Art Libreria is a fully vegan restaurant in San Cristóbal de las Casas, but calling it a restaurant never feels like quite enough. It’s a place shaped entirely by one person’s convictions—his politics, his history, his relationship to land and food, and his desire to live in a way that heals more than it harms. We first walked in for a meal, but quickly found ourselves returning for the conversation, the care, and the sense that this space was built with very beautiful intentions.
Gerardo, the owner and creator of Art Libreria, is someone who lives his values with a rare clarity. Over the weeks we spent in San Cristóbal, we shared cacao at his counter, listened to his stories, and took a vegan cooking class with him. Every dish he prepares carries a through-line: (organic, vegan) food as medicine, food as resistance, and food as a guardian of the earth.
What follows is a recorded interview-style conversation with Gerardo. All his words are presented exactly as he spoke them. We wanted his voice to remain intact because it reflects the same raw honesty that fills the walls of Art Libreria. His story is one of movement, loss, rebuilding, political clarity, and deep commitment. It’s also a story of how a small kitchen can become a node of care in a city shaped by both beauty and struggle.
Nomad Earth Catalog
Could you tell us a bit about your story? What brought you here to San Cristóbal de las Casas? And why did you start Art Libreria?
Gerardo González Miranda
Well, what brought me to San Cristóbal de las Casas—when I used to live in Dublin, I walked in Grafton Street and I saw everyday the newspaper, the first page of this, talking about the Zapatistas. That was from '95 to '98. So I said I have to go to Chiapas to get to know what happened with the Zapatistas. Indeed in 2000, I came here and the day after I arrived to San Cristóbal, I went to a Zapatista party, and that's my thing. The party was no alcohol. It was chocolate instead of alcohol and bread. So I said "This is my place, I'm going to stay here," and I stayed here and I began working in food projects.
I was manager of a very important restaurant back in those times. I made it very famous, this restaurant. Now after all these experiences, I came back to Europe to learn some piano, and then came back here. I'm a piano player and I got the idea that the most important thing right now is to keep the organic food. Because I realized in all these experiences—I was a director of the Institute for Permaculture in Honduras, I've been working in permaculture in nature, fighting global warming—and I realized everything that is good for humans is good for Mother Earth. Everything that damages the earth damages the humans.
Europe and the United States and Canada—in these countries that are "first world countries," they say that, they use a lot of chemicals. All the treatments for food sterilize the food. So it doesn't have nutrients. It doesn't have the essence.
In The China Study, the doctor said the health and the nutrition is about a symphony in your body. In my own experiment, I feel so good just eating aguacates, organic aguacates, organic beans, organic farming from Huitepec, organic farming from San Juan Chamula, organic tortillas from Zinacantán. I wake up everyday, I put on my backpack, I go to the market, I go to the places where there is organic food, and I come back.
I don't use even a car. I love to climb mountains so I want to go to Everest and Kilimanjaro in the next years. So I walk. I never use cars. So, you know, and that's why I also use electric stuff, because I don't want to be in fossil fuels. So at some point I'm going to have solar panels. But the main thing about this place is the experiment of how we can be held, first, and second, to be like a guardian of food.
Nomad Earth Catalog
Can you tell us about the vegan food you cook here?
Gerardo González Miranda
My favorite dish, one of my favorite dishes is this. We're going to cook the rajas con queso y calabacita. But I also have mole. Tomorrow I'm going to start making mole again. All my food is Mexican. I do tacos dorados, the papa. I do dobladas de frijol. No one does dobladas de frijol. Actually, they don't call it dobladas because in Mexico, it's tacos. In Chiapas, you must know it's not tacos. The tacos come from Mexico. But here in Chiapas, the real thing is called dobladas. So we fold the tortilla. We put something in it and we fold it. Because originally people in Chiapas are not very rich so they use less amount of everything. So it gets folded and gets very flat. So I do dobladas de frijol, tacos dorados. Very deep Mexican food. Sometimes I do palitos, como en Querétaro. I do tacos de flor de calabaza. Mexican deep food. That's what I do.
Nomad Earth Catalog
What is your personal vision of a better future for San Cristobal de las Casas?
