationships, local production systems, and the communal sense of place, as these phenomena intersect with the nation-state and global capitalism.
Quinoa: Food Politics and Agrarian Life in the Andean Highlands is divided into two parts. The first lays out the history of past political regimes and the overwhelming racialized topography that has characterized daily life for Indigenous inhabitants of the Andean highlands of Peru. The author analyzes key moments and policies that have shaped efforts of Indigenous Quechua inhabitants to regain and maintain control of their agrarian land base, and the conflicts that have ensued as a result. She also reviews the history of the establishment of infrastructure in Huanoquite and the promotion and the development of Huanoquite.
Chapter 1 summarizes the impact that a far-reaching and radical agrarian reform, implemented in Peru in 1969, had on Huanoquite, and then turns to a discussion of what the consequences were when the state subsequently turned back the agrarian reform and promoted the privatization and individual titling of lands in the countryside.
In chapter 2, Seligmann looks at the power of infrastructure as it has intervened in the choices Huanoquiteños face. The chapter discusses how changes in infrastructure have taken place, forming the livelihoods of Huanoquiteños. In chapter 3, the author asks why, at this point in time, are so many Huanoquiteños exploring a wide range of entrepreneurial ventures and how these differed from state- and NGO-sponsored initiatives.
Part II of the book is dedicated to unpacking the assumptions that have guided how Huanoquiteños are cultivating their lands as they encounter and participate in globalization, the pressures to migrate, and state policies that support mining and agroindustry. It discusses the long- and short-term strategies and the cultural resources that Huanoquiteños are drawing on to perpetuate their communities and territorial bonds and to resist the incursion of corporations and state policies that threaten their livelihoods.
Chapter 4 provides readers with an understanding of the stages of quinoa production and documents the efforts of state and non-state actors to expand quinoa production in Huanoquite. This chapter shows what motivated some households and not others to cultivate quinoa in greater amounts, and looks at the differences in assumptions and expectations with respect to quinoa cultivation and marketing, held by the Regional Government of Cuzco and INIA, which is a branch of the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI), on the one hand, and by Indigenous farmers on the other.
The next chapter delves into food politics. Food security and food sovereignty are both of concern to Huanoquiteños. This chapter highlights some of the tensions surrounding quinoa, ranging from control over the knowledge that made quinoa so attractive to the rest of the world as food, to questions of individual or community control over food resources and consumption. The chapter also addresses the stress and conflicts that ensued in Huanoquite, including among farmers themselves, as a consequence of their motivation to scale up their production of quinoa for export and their desire to cultivate crops that would ensure the wellbeing of their communities and households.
Chapter 6 brings the voices, aesthetics, and activities of women in Huanoquite to the foreground. Governmental and nongovernmental entities had begun to view women as better candidates than men for introducing new farming practices and experimental development projects and for implementing them.
The final chapter funnels outward again to consider the preoccupations that the workers who had helped to harvest the author’s compadre Lorenzo’s quinoa, voice to her about mining activities near Huanoquite. It emphasizes the grave concerns of Huanoquiteños about current and prospective environmental damage caused by mining. Seligmann’s book, Quinoa: Food Politics and Agrarian Life in the Andean Highlands, provides an inspiring discussion, and I highly recommend it for all those interested in agriculture, food politics, agrarian communities, global capitalism, gender relationships, and local production systems.
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[Review length: 729 words • Review posted on January 22, 2025]