First I would like to say how grateful I truly am for this course and for all of you! We all engaged with one another in a variety of ways and it’s such a sign of a great class when full attendance is met! I look forward to seeing you folks again in future classes or out in the real world someday. If ever you want to stop by my brewery for a chat or beer, I am at Luppolo Brewing in Stratchona/East Van. You can reach me at sales@luppolobrewing.ca or on instagram at WizardCrouton.
Second, thank you Jeremiah, Ashley, Claire and Ata for the wonderful conversation on Thursday and for putting together such a stellar lecture on the Mapuche. Prior to this lecture, I was not too familiar with their lifeways or foodways, so I was definitely looking forward to learning more.
I loved our conversation yesterday about merkén. In discussion, we realized you could only really buy it at Whole Foods or on Etsy (of all places). I wish we could have discussed this in class, although we did touch on it a bit with quinoa, about how Indigenous foods are fetishized on the market. Similar to turmeric, merkén is commercialized as this cure all ‘foreign’ elixir-esque fountain of wonder (that’s a lot but accurate). Similarly, we see how turmeric trends in and out. So this connects me to a previous lecture: as we recall from the “Broccoli & Desire” reading, Indigenous peoples surviving on export agriculture mostly rely on the changing and fluctuating Western markets that are based on consumption and popular food culture. Obviously, that involves ingredients like merkén, quinoa, avocados, livestock and water animals. In that sense, I think it’s important to really understand how we each play a role in food and culture exploitation. And that’s a major takeaway for me in this class. I am more mindful of my own practices and I have learned new ways to critique systems of power. I can’t say that I would have really connected colonization to my food practices prior to this class, but I definitely connect it now! More so too because I have been thinking about my family in Puerto Rico. With every reading and conversation we have had in this course, I have found new ways to understand my own history. That’s been the most rewarding thing I think, all the personal connections I have drawn from the class content. There’s nothing I love more than being Boricua, and I being able to do a project on my Taíno ancestors was a privilege and especially important to me because I got to share it all with you.
Hi everyone, welcome to our lecture! My name is Emma and I am joined today with Grey and Roberto. Today, we will be discussing the Taíno people of the Caribbean islands. The Taíno people today have a complex ethnogenesis that involves centuries of encounters and colonization among Indigenous, African, and European cultures. In the lecture that follows, we tease out how these diverse groups came into contact and survive to this day. Along the way, you’ll learn about foodways and agricultural practices that are still evident in Taíno descendants today.
History & Background
The Taíno peoples were the principal inhabitants of the West Indies, and were some of the first people to greet Columbus. However, the Taíno peoples lived throughout the Caribbean islands for generations before the Europeans arrived in 1492. The islands of the West Indies are divided into three parts: The Lesser Antilles, The Greater Antilles and the Bahamian Archipelago. The Lesser Antilles consist of the Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands. The Greater Antilles are composed of islands such as Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. The Bahamian Archipelago consists of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos (Plato 3).
Map of the West Indie Islands (The Greater and Lesser Antilles)
Many researchers agree that before 1492, the population of the Caribbean region was quite large. The islands had a population of approximately 5 to 13 million people, who all had a range of different cultures. Approximately 8 to 10 million Taíno people lived in the Caribbean territories at the time of European contact. Additionally, there were about 1 million of those Taíno people who are believed to have lived in Jamaica (Neeganagwedgin 378). Despite the Taíno peoples still existing today, it is important to note that many aspects of their history are complex and have thus been mainly recorded by Spanish explorers, Columbus, and archaeological information. Therefore, it is not consistently solely documented by the Taíno peoples themselves.
In 1871, ethnologist Daniel Brinton had suggested identifying the Indigenous people located in the West Indies, as “Island-Arawaks”. The Taíno spoke but did not write a type of Arawakan language, therefore he felt this was an appropriate name (Plato 5). Additionally, ethnohistorians have made some assumptions about the origins of the Taínos, stating that the Guanahatabeys were the original people who lived in the Antilles. The ancestors of the Taínos were the next people to inhabit these areas. By calling them Arawaks, ethnohistorians have inferred that they were perhaps a branch of the Arawaks that were originally from the Guianas and Trinidad in the time of Columbus (Plato 24). It is generally agreed that the ancestors of the Taínos most likely rode from the Orinoco River to the Windward Islands. From there, they would have continued through the Leeward Islands and the Greater Antilles into the Bahamian Archipelago, leaving only Guanahatabeys at the western end of Cuba (Plato 24). It is assumed that these events took place quite a long time before 1492, since the Taínos never mentioned or recorded having come from the mainland. Instead, they believed that they had emerged from caves in Hispaniola (Plato 24).
