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<p><a href="https://www.insider.com/category/me-first"></a></p><div type="image" title="Chef Cristina Martinez speaks onstage behind a podium during the 2022 James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards" height="2242" width="2990" msid="93061946" hostid="261" sizebytes="91060"></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>After growing up in an unstable home, <keyword id="14530486" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="cristina-martinez" source="Orion">Cristina Martinez</keyword> found herself in an abusive marriage.</li><li>She made the tough choice to leave and immigrate to the US, where she's become an award-winning chef.</li></ul><p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/barbacoachef/?hl=en" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored nofollow sponsored">Cristina Martinez</a> is a chef, a restaurant owner, an immigration activist, and a mother. Now, she's becoming an advocate for victims of domestic abuse. </p><p>The owner of <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/food/cristina-martinez-south-philly-barbacoa-new-restaurant-20220405.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored nofollow sponsored">South Philly Barbacoa</a> has amassed a long list of accomplishments, appearing on <a href="https://www.bonappetit.com/story/south-philly-barbacoa-philadelphia" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored nofollow sponsored">best-restaurant lists</a>, landing an episode of Netflix's "Chef's Table," and, most recently, <a href="https://www.jamesbeard.org/blog/the-2022-james-beard-award-winners" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored nofollow sponsored">winning a James Beard Award</a>. But when she was asked about the most pivotal moments in her life, the Mexico native chose to talk about her decisions to take herself out of abusive situations. </p><p>"I believe that one of the greatest talents I have had as a woman is that sixth sense," Martinez told Insider in an interview translated from Spanish. </p><p>For Martinez, 52, the most powerful moments of her life have involved listening to her intuition. She said the gut feeling of knowing when to leave was what pushed her out of her parents' home at the age of 17, and then out of her husband's home to come to the US. Neither decision was free of consequences.</p><h2>Growing up in a culture of silence around abuse</h2><p>Martinez grew up in Capulhuac, Mexico, where she lived with her mother, father, and four siblings until she got married at 17 years old. It was there that she learned how to make barbacoa, the dish of slow-cooked lamb that has propelled her to culinary stardom.</p><p>She said she had many happy memories of her father, including his love of preparing barbacoa, but added that there were dark moments.</p><p>"My dad was an alcoholic, and I felt every time he drank that he was going to harass me," Martinez said. "I was always on the alert when he was drinking and drinking."</p><p>As a kid, Martinez said she felt like she had no one to turn to. Her mother thought the verbal harassment was normal, she said, and the environment she grew up in was one of shame and silence when it came to abuse. She couldn't share "those kinds of things that are so delicate and deep that they hurt, not even with my sisters," she said, adding: "I didn't know what reaction my sisters or my mom would have."</p><p>So when she met a man who asked her to marry him after just 15 days, she saw it as the perfect opportunity to remove herself from her father's home. Unfortunately, she said, she didn't stop to weigh the consequences.</p><p>Martinez said her first husband, who was also a victim of childhood abuse, ended up being physically violent toward her, which continued a cycle of abuse that left her feeling trapped, like she was in a prison. The abuse went on for nearly 15 years as the couple had four children together. </p><p>"I couldn't go to my mom. I didn't have friends to tell what I was going through with my partner," she said. "The aggression was also increasing to the point where I returned to that sixth sense, in which I saw that if I stayed there, I would end up in a wheelchair, paralyzed, or bedridden."</p><h2>A difficult decision to leave home</h2><p>Around 2006, Martinez decided to take the leap and move to the US. There, she worked as a dishwasher and a pastry chef so that she could send money home to her daughter Carla to pay for boarding school and help her escape the pattern of abuse that she herself had been trapped in.</p><p>Martinez's decision to leave Mexico didn't come without a price. Because she's unauthorized to live in the US, she can't return to the country and hasn't seen three of her children in more than 10 years. (The fourth came to live with her in Philadelphia in 2012 but died two years later.) Carla is now an emergency-room nurse and has been denied a visa to visit her mother four times. </p><div type="image" title="Cristina Martinez speaks onstage behind a podium during the 2022 James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards." height="2213" width="2950" msid="93061947" hostid="261" sizebytes="110476"></div><p>After she lost her pastry-chef job because of her immigration status, Martinez started cooking barbacoa and consommé in her apartment with her husband, Benjamin Miller, whom she'd met at work. On "Chef's Table," the couple said they started selling the dish out of their home on Sunday mornings.