Introduction of traditional Chinese crops in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, Argentina

PUENTES, JEREMÍAS PEDRO; ARENAS,PATRICIA MARTA; HURRELL, JULIO ALBERTO

Congreso; VII International Congress of Ethnobotany ? I International Congress of Ethnozoology; 2019

This contribution presents partial results of a study framed in a research line in Urban Ethnobotany, pioneer in our country, developed by the LEBA in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA). At present, the studies focus on recent Chinese immigration, with conspicuous presence in the Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, concentrated in a sector of Belgrano neighborhood, called "Barrio Chino" (Chinatown), where cultural and commercial activities are carried out the commercial circuit of Chinese immigrants includes five large supermarkets that introduce plant products (dried and/or preserved) mainly from China, which increase local biocultural diversity (of the species and their associated knowledge). The objective in this case was to analyze the production-commercialization-consumption circuit of traditional Chinese fresh plants marketed in the "Barrio Chino", and cultivated in the peri-urban sector of the AMBA. These supermarkets were studied without interruption since 2005 and in the last year to date, in each season, open and semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to obtain ethnobotanical data about these plants and their route of commercialization. In this sense, 11 qualified informants were interviewed prior informed consent, both sexes and different ages (between 25 and 60 years old). We present eight taxa cultivated in the study area and marketed in the "Barrio Chino" for their food and medicinal uses: Apium graveolens ´Secalinum´, Benincasa hispida, Brassica juncea, Brassica oleracea var. albiflora, Ipomoea aquatica, Lactuca sativa var. angustana ´Asparagine´, Luffa aegyptiaca and Momordica charantia. These new cultivated taxa not only increase agro-biodiversity in the AMBA context, also the diversity of local botanical knowledge linked to those taxa. In this framework, although the cultivated taxa are novel for the study area, at the same time they are not visible to the majority of the local inhabitants. This happens because the crops destination for commercialization and consumption is restricted to the commercial circuit of the Chinese supermarkets of the "Barrio Chino". This research about the origin of fresh products marketed in those supermarkets shows how the surveys carried out (from the Urban Ethnobotany perspective) constitute a relevant tool for identification and valorization of plants linked to immigrant groups in urban pluricultural contexts.