Over time the suggestion of the prefix “Island” from “Island-Arawaks” was dropped for simplicity, but this eventually caused some confusion when discussing the different distinctions between Indigenous groups. As mentioned, during the time of Columbus, Indigenous people who self-identified as Arawaks only lived in the Guianas and in parts of Trinidad; and Columbus never met these individuals (Plato 5). Therefore, archaeologists realized that using the name Arawak (without the Island) had blurred distinctions between South American and West Indigenous people. In response to this blurred understanding of the Arawak and the Taíno, archaeologists decided to adopt the identifying term Taíno for those living in the West Indies; in order to respectively identity the two groups (Keegan and Carlson 11).We can make sense of this decision due to early Spanish explorers who have described that the Indigenous people of the West Indies would use the word Taíno, when greeting them. The word Taíno translates to “good” or “noble”, and this term was frequently used by members to most likely indicate that they were not Island-Caribs (Keegan and Carlson 11). The Taínos probably wanted this clear distinction, since Spanish colonists referred to Island-Caribs as cannibals (Plato 23).
Despite these misrepresentations in the face of colonialism, Spanish records indicate that Taíno was not a collective name that they used. They identified themselves by individual yucayeque (meaning the population and village), and cazicazgo, meaning the control of a particular cacique (otherwise known as a chief) in specific regions (Ciment 823). For example, the islands to the north of Hispaniola were referred to as “Las Islas de Los Lucayos”. The Indigenous people of the Bahama archipelago were called the “Lucayan Taínos” which translated to the “good island people” (Keegan and Carlson 12). These regional distinctions between the Taínos can be further seen in broader terms, using the classification of the Classic Taínos, Eastern Taínos and Western Taínos.
The Classic Taínos lived in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. They believed that they had originally come from caves in a sacred mountain on the island of Hispaniola. They traced their familial ancestry through their mothers, and they lived within a matrilineal system (Plato 16). They were also spiritual people, and they centered their worship on deities, spirits or their ancestors, who were known as Zemis. They had two main deities who they worshipped that were referred to as: Yúcahu, the lord of yuca and the sea; as well as Atabey, his mother, who was the goddess of fresh water and fertility (Plato 13). At the time of the arrival of Columbus in 1492, he encountered permanent villages in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, which were each governed by a chief. Either men or women could take the role of a chief, and they were in charge of the village where they resided. The Taíno’s also had fairly advanced agricultural features, such as constructing fields called conucos with knee-high mounds of soil. In these fields they intercropped yuca, beans, squash, peppers, corn, sweet potatoes, and peanuts (Ciment 823).
Due to limited information about the people who lived immediately to the west and east of the Classic Taínos, much information was gleaned from archeological research. Despite this lack of documentation on Western and Eastern Taínos, they have confirmed the presence of the Western Taínos in Jamaica, central Cuba, and the Bahama Islands. The rest of the Virgin Islands and a majority of the Leeward Islands were inhabited by Eastern Taínos (Plato 17). Their languages were significantly different from region to region, but were mutually intelligible. Furthermore, their agricultural techniques were slightly different from region to region, but Taínos’ spiritual beliefs and practices appear to have been relatively similar (Ciment 823). The Western Taínos are said to have been more peaceful than the Classic and Eastern Taínos. This is most likely due to them only living bordered by the Classic Taínos and the Guanahatabeys, who did not show any aggressiveness towards them (Plato 19). This non-hostile attitude worked in Columbus’ favour after his voyage through the Bahamas to central Cuba. The Western Taínos were hospitable and assisted them in recuperating from their voyage (Plato 19). In comparison, the Eastern Taínos were more hostile because they had to defend themselves from the South Island-Carib raids. Therefore, it was a natural reaction for them to react negatively towards Columbus when he encountered them during his second voyage (Plato 19).
Columbus was notorious for his colonization of Indigenous land, and the Taíno cultural development was abruptly stopped with the arrival of Columbus and the Spaniards. Since the Taínos were the first people of the Western Hemisphere to come into contact with Europeans, they played a major role in what is referred to as the Columbian exchange. This was where the Spaniards and these Indigenous groups traded diseases, crops, artifacts, customs, and ideas (Plato 24). Additionally, Columbus gave new names to many of the places he landed. For example, the Lucayan Islanders called the island where Columbus first landed Guanahaní, but Columbus called it San Salvador (which translates to “Holy Savior”). Furthermore, Columbus asserted that the Indigenous peoples owed allegiance to the Spanish monarchs (Keegan and Carlson 10). Disease combined with the exploitation of labour, goods and resources, caused a drastic decline in the Taíno population. By 1524 they were deemed to no longer exist as a separate population group (Keegan and Carlson 14). However, the Taíno people still continue to exist. There is still a community of Taíno people, and a huge push for the reclamation of their cultural background and identities. It is extremely important to recognize that these people have not been completely lost to the violence of colonization.
