Oregon Culture Keepers Roster Menu

Dorotea Lopez is a Mixteca culture keeper. Born in San Miguel el Grande, Oaxaca, Mexico, her first language was Mixtec, the indigenous language of Oaxaca. Lopez is the tenth of twelve siblings and learned to cook by watching and helping her grandmother, mother, elder sister, and other community members. Her grandmother and mother also taught her to sew and embroider the unique designs of the Mixtec people. Lopez moved to Oregon in the 1980s when her husband’s family became established in agriculture. Since then, she has found a way to celebrate her heritage with friends and family from her hometown. A group of more than fifty Oaxacan women in the Cornelius area gather at least six times a year to cook their traditional foods, speak their indigenous language, and embroider traditional textiles. At gatherings, Lopez and the other women usually cook traditional Mixtec foods, which are mostly seasonal and predominantly vegetarian. Dishes are generally corn-based and also include mushrooms, spinach, and beans, which are served with tortillas, tamales, and moles. Meat, an expensive commodity, is saved for special occasions. As they cook, the women chat in their native Mixtec, an indigenous language spoken by only about 300,000 people. After dinner, they embroider traditional huipils, the highly ornamented blouses that women slip on over their heads. Each huipil takes about four months to make. Though they may not wear their traditional clothes every day, when the Mixteca women of Cornelius come together to prepare food, eat, and work on embroidery projects, they renew their connections to their heritage. Lopez plans to expand this group by helping the Oregon-based Mixteco community document their language and foodways. Her goal is to preserve those traditions for future generations.