</p><p>"People came to the apartment, needing to eat and feel at home," Martinez told the filmmakers. "They were immigrants like me."</p><p>As the couple transitioned <keyword id="14530487" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="south-philly-barbacoa" source="Orion">South Philly Barbacoa</keyword> into a restaurant space, it began generating media attention. In 2017, Martinez received her first James Beard Award nomination for best chef, mid-Atlantic. She <a href="https://www.phillyvoice.com/cristina-martinez-south-philly-barbacoa-best-chef-james-beard/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored nofollow sponsored">won the award last month</a>.</p><p>The chef has been happily married to Miller for 10 years, and the pair opened a second Philadelphia restaurant, Casa Mexico, in 2020.</p><h2>Speaking up about breaking the cycle</h2><p>Martinez has been a passionate advocate for immigrants unauthorized to live in the US. She told her story on <a href="https://www.univision.com/noticias/inmigracion/podcast-mejor-vete-cristina" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored nofollow sponsored">a Spanish-language podcast for Univision</a> and, along with Miller, founded the Popular Alliance for Undocumented Workers' Rights, which <a href="https://www.dosagemagazine.com/south-phillys-undocumented-workers-need-love-and-aid-and-cristina-martinez-and-benjamin-miller-want-to-get-it-for-them/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored nofollow sponsored">pushes for amnesty for workers</a> and has provided free meals to those in need during the pandemic.</p><p>Speaking out about abuse has been harder. Martinez said her two sons in Mexico continued to perpetuate the cycle she grew up with. One is physically abusing his partner, she said, adding that the other had an addiction to crack cocaine. </p><p>"I am a mother who does not want her granddaughter to live with a man like my son," she said.</p><p>She said she's opening up about her experience for the first time because she wanted people to understand the challenges of breaking the cycle. </p><p>"The fact that my children are not so conscious does not defeat me," she said. "On the contrary, it gives me more strength because at the moment of sharing everything, although they see me far away, they know that I am fine."</p><p>Ultimately, she said, trusting herself and leaving Mexico was the best decision she could have made. In the meantime, she wants her children to see that she is, and will remain, a safe haven for them if they choose to lean on her. And she hopes her story serves as an example to anyone grappling with listening to their intuition. </p><p>"I'm still strong," she said. "I'm still fighting so that these things don't happen to other families."</p><p><em>Anyone affected by abuse and in need of support can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233). Advocates are available 24/7 and can also be reached via live chat on </em><a href="https://www.thehotline.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored"><em>thehotline.org</em></a><em> or by texting "START" to 88788 or "</em><a href="https://www.loveisrespect.org/get-relationship-help/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener sponsored"><em>LOVEIS</em></a><em>" to 22522</em>.</p>

Chef Cristina Martinez has won a James Beard Award and appeared on 'Chef's Table.' But she says her greatest accomplishment was escaping domestic abuse.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/category/alberto-nisman">Alberto Nisman</a>, the Argentine prosecutor who was found dead in his locked apartment in January, was a marked man when <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/alberto-nisman-drugs-hezbollah-and-iran-2015-3">he died mysteriously</a>, and his most dangerous enemy appears to have been the People's Republic of Iran.</p><p>In the trove of confidential diplomatic cables leaked online in 2010 by WikiLeaks, there appears to be evidence of Iran's hatred for Nisman.</p><p>In 2007, Nisman had presented to Interpol the findings of his investigation into Iran's involvement in the deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.</p><p>When Nisman did that, Iranian officials went ballistic.