Globalization
In the first lecture of the semester, Tamara defined globalization as “the increasing interconnectedness among peoples and communities across the globe”. Furthermore, scholars often mark the arrival of Europeans to the Americas as the beginning of globalization. However, the Taínos provide a convincing example of how globalization pre-existed their conquest, as evidenced by their movement and encounters in the region. The Taínos are believed to have lived in South America (Rouse 27). The Taínos are thought to have migrated towards northern South America, where they encountered the Kalinagos, who lived between the Amazon and Guiana (Rouse 27). These two groups fought for land rights that eventually resulted in the Taínos occupying most of the northwestern portion of the continent. In addition, once the Taínos arrived in Trinidad, they fought the Kalinagos, resulting in them occupying all but the northwestern part of that island, which the Kalinagos continued to occupy (Rouse 27). The Taínos also moved up to Florida, Hispaniola, Cuba, as well as other islands within the Caribbean (Rouse 27). The Taínos developed their distinctive culture within Hispaniola before the arrival of the Spanish (Granberry 130). In a reflection of globalization, the Taínos interacted with Ciguayo and Macroix peoples who lived on the island, which resulted in a hybrid ethnogenesis of present-day Taíno peoples, with roots in both South America as well as from other indigenous groups in Hispaniola (Rouse 27). The Taíno newcomers within Hispaniola did not oppress the other indigenous inhabitants on the island, allowing them to continue to express their cultural customs, however the Taínos became the ruling class (Granberry 130).
Within the Taínos social class structures, there were three different ruling titles. The great lords or Matuheri were the highest on the social pyramid within the Taíno population, and were the rulers of the five Taíno kingdoms (Granberry 133). The second highest were the Bahari, or the lesser lords, who ruled the subkingdoms of the provinces that were divided amongst each kingdom (Granberry 133). The last on the ruling pyramid was the caciques, or gentlemen who filled lower roles within kingdoms and provinces (Granberry 133). Furthermore, women had a significant role within the Taíno kingdoms. Certain types of property, Duhos or ceremonial goods, and tools were inherited only by the female line (Deagan 600). In addition, the line of successions within the Taíno kingdom went from a male leader to his sister’s son, rather than his own son (Deagan 600). Upon the arrival of the Spanish, one of the Taíno kings was executed, and as result, his wife, Anacaona, took over as the monarch (Stoneking 5). This demonstrated a change in social structures amongst the Taínos due to globalization, as normally the King’s sister’s son would be the next in line to the throne.
Image of a Taíno duho, meaning ceremonial good
Spanish arrival as an element of globalization also had effects on Taíno autonomy. After relentless fighting for over five years, the Spanish established the encomienda (Deagan 602). As a result, Taíno men had to work for the Spaniards in exchange for (forced) instruction in Christianity and civilization. The Taínos spent from four to six months in service to the Spanish and the remainder of the year in their villages. This was also an opportunity for disease to spread between Spaniards and the Taínos which led to many indigenous people passing away (Deagan 602). Also, Taínos worked many hours in mines searching for gold for the Spaniards, which were dark, dirty and unsafe (Stoneking 18). As a result, many Taíno died from this labour (Stoneking 18).
The Taíno economy was based on root crops and wild resources. Crops that they cultivated were, for instance, corn, beans, and squash (Stoneking 12). Cultivating and gathering manioc roots were not the tasks of a specific gender. However, the clearing of fields and the preparation of conucos—the raised mounds in which manioc was planted—are assumed to have been done by men (Deagan 601). Once the conucos were constructed, manioc cultivation required periodic planting, weeding, and harvesting, all tasks that both men and women carried out (Deagan 601). Furthermore, the Taínos played a significant role in the exchange of these foods, especially to tropical peoples of the Eastern Hemisphere (Rouse 170). Also, both men and women cultivated wild resources, for instance, through fishing (Deagan 601). However, upon the arrival of the Spanish, more Taíno men fought the colonizers and were killed. This led to more and more activities being done predominately by women in the Taíno culture (Deagan 601). Also, the Spanish were able to cultivate the corn from the Taínos and send it to Spain (Stoneking 170). In addition, the Spaniards admired the quality and artistry of Taíno canoes (canoa) and their weaving of cotton into hammocks (Rouse 170). As a result, the Spanish added both of these items to their inventory and sent them to other parts of the world. Furthermore, the Spanish, who used Taínos as forced labour, also used them for the cultivation of conucos (Stoneking 17). Taínos worked six hours a day for one month planting conucos that would provide bread for Spaniards for two years (Stoneking 17). Furthermore, tobacco and rubber from the Taínos was also part of the Columbian exchange (Rouse 170).
Example of a conuco
Through globalization, Taíno foodways were destroyed in part by animals brought from Spain. The lack of fencing allowed for animals brought by the Spaniards to roam free around Caribbean islands (Stoneking 17). These animals ate food, including the crops cultivated in the conucos, which were the main subsistence crops for the Taínos. This furthered the Taínos problems with food scarcity following the arrival of the Spanish (Stoneking 17). As a result, with these persistent food problems due to invasive animal species, coupled with the disease the Spanish brought, and the food that the Spanish had already taken from them, a large portion of the Taíno population were unable to survive (Stoneking 17).
Yuca, First Foods & Areytos
Cooking and the consumption of food were important components in a Taíno society. Food offerings were central to ceremonies honoring their cemís, which were spiritual guardians or gods, and the process of eating had great meaning, especially when hosting a visitor. For instance, as a presentation of power, the cacique would occasionally eat first although normally the cacique would eat meals along with their community members (Lefebvre 76-7).
