ABSTRACT
What people cook and eat, what sorts of food they share, and how, why, and in which contexts they do so, constitute a powerful analytic window into understanding cultural expression and identity, as well as social relationships. Diet-the types, proportions, and nutritional values of foods eaten-and cuisine-the kinds of meals or dishes that are prepared and shared-all reveal important insights into history and the construction of culture. It is difficult to imagine Mexico without maize, or think of Mexicans (or Mexican Americans in the United States) shunning maize-based dishes such as tacos and tamales. It is likewise hard to envisage Caribbean and Central American peoples doing without rice and beans, or spurning the almost endless variety of banana and plantain-based dishes. If, as some have suggested, “we are what we eat” and if, as may certainly be the case, “. . . to eat is to live [and] to live must be to eat” (Mintz 1994:103)— then it likewise follows that we can learn a great deal about Latin American and Caribbean culture by focusing on diet and cuisine. (Indeed, throughout Spanish speaking Latin America and the Caribbean, it is in the sphere of agriculture, crops, and cuisines that an abundance of indigenous and African loan words, as well as enormous variability in Spanish lexical terms, exists.)
To reflect on and ask questions about food and culture-to inquire about the meanings of food in different societal contexts is, as Mintz (1994:104-105) suggests, tantamount to pondering ourselves as a culturally constituted human species:
Eating habits . . . are not only acquired habits but also historically derived habits, uninscribed in our natures, except by early social learning. Though all peoples have ideas about what foods are good for them, in no culture do they eat everything. What is more, no people eats only what is thought to be good for them . . . This aspect of our behavior has to do with the uniquely human capacity to create a symbolic world, and then both to call it reality and to treat it as real.
