For This Colombian Photographer, Mecato Food Is a Taste of Home

Growing up in the Suba, Costa Azul neighborhood of Bogotá, Colombia, in the early ‘90s, the photographer Alejandra Loaiza always looked forward to a mecato.

Mecato is a Colombian term for snacks or small bites, including everything from empanadas to arepas to plantain chips and chicharrón, which are affordable and often found at street food stalls. More than a snack, mecato is a vital part of the social and cultural rhythm of everyday life in Colombia. When Loaiza would come home from school, she’d go straight to an arepa truck near her house. When she thinks of Sundays at home, she conjures the smell of tamales in the pots of her neighborhood bakeries. Mecato “gives life to the neighborhood,” Loaiza tells Vogue.

When she moved to Europe more than a decade ago, one of the things she missed the most was mecato, and especially the late-night offerings. In Paris, where she lives now, “the only thing you can find at 3 a.m. is kebab, which is good,” she says, “but I mean, it’s crazy to find a little soup at 4 a.m. that makes you feel warm in the heart.”

The photographer set out to create a project to celebrate mecato and “the richness of the everyday rituals that bring life” to Colombia. She worked with her friend, the Colombian artist and set designer Jhonson Camilo Tovar Quintero, to make a series of vibrant diptychs that tell stories of Colombian food and culture, featuring a mix of food stalls and restaurants, Catholic iconography, and national pastimes such as tejo, the national sport of Colombia. For Loaiza, the project is a way to “freeze those places that I don’t know if they will be there in 20 years.” Below, Loaiza shares the project with Vogue.