The Taíno peoples also hosted festivals with song and dance called areytos. The songs narrated and honoured the heroic deeds of their ancestors and acted as an oral telling of their history. These ceremonies were also performed to celebrate a good harvest and to observe the first moon cycle for young women (Castanha 25). These performances included the entire community and lasted several hours to several days until the storyteller or lyricist told their full history. Because the Taíno peoples did not have a written language, oral communication was vital in the transfer of Indigenous knowledge and histories. While the areytos died along with a lot of Taíno cultural knowledge, today there is a revitalization of this symbolic performance in the Borikén and Taíno identity movement.
(El Grupo Concilio Taíno performing an areyto at the 2011 International Book Fair in Puerto Rico)
Taínos were skilled agriculturists who practiced ‘slash-and-burn’ horticulture. This involved clearing plots of land that contained trees and bushes, allowing these to dry, then burning the soil and brush just before a rainy season to release nutrients. Using a coa, or digging stick, the tough, clay-like soil was broken to cultivate crops. After about four years of harvests, the fields would usually lay fallow for decades (Keegan 72).
The Taíno diet consisted of more than eighty different cultivated plants and vegetables including beans, gourds, corn, palm fruits, groundnuts, yautia, cocoyam, boniata (sweet potato) and most importantly, yuca, also known as manioc or cassava. For this lecture, we refer to manioc as yuca. Yuca is extremely drought resistant, has a high caloric content and can be stored underground for long periods of time, often only harvested when needed.
As we learned in our studies of the Garifuna peoples, yuca required a strenuous production due to the poisonous hydrocyanic acid found in the root. The process involves peeling the skin and grating the flesh on a guayo, a grater made of wood. The grated shreds are placed in a basket to release all the poisonous juices. The paste is then dried into a flour and cooked on a clay griddle, or burén, to make yuca bread or casabi. The burén was made of red loam and burnt conch shells (Keegan 4).
Casabi Bread cooked on a burén
After boiling out the poison in the leftover yuca juice, it was used in their main dish, casiripe, or Pepper Pot Stew. This dish most often includes meat, fish and vegetables on the verge of spoiling and is served with casabi. After the colonization of the Taíno people, the Spanish recognized the stability of casabi bread and it became a staple food on long voyages throughout the Americas. Casabi also became a common tribute item from the Taíno people to the Spanish (Keegan 76). Speaking of the Spanish, oral history states that the Taínos fed them the fruit of the prickly pear cactus, or tuna, which turns urine red when consumed in an effort to scare them and discourage their invasion to little avail (Keegan 70).
According to Taíno oral mythology, Yúcahu (son of Atabey, the supreme goddess) was the god of yuca, agriculture, goodness and male fertility. It is believed that Yúcahu created the sun and moon and brought yuca to the Taíno people. In return, he is worshipped with triangular stone carvings buried at the start of harvest and hurricane seasons in the soil. The triangular stones represent an open mouth that eats the soil, allowing crops to grow underground (Keegan 73). Today, it is believed Yúcahu lives in the Puerto Rican national park, El Yunque (one of the most beautiful places in the world). Taínos had an extensive relationship with different gods and deities that each
represented different phases of life: Maboyas, the Lord of the Dead ruled the underworld; Guabancex controlled the winds and demanded respect; and Jurakán, the storm god, who unleashed his powers when Guabancex was not respected. Does Jurakán sound familiar? The word hurricane stems from the warrior’s name in Indigenous mythology and represents Guabancex’s wrath. The Taínos believed that worshipping these gods with offerings would protect them from illness, hurricanes and misfortunes (Keegan 6).
While plant foods dominated the Taíno diet, land and sea creatures were also eaten with a major part of the protein coming from their proximity to the coast. Marine habitats provided several ecologically diverse areas to exploit animals on the island. Fish was established as a daily fixture including snapper, grunts, jacks, parrotfish, and bonefish (Lefebvre 59). Other land mammals were eaten as well including lizards, rodents, guinea pigs and spiny rats known as hutia (Lefebvre 61).
Espiritismo
Taíno cemí idol
The practice of Espiritismo is essential to the revitalization of Indigenous practices in the Caribbean. It is a product of the synthesis of polytheism and Catholicism from the encomienda systems of colonized Caribbean peoples. Espiritismo is a term that refers to the sacred beliefs that link the spiritual world, the physical world and the ancestral world together. Cemís are familial guardians (or gods) with spiritual significance that are honoured with tokens made out of wood and stone. These tokens are used to invoke the spirits of the cemís in times of need during the cohoba, a native plant ceremony. Similar to the Ayahuasca Shaman ceremony, cohoba is inhaled by a medicinal healer or curandero, and used to heal the sick, assist in childbirth, bring on a bountiful harvest and make prophecies for the future (Castanha 110). Today, Espiritismo is practiced among the Taíno and Borikén diaspora in the United States and abroad. The tradition includes the setting of the mesa blanca or white table. The table is covered with candles, idols, offerings, books, and other symbolic objects where a group of people can gather around it and communicate with their ancestors or connect themselves to the spiritual world.
