Terrae Prize awarded to Leonor Espinosa for promoting Colombian organic cuisine

This year, Terrae pays tribute to this Colombian chef with a restless gaze, who has made visible the immense value of Colombia's culinary traditions. The general director of Vocento Gastronomía, Benjamín, presented her as one of the three most important people in the last 50 years of Latin American cuisine, positioning it as a tool for cultural expression, sustainable development and social justice.

After studying economics and fine arts, Leo worked as an advertising executive, but eventually found his way to the kitchen, opening the restaurant Leo in Bogotá in 2005, from which he defends the popular and indigenous aspect of Colombian flavours, combining them with contemporary art and an anthropological vision of the different places in the country. Our proposal is based on bioculture, which combines biodiversity with tradition and memory, the intangible heritage. It is about reconnecting to tell stories that belong to human life in ecosystems. And more than sustainability, what we are generating is an impact of care for ingredients and a more cultural and identity impact by promoting regenerative cuisines," she argued.

It is a perspective that she is expanding two years later with FunLeo, a foundation she runs with Laura Fernández - her daughter and a sommelier - in which the chef recovers the indigenous secrets and ancestral techniques of Colombia's ethnic communities in order to valorise and integrate them into the Colombian gastronomic discourse. We work to create ownership and a sense of belonging. From the moment we started working with the Amazonian communities, we realised that we had to work not only with the grandparents on tradition and memory, but also with the enormous biological heritage of the territories,' she explains.

A pioneer in the sustainable use of biodiversity, her work has gone beyond the kitchen to become a model for regenerating ecosystems and empowering communities. The wealth of resources in these areas is unimaginable, but there is a lot of migration. We need to understand how to stabilise the population without an agricultural revolution, because the cuisine is sustained by the soul of these suppliers, who are the future of the country,' she said.