Mujeres Tz’utujiles: Recetas para la Recuperación en Chuk Muk

This recipe book emerges from the collective work of the "Recipes for Recovery" project (2023-2025), a transformative feminist and decolonial action-research proposal that is part of the "Ixchel" project. As part of "Recipes for Recovery", we committed to documenting the agri-food traditions within the work of Tz'utujil Maya women who make possible the continuation of Maya ways of life in Chuk Muk after a disaster resettlement. Chuk Muk was developed to house people displaced by a landslide that partially buried the community of Panabaj in 2005. In disaster recovery processes, the inclusion of local culture is important to build and rebuild resilience among resettled communities. Rituals, social organisations, and local crops are part of this culture. With this recipe book, we want to share the way women articulate their present and their Tz'utujil culture by reappropriating the knowledge of plants and food from their mothers and grandmothers. Through work in their family gardens and kitchens, Tz'utujil women have planted the seeds of their own recovery process. These recipes have helped women build important connections between their lives before and their lives now, creating a continuity of Tz'utujil ways of life that endures.