The ‘Revival’ of the Taínos ofBorikén
The Taíno peoples of Borikén (a Taíno name for present day Puerto Rico) are very much alive and thriving. The sixteenth-century extinction theory during Western Imperialism invalidates the existence of Taíno communities and their descendants. While the violence endured during the colonization of the Caribbean Islands did lead to their genocide, Indigenous communities maintained a presence especially in Borikén. After the Indian war of 1511, many people escaped to the interior mountains of the island and remained there until Puerto Rico was colonized in the mid-nineteenth century (Castanha 23). Today, there is a global Indigenous movement aiming to reconnect Indigenous peoples with their cultural backgrounds and identities to revitalize their traditional lifeways especially in Puerto Rico (Castanha 18). More importantly, this movement is about reclaiming a rightful place in history and advocating for self-determination. Scholar Jose Barreiro said it best that Indigenous movements “have become a defining social actor, either in government or in opposition, so that the voices of the original inhabitants can no longer be ignored” (Neeganagwedgin 384).
According to a 2014 U.S. census, there are over 30,000 Indigenous Taíno people living in the United States and Puerto Rico. A Borikén Taíno community leader and President of the United Confederation of Taíno People, Roberto Múkaro Borrero, advocates for the self-determination of Taíno peoples, “this is about the right to affirm who we are as Indigenous peoples, the original nations of these lands. Our right to self-determination is an inherent human right” (LaRobardier). Borrero calls the erasure of Taíno identity from the 1800 census of Puerto Rico a ‘paper genocide.’ The Spanish implemented a ‘Puerto Rican’ identity as a mixture of African and Spaniard heritage effectively eliminating the Indigenous presence (Castanha 16). This concept of ‘cultural mestizaje’ attempted to erase a colonized history with a movement towards a homogenous white society. This also removed the Taíno claim to ancestral land (Parker). Currently, the Indigenous peoples of Borikén are still struggling to maintain autonomy under the current neocolonial system. The Indigenous movement maintains their continuity by resisting and challenging imperialism to fight for their rightful place in history.
On the topic of reclaiming a Taíno identity, a major part of that process involves the decolonization of the Caribbean diet. Researchers Vanessa García Polanco and Luis Alexis Rodríguez-Cruz consider the term ‘resurgent indigeneity’ important in relation to Taíno reclamation of their food culture:
What it means to “be” or “become” Indigenous for a people who are not typically seen, or who are no longer accepted, as Indigenous. To do this, [they are] investigating Indigenous consciousness among Antillean Latinos, particularly among Puerto Ricans who are recovering an Indigenous Taíno heritage, reclaiming Taíno identity, and reconstituting Taíno community (26).
The Taíno diet evolved over time especially after colonization and the start of the African slave trade. Eating patterns were shaped by the agriculture trade and, over time, staple Taíno foods, like casabi bread and iguanas, were no longer as significant. In order to revitalize the Taíno diet, Polanco and Rodríguez-Cruz conclude that it is difficult to decolonize an Indigenous foodway when an Indigenous people is still colonized. But incorporating traditional foods and agricultural relationships is essential to the continuity of the Taíno peoples. That can be achieved in many ways including supporting local agriculture, recovering and reclaiming traditional knowledge and foodways, and understanding how food intersects with gender, class and socio-economic position (27-9).
my papa, mama, mom and Titi Evelyn at a beach in Ponce, PR
My sister, named Taina, and my mom!
A final note from Grey, my ancestors are Taíno. They are buried in the land that my family in Puerto Rico walks on and are connected to our spirits. Our histories have been greatly minimized but if there is one thing that’s for sure, Boricuas are resilient and will weather any storm. I want to share with you folks a few excerpts from a comic book, Puerto Rico Strong, which is a comic anthology supporting Puerto Rico disaster relief and recovery after Hurricane María. I am so proud to be Boricua, I could probably go on for hours about our histories and cultures but instead, I encourage you to check this book out, as it includes honest insight on the devastation of the hurricanes on Puerto Rico, the diaspora, and the resilience of Taínos.
Puerto Rico Strong
Madre De Dios by Daniel Irizarri Oquendo
Areytos by Vita Ayala and Jamie Jones
Gods of Boriken by Sabrina Cintron
Yucahu and the Creation of the First Man by Little Corvus
A Taino’s tale by Alejandro Rosado and Shariff Musallam
Taino Online, Joamette Gil
Taino Online, Joamette Gil
I also want to share with you a family recipe for Sancocho. As I mentioned before, Pepper Pot Stew was a common Taíno dish that used various proteins and vegetables, including yuca. Sancocho (spanish for pig slop) is said to have been derived from Pepper Pot Stew, evolving over many generations as a hodge-podge soup.For Puerto Ricans, Sancocho is the mother soup. It can be made with whatever meat or veg, similar to Pepper Pot Stew, and it is eaten to cure the soul. My mama’s (grandmother) recipe, or rather the recipe of her mama, is incredible. It’s the first thing I crave when I visit home. I have modified the recipe to include ingredients you can actually find in Vancouver. Hope you enjoy it!
Sofrito Recipe
Sancocho Recipe
Podcast Works Cited and Consulted Official
Castanha, Tony. The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction: Continuity and Reclamation in Borikén (Puerto Rico). Palgrave Macmillan US, New York, 2010.
