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The First Formal Community Kitchen Movement—Peru

  • Brief history of comedores populare
  • Effects on women
  • Current Events
Due to massive migration from rural to urban areas during the 1960s and 1970s, extensive squatter settlements formed around city centres in Peru. During this period, the International Monetary Fund also underwent large-scale reform, raising the cost of living and doubling the country’s poverty rate. In response to inflation surges, multiple factory closures resulting in an unemployment crisis, and the subsequent rise in malnutrition-based tuberculosis rates. Impoverished female rural migrants and disadvantaged urban residents pursued improved living conditions in part by purchasing and preparing food in bulk, a system that became known as comedores populares (community kitchens). Due to the remarkable successes of these kitchens, the Peruvian government and donor agencies began providing food aid and seed money for further development. As a result, the women-led movement steadily gained popularity, and by 2003 was one of Peru’s integral food distribution systems with over 10,000 centres that serve over 3 million participants throughout the country.Not only do comedores populares provide affordable and sustainable access to a consistent and healthy diet, they also play a vital role in empowering Peruvian women. In 1989, CARE, an international development and relief organization dedicated to community development through food aid, created a revolving loan fund to provide women with access to credit. The women involved in this program are encouraged to create and maintain community kitchens and other such projects. They receive business training and support while learning how to independently manage and improve their finances. In the kitchens women assume leadership roles, gain self-confidence, and develop organizational skills. Through the presence and popularity of these community kitchens, many Peruvian women have achieved previously unattainable positions of influence and financial security, as the strongest kitchens are now becoming self-sustaining, collectively owned restaurants The comedores’ collective food purchasing and preparation are far more efficient than those of individual households, yet the system is faced with the daunting goal of self-reliance. As consumers, the kitchens are susceptible to rapidly rising prices, and are forced to choose between a decrease in food quality and an increase in menu prices. Reluctant to raise prices and therefore cut off disadvantaged patrons, most kitchens rely on charitable donations in order to remain accessible to their poorest members. Eager to establish themselves as sustainable organizations, many of Peru’s community kitchens are striving to sever their dependence on external support. Considering Peru is largely dependent on expensive, imported foods, this is not an easy task. Rather than accept their currently unstable existence, an association of comedore populares in Lima united in a campaign to overhaul Peru’s food production and distribution system. Recognizing the Peruvian economy’s lack of self-sufficiency, these women are pursuing an economic remodelling in which the needs of the poor become primary. Since over 85% of Peru’s wheat and milk is imported, these activists intend to lobby both nationally and locally for an increase in domestic food production in place of commonly produced exports such as cotton and flowers.This radical movement grew directly out of individuals simply pooling their resources to meet sustenance needs. Through the comedores populares movement, many empowered Peruvians are now recognizing that “basic control over one’s own resources and decisions is a prerequisite for any healthy, democratic development”, whether within a kitchen or a country. (http://www.newint.org/issue183/recipe.htm, June 21, 2004) Resources Used:
‹ Community Kitchens upThe Canadian Community Kitchen Movement ›