They had to call them out because it was happening again. Mario Ceballos and the other of the POC Fungi Community learned about a couple of groups in New York and Chicago who were growing and serving what they were calling “corn caviar.” Turns out, an individual traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, tasted huitlacoche, and came back to the U.S. to feature it on a restaurant menu and rename it “corn caviar” and “corn truffle.”
Huitlacoche (pronounced weet-lah-KOH-chay) is a Mexican delicacy derived from a fungus that grows on corn. According to Ceballo, it’s a sacred part of the creation story for the Hopi and used in birth work and medicine for the Ojibwe, with a range of uses among other Indigenous people.
“But huitlacoche is hard to say. It doesn’t sound appetizing, so they started changing the name … that way, it seems more appealing,” Ceballo says. “That’s when we heard of these farmers becoming famous for ‘discovering’ how to grow huitlacoche, so when we’d seen that, we were like, ‘Oh, here it is. It’s another form of colonization and erasure.’ They’re changing the name and when you change the name from an indigenous word to something else, you’re erasing a whole culture and whole side of that food history.”
Ceballos grew up in National City and Chula Vista and is of Yoeme ancestry. He’s also co-chair of the Yaquis of Southern California. The POC Fungi Community, which he helped start in 2019, facilitates mycology-related events and education centered around medicinal and edible fungi, and also focuses on climate justice, food access, and social justice intersections that help communities of color reconnect to their ancestry and identity through food. He took some time to talk about that work and where things like mushrooms and huitlacoche fit in. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: Tell us about the work of your organization.
A: [In 2020], we celebrated our one-year anniversary with a fungi gathering that happened at the WorldBeat Cultural Center. We had expected that 50 to 60 people would attend that event—by the end of the night we had around 500 people. It was amazing. We had a lot of beautiful momentum, folks were really excited. Two weeks after that, it was a COVID mandate and everybody went on lockdown. It was interesting to have all of that momentum and excitement, and then to have the pandemic kind of put a halt to all of our efforts and what we were organizing for. We kind of switched our efforts at that moment. At the same time, the George Floyd uprising was happening, so we kind of just switched over to mutual aid and just were talking a lot about providing community care. We were just ing folks with traditional medicine makers [who made reishi and turkey tail tinctures] and food, raised and donated money for Kumeyaay folks, for community relatives who weren’t able to get off the reservation at that time, the elders who were sick.
One of our philosophies is that fungi is intersectional. We say that literally, metaphorically. Literally because with fungi, there’s a mycelium network, which is kind of like a web-like network underground connecting trees, roots, mushrooms, other life forms. That’s like an actual, living network that’s communicating through trees and plants, providing resources and things like that. We also like to think that fungi is intersectional because there’s intersections of food, climate justice, social justice, and even spiritual and mental health that can be unlocked there. We see ourselves at the intersection of many of these places, so that we can evoke change in all of those places. Representation in the space of ecology, specifically in the fungi world, is another one. There’s a lot of weird, toxic stuff going on in psychedelic science space — we’ve seen a lot of gaslighting, tokenization — so we decided to kind of separate ourselves and create a safer space where we can have these conversations, specifically to recover our own indigenous knowledge and not have it read back to us by White people, and commodified and then repackaged and sold back to us. We see this happening all over again with indigenous medicines, with the psychedelic field, and even with mushroom medicine, like tinctures. Reishi, lion’s mane, turkey tail— those mushrooms have been used for thousands of years by the Chinese and folks in Asia. They have a really long recorded history of medicinal mushrooms and herbal knowledge, and medicine, in general. In a way, we organize ourselves to protect the knowledge and gatekeep a little to take care of that knowledge and recover that knowledge in a good way.
Q: How did you get into this particular kind of work around food justice?
A: I have a background in the medical field [as a patient liaison and prepping patients for surgery]. I worked for about 10 years in the medical field. One of the last places I worked was a teaching hospital and everybody was getting different treatment there. We catered to a lot of the rich, but every once in a while, we got some teaching doctors who would bus in folks from different counties, especially from Imperial County. We’d have a large Mexican/Latino population coming in, so I was used often to do translation. After so many years of working there, I would recognize patients, I got to know their families and was on a first-name basis with these folks. I’d ask them, “Why are you here again?” and they would almost always say, “Because the doctor told me,” not really sure why they were there. On the business side of the hospital, I was seeing that we were often just bringing them in for teaching new doctors. So, we were moving folks around, corralling them. I don’t want to say experimenting, but teaching on this vulnerable, naïve community who had a lot of trust in the medical system and the doctor. While I believe in a lot of the work that we were doing, and a lot of the amazing doctors and nurses, I started wondering, ‘How do we even prevent folks from getting here in the first place?’ A lot of the issues that we were dealing with were caused by food or by environmental health issues.