Gerardo González Miranda
So here what I do in San Cristóbal and with my life is to tell the people don't drink alcohol. Get cacao, that's it. The mezcal is not pre-Hispanic. We are not pre-Hispanics. We are civilized people, and now we must drink cacao. For every mezcal, tequila, or whatever, you also cutting forest. For any tequila, you see Jalisco, they had the worst climate in the history last year and they said, "Why we have 52 degrees?" Because you don't have forest. It's all producing tequila. Also Jalisco is recognized as the worldwide reserve for beauty when they don't have forest. So people are very stupid for money. We must work for health. You see, I'm not getting rich. I'm nearly paying my rent yesterday, and tomorrow I start my new rent again. So I got one month back. I always pay, I don't drink, I work every day, that's why they trust me. I'm not getting rich, but I'm getting healthy. I see the other owners of restaurants and they are not healthy here in the brain, in the mind, in the spirit. Health is very important. We have to heal this planet or we lose it. And to heal is a lot of work. And it's beautiful.
Nomad Earth Catalog
Can you tell us a bit more about the name Art Libreria and why you chose that name?
Gerardo González Miranda
I chose that name because in the pandemic, I had a bookshop in the city. I was doing a bookshop business. I didn't do the restaurant yet. But after the pandemic, I lost everything. So no money. So I went to the Zapatista school and they gave me books. I have books in the street and I start my business from that and in the street I decided to call my restaurant Art Libreria. You know, because it's art. Most of the bookshops, they don't care about the quality of reading. They can sell something and they don't care. They just need money. Any book that entered to my place, I read it, I check it, I study it. So reading, beautiful reading can make your life very beautiful. So that's why it's called Art Liberia. And now it's Art Liberia Cocina Vegana. Because after the books, I started selling food. I've been working for 36 years in food, so I know what I'm doing. I've cooked in 18 countries.
Nomad Earth Catalog
A lot of the art on your wall, besides being Zapatista-inspired and dealing with social and political issues, there's a lot of features that are about Coca-Cola and its influence in the region. Can you talk a bit more about that?
Gerardo González Miranda
To understand why we are very pissed off, the beautiful people in Mexico, Mexico is very pissed off, very angry with this. This is because it was one of the most corrupt political issues in the history of Mexico. The president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006 was Director of Coca-Cola and President of Mexico. And that's illegal. That's anti-constitutional. And also he signed all the permissions of Coca-Cola to take water from Chiapas and everywhere. And that's another illegal issue in the Constitution. So we remember that. So when the [other] President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in his presidency, he started attacking Vicente Fox [President of Mexico from 2000–2006; previously served as Director of Coca-Cola Mexico in the 1970s]. If the government removes Vicente Fox’s political immunity, all the permissions he signed, including those for Coca-Cola, become invalid. And if that happens, Coca-Cola has no legal basis to stay in Mexico. So this is the main issue in the Mexican government. And after Andrés Manuel López Obrador [pushed for public scrutiny of decisions made by previous administrations, including those involving major corporations], many activists, we got in line with the President [Andrés Manuel López Obrador]. We have an attack here in San Cristóbal against Coca-Cola.* (See Editor's note 1 at the end for further info.)
You know, they shot some innocent, and the Mexican channel, they said, narco, narco. But that was fake news about narco. They parked all the patrons in front of Walmart, 60 patrons. So it was no security in San Cristóbal. They shot this man that is a normal person. He is not—he worked in Santo Domingo. I know him. I used to know him because I buy hippie clothes from his place. He sells in the market. He has a wife. He has a daughter. And he was shot in his old car. He was a normal person working like me.
We know that in the history of Mexico, they make the call worldwide about narco in San Cristóbal. I didn't have people for three months. I sold my piano, I sold the projector, I sold my computer, I sold, because I have movies all the time, and I have the piano, so I used to have concerts. I sold everything. I don't have any more equipment for music. I have concerts here. You know, amplifiers, guitars, piano, organic, like piano forte. Nothing. I sold everything to survive. So those guys are bad. Coca-Cola has to leave Mexico. I know it's going to happen. And we're working, many activists in Mexico, we're working, focusing on that, helping the Mexican President. I believe in Claudia.
Nomad Earth Catalog
And what impact has Coca-Cola had specifically on the local water system and access?
Gerardo González Miranda
We don't have water because of Coca-Cola, the factory of Coca-Cola, which is located in the Huitepec. First, now they're fracking. A lot. Every time they are fracking. I think they have like 13 kilometers of fracking down. Every time they are fracking, the water in San Cristóbal gets cut off. No one has water. Even the coriander that I pay five pesos for. If I go directly with my friend, five pesos the coriander for me is my price. Normal people pay 15. But when Coca-Cola does fracking and the water is cut off, they have to buy a pipe of water and the coriander can cost 30 pesos. And all the vegetables get twice or three times the price. And the people don't understand why the food gets expensive. It is because of Coca-Cola. That's why. Because every time Coca-Cola does fracking, all the food producers, they run out of water and they have to buy water. Point number one. Point number two, which is disgusting. Coca-Cola, when this person, the President of Mexico, entered to the Presidency, he banned it. He took 70% of the budget of education off and he suicided Coca-Cola. And they [Coca-Cola] paid money and they killed people in San Juan Chamula to continue to do what they're doing.* (See Editor's note 2 at the end for further info.)
