Embracing Scared Food: Sembrando Amor

Sembrando Amor (sowing the seeds of love) zine, 2022
Courtesy of Healthy Neighborhoods, City of San Antonio, Metropolitan Health District, Texas

Click Here to Read the Full Zine

"Ancestral Chichihualtia" poster on display, 2022
Courtesy of Luissana Santibañez

San Antonio’s Healthy Neighborhoods Program, funded by CDC’s Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) program, embarked on a COVID-19 pandemic project to encourage breastfeeding as a way to address nutritional needs of children in communities of color.

The project brought together community experts whose lived experiences are meant to support breastfeeding in ways that are supportive, meaningful, practical, and culturally and linguistically sensitive. Their experiences are critical to understanding the challenges that parents of color have faced in overcoming systemic barriers that were particularly amplified during the pandemic.

The project also included a Photovoice component, and the creation of a zine titled Sembrando Amor (sowing the seeds of love).

Ancestral Chichihualtia poster, 2022
Courtesy of Luissana Santibañez

Luissana Santibañez with one of her three children

Luissana Santibañez is one of the community experts. A first-generation daughter of Indigenous parents of Purepecha and Mestizaje heritage from Michoacan, Mexico, she created this poster extolling breast milk as sacred food, linking it to sacred matriarchal bonds and Indigenous food sovereignty.

Courtesy of Healthy Neighborhoods, City of San Antonio, Metropolitan Health District