Food History (Latin American Studies)

Introduction

Changes in food consumption, production, and nutrition patterns reflect the broad changes in Latin American history since before the conquest of the Americas by the Spanish. Food was closely intertwined with identity and local worldviews, and while food patterns varied depending on region, class, and local histories, most sedentary precolonial diets were largely vegetarian. With the onset of European colonization in 1492, indigenous culinary and food practices (foodways) began to sharply transform. In areas where Europeans settled, the introduction of Old World foods such as wheat, pork, and beef began to transform the landscape and diets. Coercive labor practices and changes in diet made indigenous populations more susceptible to disease and contributed to the massive deaths of indigenous populations. The forced relocation of Africans to the Americas through slavery also transformed diet in the Americas and introduced new crops and different ways of food preparation. Under the influence of the Enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans aggressively transformed indigenous ways of life through dislocations of populations as part of an expansion of export crops. Social Darwinian thought linked indigenous foods to backwardness and European foods to modernization, leading to an array of policies generally focused on women, and aimed at promoting the consumption of foods associated with Europe. Despite efforts to erase traditional food cultures through production and consumption policies, indigenous and mestizo communities struggled to maintain and transform their traditional foodways. Popular revolutionary struggles throughout the 20th century forced many governments to prioritize food production for internal consumption. In many countries this boosted basic food consumption for growing numbers of people and provided some support for traditional producers. Populist policies fostered the formation of national cuisines that integrated traditional ingredients and foods in a modernized fashion. With the onset of neoliberal globalization in the 1970s and 1980s, emphasis on food self-sufficiency was replaced by market-based policies driven by free-market ideologies backed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. While proponents of free trade have argued that open markets would reduce the price of basic foods and increase consumption by the poor, there is mounting evidence that this has not occurred. Scholars have documented the growing inequality and rural poverty in much of Latin America, which has been exacerbated by the sharp increases in basic food prices from 2006 to 2008. This poverty has fueled migration and social unrest and has spurred renewed movements for land reform, indigenous and campesino (rural workers) rights, and food sovereignty.

General Overviews

While there has yet to be a general history of food in Latin America, there are several global studies that address Latin America as whole or as specific countries. Pilcher 2006 and Kiple 2007 provide overviews of food in world history with ample coverage of the global south and Latin America in particular. Kloppenburg 1988 gives a global analysis of how capitalism has transformed seeds into a commodity in ways that have enriched a handful of corporations while alienating peasants from the land. Kloppenburg provides a sharp contrast to Kiple’s view of globalization. Carney and Rosomoff 2009 demonstrates how, beginning with the Columbian exchange and slavery, Africa has had a profound botanical legacy on diets in the Americas. Lappé, et al. 1998 shows how the combined factors of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism have shaped world hunger, malnutrition, and inequality while at the same time obscuring the real causes of hunger. Barkin, et al. 1990 underscores the detrimental impacts of the growth of feedcrops and how they exacerbate inequality. In its ethical and human rights analysis of food, Schanbacher 2010 is able to show how social movements and local producers offer a number of alternatives to the current global food system that more directly address the issue of equity and control over foodways.