Cancer rates and asthma rates are higher, diabetes rates are disproportionately higher for Black and Indigenous, migrant neighborhoods. It was keeping me up at night knowing what’s going on and having that perspective of the health care system and the environmental system. Then, seeing all of this amazing work happening within science and ecology, I was seeing a lot of excitement in the fungi world around remediation and things like cleaning the soil, environment, and water and stuff. When I was talking about it in my neighborhood or my community, people had no idea what I was talking about; I just sounded like a weird guy talking about mushrooms and it looked funny. So, I was wondering why that is. Education is everything, right? So, we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us that was going to start with lots of education, with probably years of education before we can even start mobilizing and seeing real change. So, that’s where we’re at right now.
Q: Why mushrooms?
A: There were some innovative things going on in the mushroom world and the mycelium, fungi world. Community science was kind of blowing up at the time [that POC Fungi Community started], which was amazing for me because I always loved science, but was never given much access to it. Going to high school and the area I grew up in, we didn’t have a science program or anything like that, so I was interested in that. Specifically, from the work that I’ve done, research that I’ve done in cultural heritage work, Indigenous folks are scientists. We’re the original scientists — we mapped out the skies, we experimented and observed the earth and the land, the animals and plants. We know which ones work and which ones don’t, which ones are good for the land. For me getting back to that sort of indigenous science was alluring to me. That could even be used as a healing modality, as far as education and taking up space in the outdoor area. We promoted a lot of community science.
Then, there were videos and posts talking about cleaning up the environment, water, toxic spills from old contamination, from oil and heavy metals. That is always interesting because I grew up in National City and the Logan area, which are known to be among some of the most polluted areas in San Diego with higher rates of asthma and diseases. We’ve known that some of the old dumping sites, old junkyard sites, different commercial, industrial sites have left behind heavy metals and contaminated soil, which has made it harder for community gardens and things like that to pop up in those places because folks are testing and we figured out that the soils are contaminated. One of the things that I was interested in when I heard about soil remediation and fungi cleaning up heavy metals, I was like, ‘Wait, this is something we can use in the ‘hood. We can clean up these contaminated sites so that we can actually use them and grow food.’ That was a huge one. I’ve since realized that it’s probably a way bigger endeavor than a grassroots community can engage in, so even right now we’re having discussions about nonprofit status and trying to tap into some bigger resources to do some of that research. It takes a lot of materials and space to do that kind of work, which would mean basically growing fungi for the sole purpose of remediating contaminated sites, which is a whole endeavor.
Q: How do you understand the connection between food and ancestry, culture, and identity?
A: I did a summer camp for youth at the Centro Cultural de la Raza at Balboa Park. I did a whole week of ecology, nature walks, and things like that. The last day, we ended with food and I had a different lesson. I brought out masa, which is corn flour. I had a little mountain of masa in front of the class and I asked the kids, “Does anybody know what that is?” and somebody said clay, somebody said Play-Doh, somebody said some other things. It was interesting because some of them knew what it was—one of the kids was like, “I make tamales with that!” They knew what tortillas were, but a lot of them hadn’t seen masa, they hadn’t seen what tortillas looks like before they become tortillas. I explained how we’ve been cut off from our food and how we don’t even know what our food looks like before it’s on our plate. All we know is that it comes from the store, so it opened up the conversation around migrants and giving thanks to everybody who got this food on our table — folks who picked it, who pick strawberries year round, whether that be in the rain, the snow, summer heat, fires. Farmworkers are out there and regardless of what’s going on in the world, the pandemic or anything out there, they continue picking our food.
Then, highlighting the fact that we’re kind of separated from our food and some of us don’t even know what a tortilla looks like, so I had everybody come up and make a tortilla, grab some masa and roll it around, flatten it in their hand, and cook it up. It was amazing because some of them have never done it before and then all of these stories come out because there’s ancestral memory that gets unlocked. People start to , ‘Oh, I’ve seen my grandma do this!’ All of these stories come up and, for me, that is a revitalization of identity. For me, those simple things, that ing, connecting back to food or medicine or the herb or plant, is part of reclaiming identity. Some of us, in many ways, are disconnected from our traditional homelands. We’ve had to travel from different places, had to assimilate to an American diet and cuisine, so we start to lose our connection to foods, our traditions. So, food, for me, is a direct connection to our ancestors. It brings me so much comfort knowing that when I’m eating a tortilla, eating beans, huitlacoche, eating these ancestral foods, that they’re the same foods that my ancestors have been eating since time immemorial. I think there’s something really powerful about that. That, to me, is like medicine and direct connection. Now you’re seeing food in a different way, you’re appreciating how it got here, you’re appreciating the struggle that it took to get here. To me, getting back in touch with those foods is not only radical, but very healing and it’s something that I’m proud to share with the community and proud witness young and old have that experience and be reintroduced to it.