What they're doing is a felony for the history of Chiapas. San Juan Chamula is having a revolution. The Chamulas are not agreeing with what they're doing there. The leaders of Chamula are corrupt and still receive money from Coca-Cola. They receive salaries from Coca-Cola, but most of the people in Chamula are angry because the Chamulas are artists. They play heavy metal. They're painters, extraordinary painters from San Juan Chamula. Chamula is a town of artists. It's not a town of narcos. Coca-Cola is doing violence. Coca-Cola is pulling everything to fuck up the education in San Juan Chamula. But Chamulas always defend themselves. Because Chamula is a big town of art. So I know it's going to change. But Coca-Cola is the cancer of Mexico. It's one of the cancers because Coca-Cola is one of the main tools of the far right. Coca-Cola uses about 40 million of liters of water per day and the beer factory about 30 million liters per day. Because all the production for South Mexico and even Europe goes from here.
Nomad Earth Catalog
You speak a lot of capitalismo [captialism]—can you share your perspective?
Gerardo González Miranda
Well, the capitalismo produces everything, and does everything bad for business. Like Coca-Cola, they don't let us clean the rivers in Chiapas because polluted water is business. So they can sell all this stuff to purify the water. So it's terrible. Also, you know, everything that is bad, weapons. Ignorant people is business. To the ignorant people, they sell Coca-Cola, they sell Sabritas, or they sell alcohol. They sell meat. You know? That's why it's called Art Libreria, and I keep this name. You know? Because, if you analyze my books, this book over there, is the best book of global warming ever, the big one. One of the best books I ever read about global warming. Because this global warming is changing the chemistry in your body. It's changing the chemistry of everyone in the body. I mean, the bad capitalismo, the bad praxis in capitalismo is changing everyone's chemistry. That's why I buy organic. Even I buy organic when the environment is not clean. DDT was being used for a long time, even in the US they are still using DDT. It's crazy. The US, which is a very white country, you can have DDT molecules worldwide. Monoxide of carbon, gas methano, all the gases we have now are changing our chemistry.
Actually, my idea is, and it's very difficult to talk about this, but I think many people is going to be not able to breathe fully. And many people are eating bad eggs. The heart is getting weak of many people. We cannot talk about the statistics, but if you go to any hospital In Mexico, you will see how bad it is. People suffer a lot of the heart, suffer a lot of lungs, they suffer a lot. They have a lot of disease coming, first for eggs. The top is eggs. And the second is chicken. People don't understand how bad it is to a chicken. Can you imagine the chicken 80,000 years ago was a free animal. They put it in jail in boxes. So that's changing its genetics. And the animal indeed recognizes the way they can protect themselves is to produce super fat. And many people are dying of the chicken super fat and they don't even know. Besides, if you add alcohol to that, your life is going to... We're starting to... You know the average lifespan with Chiapas people, these kind of people, is now less of 50 years? And you see I'm 53 and I feel super good. But that's why the main way to resist capitalism is by defending food, because by defending food you defend everything else—you defend childhood, you defend science. Science is very important. Science is being very corrupt. Many artists, many scientists don't want to work for Coca-Cola or for the weapons factories. You know, they just rebel and that's a good thing. We must get rebels and rebel, sister. That's my point of view.
*Editor’s note 1: Vicente Fox, President of Mexico from 2000–2006, previously served as Director of Coca-Cola Mexico in the 1970s but was no longer employed by the company when he took office. Concerns around Coca-Cola’s water use in Chiapas are well documented by activists and researchers; however, the legal and geopolitical conclusions Gerardo draws here represent his own interpretation of those events.
*Editor’s note 2: Gerardo’s comments reflect his personal interpretation of long-standing tensions around Coca-Cola’s presence in Chiapas. While the company’s water use and political influence have been widely documented and criticized, there is no public evidence we could find supporting claims of a government ban on Coca-Cola or direct involvement by Coca-Cola in targeted violence in San Juan Chamula, though the town has experienced cycles of violence for decades, with most conflicts being multi-causal and tied to politics, local governance, and resource control.