Barkin, David, Rosemary L. Batt, and Billie R. DeWalt. Food Crops vs. Feed Crops: Global Substitution of Grains in Production. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1990.
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An analysis of shifts in the capitalist world system since the late 1960s and its impact on world food-crop production. By focusing on different regions, the authors demonstrate how “feed” crops have come to replace food crops in many areas of the world, underscoring the detrimental impact this has had on rural populations.
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Bello, Walden. The Food Wars. London: Verso, 2009.
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A critical analysis of recent food price increases, emphasizing larger historic and structural inequalities rooted in colonialism and imperialism. Chapters explore the 2006–2008 food crisis and its impact in a broader context in Mexico, Africa, and China. Chapters about agro-fuels and on popular resistance and alternatives provide several examples from Latin America.
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Carney, Judith, and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff. In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
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An engaging overview of Africa’s botanical legacy in the Americas. Chapters explore African food crops in the slave trade, maroon subsistence strategies, the Africanization of plantation food systems and African animals in the Americas.
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Kiple, Kenneth F. A Movable Feast: Ten Millennia of Food Globalization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511512148Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Based on the Cambridge World History of Food, this is an interpretative volume of the longue durée of food and cultural exchange. The volume gives significant weight to the Columbian exchange and its impact on world history. Kiple sees globalization as an ongoing and largely beneficial process.
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Kloppenburg, Jack Ralph, Jr. First The Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492–2000. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
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An examination of the process of the commodification of seeds from the Columbian exchange to modern times. The author examines seed and germplasm transfer from a political economy perspective, providing an important analysis of the social history of plant technology.
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Lappé, Frances Moore, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset, with Luis Esparza. World Hunger: Twelve Myths. 2d ed. New York: Grove, 1998.
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Originally written in 1986, this books links world hunger to global systems of political power. This is a highly readable and provocative book that takes on widely held beliefs about the origins and persistence of hunger. The authors draw on an array of research and many examples come from Latin America.
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Pilcher, Jeffrey M. Food in World History. New York: Routledge, 2006.
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An engaging overview of the role of food in world history. Unlike most volumes that claim to address global history, much of this book focuses on the so-called third world. Throughout the volume there are important discussions of Latin American regional food production and consumption within a global framework.
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Schanbacher, William D. The Politics of Food: The Global Conflict Between Food Security and Food Sovereignty. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010.
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An analysis of food-security and food-sovereignty approaches to the global food system. The author argues that the current food-security approach has not eradicated hunger because it is too dependent on free-trade corporate models. Instead, he argues that food sovereignty, sustainable production, and culturally relevant consumption is ethically, environmentally, and culturally preferable to the current system.
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Edited Collections

There are a number of edited works that address several aspects of food history in Latin America. Super and Wright 1985 brings together a methodologically diverse groups of studies that approach food from a variety of angles. Viola and Margolis 1991 provides several articles that demonstrate the legacy of events in 1492 on foodways, production, and consumption. Brandt 1999 and Otero 2008 provide critical perspectives on neoliberalism and global multilateral agencies and their impact on small producers, workers, and consumers. Giarracca and Teubal 2009 gives a readable introduction to land and rural struggles in several Latin American countries, demonstrating various ways that neoliberal policies are being resisted. Camacho, et al. 2008 aims to link much of the newer approaches on consumption with studies of food production in several Latin American countries.

Barndt, Deborah. Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain: Women, Food and Globalization. Toronto: SUMACH, 1999.
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These essays examine women workers in food industries of Mexico, the United States, and Canada in the 1990s. The volume derives from a transnational collaboration of scholars and activists working on food, globalization, gender, and social justice issues. Chapters illustrate the complex workings of globalization and seek to reconstruct a holistic analysis to help workers in their struggle for social justice.
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Camacho, Juana A., Alejandro Guarín, and Shawn Van Ausdal. Special Issue: Historias de la comida y la comida en la historia. Revista de Estudios Sociales 29 (April 2008).
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A collection of several original essays on food history in Latin America. It includes articles on consumption of meat in Colombia that break new ground in connecting issues of production and consumption. A section of essays reviewing key works in Latin American food history provides an excellent introduction for those new to the topic.
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Giarracca, Norma y Miguel Teubal. La tierra es nuestra, tuya y de aquel . . . Las disputas por el territorio en América Latina. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Antropofagia, 2009.
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An excellent introduction to land struggles in Latin America, drawing heavily on interviews with community activists in Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. Shows the importance of community struggle, the fight for food sovereignty, and the ways that communities have been able to organize and take advantage of loopholes in the law.
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Otero, Gerardo. Food for the Few: Neoliberal Globalism and Biotechnology in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.
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One of the first collections that examines the connection between neoliberalism and the biotechnology revolution and what it means for food production and consumption in Latin America. Essays deal with several specific case studies on Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina and underscore the cultural and social impact leading to growing inequality.
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Super, John C., and Thomas C. Wright. Food, Politics and Society in Latin America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.
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A pioneering volume that explores food politics in Latin American. Essays range in methodology but together provide several important political and economic studies of food in Latin America from the colonial period to the 1980s. Includes overview articles on Latin America as well as articles on Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Peru.
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Viola, Herman J., and Carolyn Margolis. Seeds of Change: A Quincentennial Commemoration. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
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This work brings together several essays on the sociocultural transformations between the Americas, Europe, and Africa following the onset of colonization in 1492. Several chapters deal with food crops, ranching, and the legacy of African foodways. It is written for a general audience and is adorned with photographs and maps.
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Commodity Histories