Ciment, James. Colonial America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History. Taylor and Francis, 2016, doi:10.4324/9781315705545.
Deagan, Kathleen. “Reconsidering Taíno Social Dynamics after Spanish Conquest: Gender and Class in Culture Contact Studies.” American Antiquity, vol. 69, no. 4, 2004, pp. 597–626. Crossref, doi:10.2307/4128440.
Granberry, Julian. The Americas That Might Have Been: Native American Social Systems through Time. 2nd ed., University Alabama Press, 2005.
Keegan, William F., Lisabeth A. Carlson, and Project Muse University Press Archival eBooks. Talking Taino: Essays on Caribbean Natural History from a Native Perspective. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2008.
LaRobardier, Valerie. “’Written out of History,’ Taino Write Themselves In.” Poughkeepsie Journal, Poughkeepsie, 21 May 2016, www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/local/2016/05/21/local-history-schaghticoke/84711390/.
Lefebvre, Michelle J. “Animals, Food, and Social Life among the Pre-Columbian Taino of En Bas Saline, Hispaniola.” Order No. 10646400 University of Florida, 2015. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 1 Nov. 2020.
Lopez, Marco, Desiree Rodriguez, Hazel Newlevant, Derek Ruiz, and Neil Schwartz. Puerto Rico Strong: A Comics Anthology Supporting Puerto Rico Disaster Relief and Recovery. , 2018.
Neeganagwedgin, Erica. “Rooted in the Land: Taino Identity, Oral History and Stories of Reclamation in Contemporary Contexts.” AlterNative : An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, vol. 11, no. 4, 2015, pp. 376-388.
Parker, Courtney. “Taino Rising.” Intercontinental Cry, 3 Aug. 2018, intercontinentalcry.org/taino-rising/. Accessed 25 Nov 2020.
Polanco, Vanessa G., and Luis Rodríguez-Cruz. “Decolonizing the Caribbean Diet.” Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, vol. 9, no. B, 2019.
Rouse, I. The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus. Reissue, Yale University Press, 1983.
Stoneking, Cain. “The Decline of the Tainos, 1492-1542: A Re-Vision.” 1492-1542: A Re-Vision, 2009, pp. 1–22, digitalcommons.wou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1222&context=his.
Wallace, E. Bert. “Certain Kinds of Dances Used among Them: An Initial Inquiry into Colonial Spanish Encounters with the Areytos of the Taíno in Puerto Rico.” Theatre Symposium, vol. 25, 2017, p. 29-36. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/tsy.2017.0002
The Quechua, another Indigenous group we could spend a whole semester on! I really enjoyed this week’s readings, especially the “Commons Against and Beyond Capitalism” because it introduced a new concept for me, the commons, and confused me enough to research this idea further to better wrap my head around it. My biggest take away in this reading is that shared spaces include a shared knowledge that requires a community to maintain (and build) that knowledge. I look forward to our class discussion about this reading to see what you folks think about this concept as well.
Something that’s been ruminating around in my head during this course is the use of the cooking pot. There are obvious uses for it – cooking, washing clothes, means of commerce etc. But what stands out to me to most, especially this week, is how the cooking pot has become a weapon of the resistance. Globalization, neoliberalism, social reform, class rights and fights for equality all intersect with Indigenous peoples’ foodways. I guess that’s sort of the point in this class, right? How to widen our perspective when studying Latin America to include the variety of ways Indigenous experiences has evolved over time. Take for instance, the community fighting for their water in the film “Hija de la Laguna”. The lake is their waterway and, in some ways, their last connection to the survival of their histories. What I mean to say is that as extractive industries continue to impede on their ancestral land, their ability to survive and maintain the same lifeways of their ancestors is threatened. That is, in essence, the point of the film. The family structure is broken, their self-sufficiency is diminished and they are forced into a battle for human rights against a machine of lawyers and bulldozers.
So, what about the cooking pot?
In the film, the community rallies together around the lake to protect it from being mined. Upon their arrival, they set up camp with a makeshift kitchen to feed their community through the protest. The protestors knew the police would come attack their food line first so they maintained a protective circle around it to resist the police’s efforts to destroy it. This stood out to me because this police tactic theoretically agrees that sustenance is vital to the community which is ironic because they want to take away the most essential part of their lives, their waterway.
In “Commons Against and Beyond Capitalism” we learn about how women defend nature’s commons and stand against the destruction of the environment in grassroots movements. Women set up comedores populares in their neighborhoods to help feed the community and women brought their cooking pots to the piquetes, to protest and ensure the roadblocks are held. This is also a specific form of protest that dates back to medieval times. The cacerolazo movement of banging pots and pans has taken shape as an international symbol of solidarity. In Chile, pots and pans were used to bring attention to the shortage of food in 1971 and in support of the student protest in 2011. In 2001, Argentines took to the street to protest the economic crisis, corrupt leadership and the brutal violence occurring daily. And in 2019, Puerto Rico came in full force, my aunt included, and called for the removal corrupt Governor Ricardo Rosselló by banging pots and singing for over 15 days outside his mansion. These are just a few examples of how cooking pots are being used, still, to symbolize decades (or better centuries) of inequalities piled on the marginalized and Indigenous communities in Latin America. The noise generated from the pots unifies the community and reinforces their message, they can never be silenced even if the officials won’t hear their voices.
