Eating Puerto Rico: A History of Food, Culture and Identity by Cruz Miguel Ortiz Cuadra (review)

This book is a feast for the mind. First published (in Madrid) in Spanish in 2006, it has been translated (with minor updates–it includes a 2007 figure for food assistance on p. 199) by Russ Davidson with a foreword by Angel G. Quintero Rivera (who calls the book a “hedonistic blowout – and why not! – but it is also intelligent and searching” (p. xii). Ortiz is a professor in the Department of Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico. The book is highly interdisciplinary drawing from anthropology, sociology, history, medicine and using a wide range of data sources including relatively obscure archives and contemporary censuses. There is a lot for every reader here.

The central theme of the book is how food has shaped the collective identity of Puerto Ricans historically and to the present. After an introduction, chapters on major foods of the island – rice, beans, cornmeal, codfish, viandas (root vegetables, banana, breadfruit), and meat – explaining how they were introduced, by whom, how they enter the diet of different groups, what role they play in nutrition, how they are cooked and used in celebrations. Issues of class and race (from the Taino original inhabitants to European settlers, African slaves and descendants of each) are infused into the text. The final chapters explore recent rapid changes in food patterns as Puerto Rico “modernizes” and adopts contemporary American diets, cooking equipment and eating customs. While not a “quick read” it is an intriguing one with new ideas developed on almost every page. The translation is fluent…and I learned a few new words in English (e.g. organoleptic p. 28 or bromatology p. 155)!

Most chapters pose a question to which answers are proposed. For example, why is rice by far the most dominant food when it is not native to the island and today almost none is grown there and most is imported? The answer lies in the fact that the Spanish settlers brought rice for their own consumption when they came seeking gold, but the African slaves grew it for subsistence as the strains of rice from their land of origin could be grown on the island. Then sugar and other plantation crops encroached on rice lands. Since rice is relatively easy to store and transport, most rice eaten on the island today is imported (especially from the U.S. mainland, but also from China, Egypt and Argentina), though in smaller quantities than a century ago.

Another traditional staple, salted codfish, is likewise imported. Despite the fact that Puerto Rico is an island surrounded by sea relatively rich in fish, the “taste” for salted codfish, imported from Newfoundland and the New England coast developed because the local population (slaves) were needed to work on the plantations rather than becoming fishermen. Molasses from the sugar plantations was shipped to New England for the distillation of rum with ships returning to the islands with a cargo of dried and salted fish. This pattern of vestige trade is found on other Caribbean islands–ackee (a local fruit) and codfish remains a favorite in Jamaica. Today the dominance of codfish is offset by large scale imports of shrimp and other seafood. The persistence of fish in the diet is partly attributable to traditional religious strictures about eating meat on certain days. While Catholic regulations have been relaxed and religious adherence reduced, eating fish on Fridays persists.

Unlike rice and codfish, other staples in the diet – beans and corn – are “native” to the island having been grown by the original Taino inhabitants, although different varieties of beans especially consumed on the island are native to West Africa from where slaves were brought. Other varieties of beans were imported from Spain during the early period of colonization. As is now known, such legumes have nitrogen fixing properties which enhance soil...