Given the prevalence of production for export in Latin America following the European conquest of the Americas, scholars have tended to focus their research on the role of specific commodities in Latin American history. Much of this literature initially focused on commodities that historically have fetched a high price in the world market, such as gold, silver, petroleum, and other nonfood items. However, given the demand for agricultural items beginning especially in the late 18th and 19th centuries, food commodities such as sugar, coffee, and bananas began to reshape the physical landscape as once-diverse polycultural systems were replaced by monocultures developed principally for export. Influenced by world systems and dependency analysis, scholars began to study the global capitalist factors that shaped commodity production. Mintz 1985 is one of the first global studies of a commodity that uses sugar as an avenue for exploring agricultural transformation, labor exploitation, and demand and taste in Europe. Coe and Coe 2007 provides a history of chocolate and its impact on and transformation in Europe through the 19th century. Inspired by these approaches and by the relative neglect of food crops in most commodity discussions, Warman 2003 demonstrates the globalization of maize following the Spanish conquest of Mexico as a primarily working-class crop that by the 19th century was widely consumed throughout the world. In the same vein, Carney 2001 focuses on the transnational history of rice, underscoring the value of traditional cultivation and preparation. Topik, et al. 2006 provides a flexible framework for studying the histories of commodities, and Roseberry, et al. 1995 demonstrates how commodity production and labor systems vary depending on region, population situation, and time period. Striffler and Moberg 2003 examines how banana production and trade are influenced by US corporations and how they are contested by local elite and workers.

Carney, Judith. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
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A pathbreaking analysis of the transatlantic history of rice from an interdisciplinary perspective. Underscores the importance of African methods of cultivation and preparation and how they were transported to the Americas. Within the Americas, much of the research is based on South Carolina, Brazil, and Suriname.
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Coe, Sophie D., and Michael D. Coe. The True History of Chocolate. London: Thames and Hudson, 2007.
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A comprehensive overview of the early history of chocolate with emphasis on its Olmec-Maya origins, its uses in Aztec society, European encounters with it, and its impact in Europe through the 19th century.
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Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern World History. New York: Penguin, 1985.
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A foundational study of the connection between a single commodity—sugar—and global capitalism and imperial expansion. It deftly weaves the history of commodity production with a discussion of the enslavement of millions of Africans and the development of sweets in Europe. This classic sets the standard for commodity and colonial studies by providing a holistic analysis of complex processes.
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Roseberry, William, Lowell Gudmundson, and Mario Samper Kutschbach, eds. Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
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Focuses on the role of coffee in Latin America, specifically the process of production, labor systems, and distribution in diverse regions of Latin America. The authors demonstrate the varied impact of coffee cultivation, paying specific attention to its role in class formation. Chapters focus on most of the major coffee-growing regions in Latin America.
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Striffler, Steve, and Mark Moberg, eds. Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
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Examines the connection between power and production in the banana industry in the 19th- and 20th-century Americas. Chapters explore the cultivation of bananas as well as the rise and dominance of the United Fruit Company and its impact in Central and South America.
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Topik, Steven, Carlos Marichal, and Frank Zephyr, eds. From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
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Though not focused specifically on food items per se, this collection provides an important framework for examining commodities, from production to consumption. Chapters deal with a range of commodities from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Chapter 5 deals with coffee, and chapter 8 explores the history of bananas.
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Warman, Arturo. Corn and Capitalism: How A Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance. Translated by Nancy L. Westrate. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
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First published in Mexico in 1988, this sweeping interdisciplinary study explores the origins and world history of maize from its beginnings in Mesoamerica over eight thousand years ago to its place in the world market in the late 20th century. This study focuses on the spread and adaptation of maize in various regions and social and cultural contexts.
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Agribusiness and Its Influence in Latin America