As we wrap up this course, I look forward to hearing your connection with the cooking pot and what it symbolizes for the Indigenous group you studied or better yet, what it means to you.
I will leave you here with some videos of cacerolazo demonstrations and a song by Ana Tijoux, appropriately titled, Cacerolazo. This song was written in response to over 30 years of violences towards the Chileans and Indigenous communities and is set to the sounds of banging pots and pans.
LYRICS
Banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging on pots and pans
banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging
Who else is awake?
Renounce Piñera
in the street
La Moneda is ours
Wooden spoon
in front of your bullets
and curfew
Banging on pots and pans!
They aren’t thirty pesos
they are thirty years
the Constitution
and you pardon them.
With fist and spoon
in front of the machine
and all of the State
Banging on pots and pans!
Listen, neighbor
to the neighbor and the barricade
of gasoline
With lid, with pot
in front of the clowns
the revolt arrived
and the banging on pots and pans
Banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging on pots and pans
banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging
Camilo Catrillanca
Macarena Valdés
No more pensions
Under the Trans Pacific Partnership
For education
and for health
neither the reason nor the force
No more servitude
Banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging on pots and pans
banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging
Listening from afar
the pans
and the pots ring
it is that we are not satisfied
We put the spoons
in front of the water cannon
We are not afraid
Banging on pots and pans!
We are not at war
we are alert
alive and kicking, handsome
Chile is awake
Wooden spoon
in front of your bullets
and curfew
banging on pots and pans
We are not aliens
nor extraterrestrials
Not a joke or nothing
It is the rebellious people
We take the jewels
and you didn’t kill
the assassins
Banging on pots and pans!
Banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging, banging, banging on pots and pans
banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging
(voice on telephone) As they say, what’s coming is alien…what’s coming is…
A-sass-in
We didn’t take so much
except for fear
Aim, shoot
assassin of the people
If there is not justice
there is not peace for the government
Now you tell me
who is the violent one
(voice on telephone) The most important thing is…as they say..the most important thing is to keep our cool…keep our cool…keep very very cool
No keeping cool
head is banging
no keeping cool
head is banging
no keeping cool
head is banging
Revolt, revolt
Banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
banging-banging-banging on pots and pans
banging on pots and pans, banging on pots and pans
I thought with our rushed conversation towards the end of class yesterday that I could add a bit more of my own insight to the US and Mexico relationship with Maize. I wrote a paper on the topic a month before NAFTA became USMCA in 2018. Its short and not super thorough but a good quick read for folks who want a quick context of how neoliberal free markets resulted in food insecurity for Mexico.
The sources used for this are also good context points for further research especially Duncan Green.
-Grey
side note: this was my first paper after 10 years off from college haha so some of the terms used are not the best.
Loss of Security:
The Impacts of NAFTA on The Mexican People
On January 1st, 1994 the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed into action. Hidden between the lines of this monumental document were the lives of the Mexican people who stood to suffer the most for lack of representation. More important than their labour, equality or human rights were the interests of transnational corporations. During the years 1982 to 1993, Mexico saw a decline in economic growth and job creation as a result of neoliberal policies such as reducing the role of state and depreciating the currency. This led to Mexico joining the negotiations of NAFTA. Pressure from the United States combined with their use of neoliberal policies such as privatization, trade liberalization of commodities, and devaluing currency influenced the Mexican government to succumb to unequal regulations that would impact Mexican people the most. As they had already witnessed how neoliberalism caused a decline in the economy previously, many of the Mexican people did not support such a trade agreement (Nápoles 76). After the signing of NAFTA, labour regulations changed dramatically forcing many families to work in the mostly foreign owned maquiladoras or in the informal sector. Additionally, the import liberalization on important commodities, specifically maize, jeopardized food security and accessibility. Because of neoliberal policies advanced within NAFTA, Mexico entered a social crisis resulting in negative impacts on food and job security.
The signing of NAFTA promised an economic boom with a focus on a free market, more exports and mutual interest in international trade. The trade agreement aligned Mexico, Canada and the United States in order to establish a stronger America. Unfortunately for Mexico, NAFTA is plagued with political and economic inequality. According to author Duncan Green in his book Silent Revolution, “the disparities within NAFTA are stark. The U.S. economy is almost twenty-five times larger than Mexico’s and the social and developmental gulf is arguably even wider” (143). This fact illustrates the unequal playing field between Mexico and the United States. Richer market economies, like the U.S., can afford fluctuating market prices while poorer countries suffer in comparison. Smaller economies focus on a few commodities and stand to lose the most if that commodity is liberalized. The ideology of neoliberalism obscures the inequities and hardships experienced by Mexico. As Duncan outlines, “neoliberals argue that liberalizing imports improves economic efficiency and benefits everyone. Local factories can import the best available machinery and other inputs to improve productivity, while consumers can shop around, rather than be forced to buy shoddy home-produced goods” (Duncan, “Silent” 135). While theoretically plausible, in practice it often offers an unfair playing field by flooding the market with cheap imports that undercut local economies. For Mexico, maize is such a commodity.
