Eating Puerto Rico: A History of Food, Culture, and Identity

3 Cornmeal

77 3 | Cornmeal During the war years, when rice was often unattainable, cornmeal was used with beans in place of rice and jokingly called “the Second Front.” —lydia roberts and rosa luis stefani, Patterns of Living of Puerto Rican Families, 1949 In Francisco Oller’s emblematic painting, El velorio (The Wake), the viewer’s gaze tends to be drawn to the human figures in the center of the composition , but if we look above them, near the top of the canvas, we see twenty or more corncobs hanging from a beam running below the roof. The cobs are “getting aired,” or dried. In the days before industrialized farming, corn harvested for domestic consumption was dried inside rural dwellings, hung from posts or walls and not left out in the open, where it was easy prey for birds, rats, and foraging pigs. Although the focal point of Oller’s painting appears to be the unfettered naturalness of simple country folk gazing happily at a roast pig strung above them, the artist has not included the corncobs simply as decoration. On the contrary, they carry a specific meaning within Oller’s larger depiction of rural life, a meaning—in this context—that we can apprehend by applying the ideas of Carolyn Korsmeyer.¹ According to Korsmeyer, when food plays a subordinate part in a larger visual narrative—as it does in El velorio—it typically goes unnoticed or at least fades into the background. Nonetheless, it still lends its meaning to the painting’s wider subject, reinforcing the symbolic value of the painting’s narrative line. Thus, Korsmeyer asserts, while food and other mundane objects rank only as humble elements in grand paintings, they still have vital importance for society and for the context in which they are represented: corn— as conveyed in Oller’s visual language—is a basic, essential food, and so are 78 Cornmeal the bananas that hang in bunches in the painting, and the rice that appears to be half eaten in the gourd that has toppled onto the floor. If one looks at the scene in El velorio with a view toward picturing what transpires later, the kernels of corn are going to be stripped off the cobs and—when they have dried—ground up, to be turned into cornmeal. After being passed through a sieve, the mashed kernels will swell up with the addition of water, or cow’s or coconut milk, leading to the preparation of a funche (a thick cornmeal mixture, similar to polenta). Throughout the history of Puerto Rico, no dish made from corn has satisfied the appetite—especially around the tables of less advantaged families—more than funche. Corn converted into cornmeal, however, and corn eaten specifically in the form of funche, hardly register on the food scene, and in what people eat, in contemporary Puerto Rico. Its popularity was diminished by the image it acquired after the Second World War as a “poor man’s food.” The availability of other flour mixtures and cereals beginning in 1950, along with the fast-paced globalization of food in recent years, has also contributed to this decline. Nevertheless, some adults continue to eat the dish for breakfast, as it is easily digested on an empty stomach. The minority of young people who still consume it prefer the version that comes precooked and seasoned under the name cremita de maíz (creamed cornmeal), a rather insipid name given to the preparation by the agro-food industry as a way of appealing to people in various age groups.² As a result, the young do not call it funche, although the only difference between the two is the rather soupy consistency of the former. At present, cornmeal in Puerto Rico is primarily used for making corn bread or sorullitos (cornmeal fritters resembling a small stick—one type is stuffed with cheese, the other is sweetened and flavored with cinnamon and anise—deep-fried and eaten by hand). It is also used as the base for making guanimes—seasoned cornmeal mixed with water (there are two types, sweet or salted) and shaped into tamales that are wrapped in banana leaves and boiled in salted water—a popular item among “foodies” who enjoy guanimes in combination with salted codfish, as a kind of “blast from the past,” on weekend excursions out of the capital. The cornmeal used in preparing guanimes is usually mixed with coconut milk, to counteract the saltiness of the codfish. Ultimately, though, cornmeal was most commonly prepared...