The emergence of agribusiness in Latin America has a deep and complex history. The refining and processing of food crops became a major industry in many countries during the 19th and 20th centuries. While scholars have traditionally explored commodity histories, as discussed above, fewer focused on agro-industry, and those that have tended to examine the enormous impact of transnational corporations. Burbach and Flynn 1980 demonstrates the negative impact that Del Monte and Cargill have had in various parts of Latin America. Davis 2002 and Tucker 2007 independently provide analyses of the economic and political climate in which Latin America was further drawn into the world capitalist markets during the 19th and 20th centuries and underscore the social and ecological ramifications of these practices. Dosal 1993 examines the political history of the economic operations of the United Fruit Company (UFCO) in Guatemala during critical periods of growth of the UFCO and of the political development of Guatemala. Bucheli 2005 provides one of the first company studies of the UFCO emphasizing the company’s business strategies and its interactions in Colombia, raising important points about the nature of corporate exploitation. Austin 1974 is one of the few studies of national agribusiness firms and their inner workings. Feder 1977, in contrast to Austin, applies a dependency theory approach to the rise and development on the strawberry export industry in Mexico, linking it to historical patterns of colonialism and exploitation.

Austin, James E. Agribusiness in the Americas. New York: Praeger, 1974.
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An early discussion of agribusiness in Latin America. This study, originally prepared for use in classes for Instituto Centroamerica de Administración y Empresa (INCAE) in Managua, Nicaragua, focuses on several case studies of firms in the poultry and swine industry, dairy and beef system, basic grains traditional exports, and nontraditional exports in 1970s Central America.
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Bucheli, Marcelo. Bananas and Business: The United Fruit Company in Colombia, 1899–2000. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
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A business history of the United Fruit Company’s operations in Colombia, focusing on the company’s strategy and its relations with local and national governments. The author shows that the growth and dominance of UFCO in Colombia was accomplished by accepting lower profits in exchange for the security of developing a long-run strategy to address the various political and economic factors beyond their control.
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Burbach, Roger, and Patricia Flynn. Agribusiness in the Americas. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980.
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A critical analysis of the ways that US agribuisness has transformed and expanded into Latin America over the course of the 20th century. Chapters explore capitalist modernization in Latin America and the role of US transnational corporations. Part 3 contains case studies of the role of US-based food producers Del Monte and Cargill in Latin America.
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Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. London: Verso, 2002.
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Focusing on the late 19th and early 20th century, Davis examines the confluence of events of weather patterns, US and European capitalist and imperial expansion, and the creation of third-world famine. In this sweeping history, several chapters touch upon Latin America, and the book concludes with an analysis of the Brazilian northeast.
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Dosal, Paul J. Doing Business with the Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala, 1899–1944. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1993.
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A political history of the rise and dominance of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala and its special relationship with that nation’s dictators, particularly Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898–1920) and Jorge Ubico (1931–1944).
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Feder, Ernest. El imperialismo fresa: Una investigación sobre los mecanismos de la dependencia en la argricultura mexicana. México: Nueva Sociologia, 1977.
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A pioneering analysis of export agriculture in Mexico during the late 1960s and early 1970s with a focus on strawberry production. Analyzes the structure of the US strawberry industry and the way it has detrimentally impacted and transformed working and living conditions in Mexico.
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Tucker, Richard P. Insatiable Appetites: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World. Rev. ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.
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Originally published by the University of California Press in 2000, this is a classroom-friendly version that explores the ecological degradation associated with US consumer tastes and the rise of agribusiness. Chapters deal with the social and ecological impact of the US demand for sugar, bananas, coffee, rubber, beef, and wood.
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Pre-Columbian Food in Latin America