</p><p>Here's part of what a US diplomat cabled home from <a href="https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07BUENOSAIRES182_a.html">Buenos Aires</a> (emphasis ours):</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">As part of their efforts to derail the GOA's [Government of Argentina] presentation of its new findings and block the request for issuance of Red Notices, the Iranian delegation then threatened to issue arrest warrants for Argentine prosecutors Nisman and Martinez Burgos if they insisted on the detention of the former Iranian president and other officials. Ambassador Gonzalez provided details of how the senior Iranian police official had said that the GOI [Government of Iran] will <strong>demand that Interpol "arrest Nisman to present to the justice system in Iran." Gonzalez protested the GOI threat on the spot. This first threat was followed by a statement by the GOI Legal Advisor, who mentioned that the GOI "Religious prosecutor" is considering presenting a case against Nisman personally for his defaming remarks about Iran and Iranian officials. He said that the GOI would prosecute whomever says things like Nisman is saying against the Iranian state. </strong>A third GOI threat related to their stated intention to sue GOA officials for their judicial actions as the GOI reportedly did in the wake of the unsuccessful efforts in 1995 to extradite the former Iranian Ambassador to Argentina at the time of the 1994 bombing to Argentina from the UK.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">[...]</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">As indicated in Argentine news daily La Nacion, the prompt registration of the complaint and level of the Argentine official delivering it demonstrate the great importance this issue carries in Argentina. (Note:<strong> Last November, the Iranian Attorney General threatened the arrest of Argentine prosecutors under the assertion that they had violated the Iranian Penal Code by propagandizing against the Islamic Republic of Iran. </strong>End Note.)</p><p>By other accounts, though, the US diplomat sounded confident that Nisman had made a better case than any other prosecutor "and that the evidence" was "very strong."</p><p>Nisman had been tasked with investigating the bombing by then-Argentine President Nestor Kirchner in 2005. At that point, finding the perpetrators was a top priority for the regime until suddenly it wasn't.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Nisman had revitalized the investigation this year, and before he died he was about to testify to the Argentine Legislature that current President Cristina Fernandez (Nestor's widow) had tried to cover up Iran's involvement in the Jewish community center bombing. In his investigation, he said that Fernandez hid Iran's involvement in order to secure an oil-for-food exchange with Iran.</p><p>But that's not all Nisman uncovered. In a 2013 report - consisting of 502 pages of wire taps, interviews, and other evidence - he detailed Iran's and Hezbollah's growing influence in South America. Nisman's belief was that Iran, with the help of Hugo Chavez's regime in Venezuela and the FARC in Colombia, built Hezbollah cells in remote parts of South America. That idea was confirmed in congressional testimony by a former <a href="http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA07/20150318/103177/HHRG-114-FA07-Wstate-Lpez-DolzD-20150318.pdf">vice foreign minister of Peru last week</a>.</p><p>"Iran and Hezbollah, two forces hostile to US interests, have made significant inroads in Peru, almost without detection, in part because of our weak institutions, prevalent criminal enterprise, and various stateless areas," Peru's former vice interior minister said in Wednesday's House hearing, noting that Peru was not hostile to the US. "These elements are particularly weak in the southern mountainous region of my country."</p><p>The State Department did read Nisman's 2013 work, but, according to security consultant Douglas Farah, who testified before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations last week, his warning was largely ignored.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Shortly after Nisman's 2013 report the U.S. Department of State issued a Congressionally mandated report on Iran's activities in Latin America which completely ignored Nisman's fieldwork, as well as dissenting views within the U.S. government - most notably U.S. Southern Command, which has military responsibility for the region. Instead the State Department concluded that, while Iran's interest in Latin America "is of concern," Iranian "influence in Latin America and the Caribbean is waning."11 In September 2014 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a sharp critique of the State Department effort, noting the report only fully addressed two of the 12 issues raised, while partially addressing six issues, and leaving four completely unaddressed.</p><p>Meanwhile, in Argentina, despite appeals from other prosecutors, no judge will pick up where Nisman left off.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/patagonia-nesting-birds-argentina-drone-video-2015-3">Scientists have captured an incredible drone video of 5,000 birds nesting on a beach in Argentina</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Fmc2VzczoTmio_f_YCZDnNktbyu9SX41" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Iranian officials completely lost it when a now deceased Argentine prosecutor confronted them in 2007

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Chef Cristina Martinez has won a James Beard Award and appeared on 'Chef's Table.' But she says her greatest accomplishment was escaping domestic abuse.

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Iranian officials completely lost it when a now deceased Argentine prosecutor confronted them in 2007

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