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

Analytical studies of foodways, extending beyond the production and consumption of sugar, are a recent feature of Caribbean scholarship. Building on the foundational work of the anthropologist Sidney W. Mintz, historians across the region have begun to develop a literature that relates culinary technologies and tastes to notions of identity. In order to create a comparative framework, the publication of substantial food histories for individual Caribbean territories is therefore essential. Hence the importance of the contribution of Cruz Miguel Ortiz Cuadra, in his innovative work on Puerto Rico.

First published in Spanish in 2006, the book’s translation makes it available to a larger readership. Although the title of the English version is somewhat bland compared to the original Puerto Rico en la olla, ¿somos aún lo que comimos? (Puerto Rico in the pot: are we still what we ate?), the fundamental questions remain. At the core of the book, Ortiz asks “why did we eat what we ate and why do we still eat it, and where, when one examines contemporary Puerto Rican cookery, do we observe both changes and continuities in this pattern?” (p. 13). Consequently, it is a food-centered history, matching an approach that has been applied to a number of countries in recent times, from Italy to Japan. It looks to the past, both in terms of historical development and in the role of nostalgia in food habits and attitudes—the palate’s memory and the supposed heritage—but also locates these survivals and revivals within the context of globalization and McDonalización, the term used by Ortiz to indicate “an unchanging food or dietary regimen” (p. 272).

Rather than attempting a comprehensive account of the foods consumed by Puerto Ricans past and present, the major chapters of the book are focused on particular ingredients, arranged according to the frequency with which they are consumed today. Ortiz begins with rice, then moves on to beans, cornmeal, codfish, viands, and meat. He follows the argument of Judith Carney in contending that the origins of rice cultivation are to be found among the enslaved Africans of Puerto Rico, as part of their effort to supply their own resources. It is certain that rice production flourished in the island by the eighteenth century, perhaps because sugar plantation agriculture was less pervasive than elsewhere in this period. This contributed to the early ascendancy of rice consumption over tubers, plantains, green bananas, and breadfruit (collectively “viandas”). In the long run, however, Puerto Rico, like many other places, came to rely heavily on imported grain and to experience the “rizification” that carried with it significant consequences for choice—which Ortiz relates to the “simplification” of the diet—and a risky dependence (p. 40). Something similar applies to the trajectory of beans, the constant companion of rice, and here the account offered by Ortiz enables comparison with the examples contained in the recent collection Rice and Beans edited by Richard Wilk and Livia Barbosa. Concluding chapters take up more general issues of theory and review long-term trends, with an eye to the future.

Ortiz is at his best when discussing food preparation and the dishes Puerto Ricans consumed. The statistical analysis of consumption trends is interesting but too often the data (with the exception of mammals and salted cod imports) appear insufficient for comparison much before 1930, or are not presented in the form of long-run charts or consistent per capita measures. The publication of the English edition has enabled Ortiz to bring some of the statistical data nearer to the present (2010) and to add graphics to some of the material first offered only in tabular format. The text does not always discuss the significance of these more recent data but the opportunity has been taken for some rewriting of the narrative overall.