Food and society prior to the European conquest of the Americas beginning in 1492 has been the subject of some scholarship in recent years. Until recently, many scholars did not focus beyond the descriptions of precolonial food and cuisine by early Spanish chroniclers. Instead, driven by materialist approaches, scholars focused on the production of some main staple crops but generally spent more time on the colonial period. Archaeologists such as Karl A Taube (Taube 1989) and the authors in White 1999 have spent much more time exploring the symbolic meaning of food than have many historians. Coe 1994 broke new ground with an encyclopedic overview of indigenous foodways. In the process, Coe is able to underscore the deep knowledge systems behind these early foodways. Ortiz de Montellano 1991 demonstrates the fallacies of much of the previous scholarship’s discussion and general assumptions of poor nutritional qualities of indigenous diets. White 1999 brings together several archaeological reconstructions of the ancient Maya diet. These studies help rehabilitate the traditional diets from years of colonial misinterpretation.

Coe, Sophie D. America’s First Cuisines. Austin: University of Texas, 1994.
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An encyclopedic study of indigenous foodways in Latin America prior to the conquest. Based on analysis of post-conquest indigenous writings and archaeological evidence, this study provides an accessible introduction to the various foods and their nutritional and historical qualities.
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Ortiz de Montellano, Bernardo. Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991.
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Examines Aztec heath and nutrition practices and their development during the height of Aztec rule prior to European conquest in 1519. Aims to dismantle the Europeanized myths that are reflected in scholarship about the poor diet and health practices before colonization. Throughout the work there are important discussions of diet and nutrition, demonstrating the varied and well-balanced diets prior to the conquest.
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Taube, Karl A. “The Maize Tamale in Classic Maya Diet, Epigraphy, and Art.” American Antiquity 54.1 (1989): 31–51.
DOI: 10.2307/281330Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the crucial role that maize tamales played in Classic Maya diet and world view through analysis of its various artistic representations, suggesting that tamales were the principal maize product of the Classic Maya.
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White, Christine D., ed. Reconstructing Ancient Maya Diet. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1999.
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Broad range of essays by archaeologists on the levels of complexity of Mayan diets. Using different archaeological processes, studies show the nutritional content and eating patterns of various Mayan communities.
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Colonial Latin America

With the conquest and colonization of the Americas, foodways underwent rapid transformation during the first three centuries of colonization. European desires to supplant indigenous ways of life and diet in the Americas led to the rapid growth of European foodstuffs as Super 1988 and Long 1996 demonstrate. Super 1980 shows that the spread of wheat production grew especially in areas where indigenous populations were less concentrated, such as the Bajio and the Mexican North. Crosby 1972 demonstrates the importance of the conquest on shaping both American foodways and European foodways. Lee 1947 provides an institutional analysis of various mechanisms used by Spanish authorities to regulate grain prices. Florescano 1986 shows how the declining production and rising prices for maize affected working Mexicans in both the countryside and the city, and how Spanish institutions did not work in the manner that they were designed. Saldarriaga 2009 focuses on the chauvinistic European attitudes toward indigenous food in ways that reinforce the binary of civilized versus savage diets. Earle 2010 provides one of the first analyses of European explanations for consuming European foods and trying to avoid indigenous foodways, lending new meaning to the adage “you are what you eat.” Carney 2004 examines the ways that food is used as a symbol of resistance through an analysis of the ways that African women maintained their production and cultivation of rice during the brutal periods of enslavement and colonization.

Carney, Judith. “‘With Grains in Her Hair’: Rice History and Memory in Colonial Brazil.” Slavery and Abolition 25.1 (2004): 1–27.
DOI: 10.1080/0144039042000220900Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Explores the important role of women in transferring rice from Africa to the Americas. Complicating the narrative that scientists and merchants introduced important old-world crops, Carney underscores the importance of local knowledge and popular foodways in maintaining cultural identity. The author draws on a range of sources to introduce complexity to the historical record.
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Crosby, Alfred W. Jr. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972.
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A pioneering study on the impact that Europe’s encounter and subsequent colonial expansion had on the natural and cultural histories of the Americas and Europe. While much of the book’s focus is on the transmission of disease, chapters 3 and 5 demonstrate the impact of food exchange in both Europe and the Americas.
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