Alex La Pierre, co-founder of Borderlandia
Monday, October 10, 2022,
2:30-3:30 pm,
ASA Koffler Great Room
Tucsonans have ample opportunity to enjoy foods with a distinctly “Sonoran” influence without a real understanding of how these influences developed over several centuries. Returning to ASA, popular lecturer Alex La Pierre will provide the fascinating background.
In the laboratories of the kitchens of the Jesuit missions of what is now northwestern Mexico, a new cuisine developed that incorporated and merged gastronomic elements and techniques of the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. This new cuisine that emerged was Sonoran and fundamentally reflected both the realities of climate and region of the Sonoran Desert as well as the old and new cultures that would come to call the region home. Thanks to the prolific writings of European members of the black-robed Jesuit order who served in Sonora in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, modern historians and researcher have a treasure trove of data on how the genesis of Sonoran cuisine took place as well as their observations and perceptions as foreigners in a foreign land.
Alex La Pierre is the co-founder of Borderlandia, a locally based bi-national organization committed to building public understanding of the borderlands (www.borderlandia.org). With a recent background in the nonprofit field in Ambos Nogales and in citizen diplomacy in the borderlands, Alex originally arrived in southern Arizona working for the National Park Service in the fields of historic preservation and heritage interpretation. A graduate of the University of Arizona, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and a public historian, his studies focus on the Hispanic cultural heritage of the American Southwest and Mexico. As a volunteer, he serves as a board member of both the Southwestern Mission Research Center and the Anza Trail Foundation. His work along the border has been featured in national and international media outlets.
When he’s not working, you will find Alex practicing yoga, hiking, traveling, reading, or practicing Spanish and Portuguese.
Compiled by Rosemary Brown, Academy Village Volunteer