Q: You were part of “Inspiring Conversations on Community Food Justice,” organized by the Urban Food Equity team at UC San Diego’s Center for Community Health. You were among dozens of food justice advocates who met at the Sherman Heights Community Center, where you screened POC Fungi Community’s short film, “Flor de Maiz,” celebrating huitlacoche, an edible corn mushroom. In the film, you mention a desire to destigmatize the use of mushrooms and cooking with mushrooms. Where does this stigma come from and why is it important to you to change that?
A: I don’t know about you, but I grew up having my parents, if I was getting close to some mushrooms or by some mushrooms and I was going to touch them, I was told immediately to stay away from them. They’re poisonous. Even by touching them, I was going to get hurt. So, that’s kind of my earliest memory of mushrooms. I didn’t like eating mushrooms, in general, growing up. In Western society, in general, we’re kind of taught that things that are rotting are gross, icky, they smell. Mushrooms are found around decaying things, things that are molded, things that are rotting, composting. I have been diving into that on my own and taking that apart. I started ing that when we’re told, as children, to not play in the ground anymore because the ground is dirty and you’re going to dirty your clothes, that’s one of our first indoctrinations to being separate from the earth. When we get our children to get off of the ground, we’re telling them dirt is gross and that they’re more than the earth, they’re separate from it, they’re above it. One of the things that I do when I do nature walks, is that I invite adults and everybody to get on their belly, get on the ground, and what it’s like to have that childlike curiosity, to have no fear of getting dirty. I’ve been out with adults who are afraid of getting dirt on themselves and I believe it stems from childhood. They their parents screaming at them, ‘Hey! Get off the ground! You’re going to mess up your Sunday clothes!’ So, we’re immediately afraid of the ground. A lot of us haven’t put our belly on the ground since we were little kids and that’s where our curiosity was the most alive. When you’re a little kid, the whole world is brand new. Imagine a little kid on their belly, on the ground, in the grass and the dirt and the mud. That’s one of the most freeing, most curious moments in their lives, so I always try to tell parents, ‘Hey, if we’re doing a walk and you want to tell your kids to get off of the ground, do it away from me. Let them stay on the ground, let them hang out down there.’ I had to challenge myself to kind of get in that space, rediscovering how close we are to fungus and how a lot of our ancestors have utilized that decay process as part of keeping the earth and the environment clean. My grandmother would eat fruit and throw the peel on the ground and cover it up with her feet. It was a practice that was nothing for her, but that’s actually an indigenous practice. She didn’t throw things in the trash, she was offering it back to the earth. There wasn’t a waste creation when we were eating like that, when we were communing with the earth like that.
A big reason why I talk about these things is really just reclaiming the land and placemaking and having ownership; not in the Western sense of having a deed, but like, ‘I belong here, my people are from here, I was raised here and I’ve made my place here.’ I do that because, as an Indigenous person, being made to feel like an outsider on my own land is crazy. I see that with marginalized people, I see that with Black and Indigenous folks, people of color — it’s easier to control people when you don’t have a claim in your place, when you don’t have a sense of ownership or pride in where you live, in your neighborhood, in your community. Then, to further that and separate them from their food. For me, redlining, taking away access to our indigenous foods, indigenous medicines, to me, all of that is a form of control. It’s been crucial and healing for folks to stake claim to their foods, stake claim to where they live.
Q: It sounds like you’re describing an understanding of a more holistic relationship with the land and that people shouldn’t be opposed to this. This ancestral understanding you’ve described is seeing people and the planet as being connected to each other, as all part of each other?
A: Very much so. I’m not anti-religious or anything like that, but I am looking for sustainable ways of connecting folks to nature that are satisfying. I do look at it, also, as a form of therapy and a place to find solace. When you have that connection to the land, when you understand all of those connections and you have a better understanding of death and the life cycles, you’re able to embrace these things more. I feel like it can help sustain long-term action, long-term work because not only are you doing something good for the environment and those around you, but you now have a system. Many of us who walk away from religious institutions and churches and things like that, we need that . That spiritual-emotional connection is important and so is having a sanctuary. Having somewhere where you can go and commune with the land, commune with spirit is so important. How amazing is it that when you discover that mushrooms and fungi are actually caring for you and caring for the environment—and some of the things that you were afraid of before, maybe the land, dirt, insects, or mushrooms—something that was scary has now become something beautiful? You’ve just turned all of nature into a church. Now, anytime you go outside and go take a hike, you’re communing with spirit and you’re able to see the creator in front of you that much clearer and that much more evident. Like, ‘Wow, there’s nothing more faith affirming for me than this beautiful flower.’ For me, that is where I find my affirmations and faith, when I see some really amazing, beautiful things happening in nature. I’m like, ‘Wow, man can’t replicate this.’