Traditionally, Mexico was the largest producer of maize with a long history of domestication and cultivation expending thousands of years. In the early 1990s, maize production in Mexico employed roughly three million people accounting for the livelihood of over 18 million people (Nadal and Wise 4). Additionally, maize is an important and basic food staple for the Mexican people. The liberalization of maize pinned Mexico against the U.S. in the fight to be the lead agro-exporter. Mexico unfortunately lost ground in the agricultural sector as maize no longer succeeded in out-producing U.S. in prices. Maize was included late in the negotiations of NAFTA, as concern grew heavy for Mexico to liberalize one of their primary crops. The settled agreement offered a 15-year phase in period for gradually increasing exports while gradually decreasing trade tariffs (Nadal and Wise 5). The goal was to allow a slow transition period for Mexico to introduce competition into the market they dominated while not crippling their export dependency. Unfortunately for the farmers of Mexico, the Mexican government declined this agreement within thirty months claiming production shortfalls and outside pressures including other government institutions and grain processors within the United States and Mexico (Duncan, “Silent” 147). Beginning in 1996, U.S. exports of maize to Mexico increased dramatically, tripling in quantity from 1.6 million tons pre-NAFTA to 6.3 million tons post-NAFTA (Nadal and Wise 5). Also, prices had fallen by 48 percent that same year (Duncan, “Silent” 147). Mexico began to depend on cheaper U.S. maize for consumption with imports rising from 8.9% to 21.3% after NAFTA (Nadal and Wise 6). Additionally, the quality of U.S. yellow maize was inferior to Mexican white maize as most of the U.S. crop was genetically modified. This led to a dependency on cheaper, less nutritional food causing a severe devaluation of food security. In addition to the impact on food security, the hike in exports to Mexico caused severe environmental damage, which included “agrochemical impacts resulting from fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides; introduction of genetically modified organisms; soil erosion; and biodiversity” (Nadal and Wise 8).
Mexican farmers were hit the most by other adjustment measures like cut state subsidies, and the abolition of state purchasing and supply agencies (Duncan, “Silent” 147). The fall in prices and exports for the Mexican maize farmers did not lead to a decline in maize production however. Many small farmers continued to cultivate their crop through the unbalanced market but had to make adjustments to their daily lives. Most farmers were no longer able to turn a large profit but were able to make ends meet by supplementing their income. Farmers’ family members, mostly women and children, were sent to work in the labor-intensive maquiladoras, while the rest joined the informal sector selling goods on the street or offering services (Duncan, “Silent” 159). Many farmers even sent their family members to the United States leading to an increased dependency on emigration (Nápoles 76). In 1995, over 400,000 Mexicans crossed the border into the United States for better opportunities (Nápoles 85). While many of the farmers survived the change of market, the adjustments made were instrumental to the destruction of their family structure and offered no long-term solutions. Women were forced to work multiple jobs with long hours which impacted their community and home life, while many men turned to alcohol, drugs and violence in the wake of lost jobs and wages (Duncan, “Face” 87-9). Self-sufficiency in the agricultural development of maize became scarce as a sole income generator for a family and access to food decreased as costs went up. According to author Gerardo Otero, “the invasion of U.S. grain has led to the bankruptcy of a huge number of Mexican peasants, whereas the increase in vegetables and fruit exports from Mexico has not been enough to generate employment for peasants that became redundant” (391). Most importantly, because of the liberalization of maize, the cost of tortillas, a staple food item typically eaten at every meal, increased in price for local consumption. Consequently, the liberalization of maize simultaneously impacted Mexican farmers in multiple ways; it contributed to malnutrition, family breakdown and exploitation of labour.
Another crucial impact to the Mexican people that jeopardized their security was the introduction of foreign interest into the labour-intensive industrial market that shaped policies to favour international interest over Mexico’s interest. One key change as a result of NAFTA’s loosening labour regulations was the rise of maquiladoras along the Mexican border. With the new lax labour, safety, and environmental laws, foreign companies flocked to Mexico to set up shop with their offer of abundant cheap labour. According to Green, “locking in neoliberal reforms via NAFTA makes Mexico a far safer prospect for foreign investors deciding where to locate their factories” (Green, “Silent” 146). Transnational companies built factories within the free trade zone for cheap products and paid no duty on imported parts, most of which were exported back to the United States free from taxes. When prices got too high, these foreign direct investors would relocate to countries with cheaper labour. According to Green “the 40 percent devaluation of the Mexican peso in early 1995 provided another boom for the maquiladoras” (“Silent” 129). Optimistically, the influx of foreign investment yielded more jobs for the impoverished Mexican people as employment grew by 3.7 percent per year during the 1990s as exports increased. Though the increase in jobs offered many unemployed Mexicans a chance at generating wages, they were misled into the quality of their work assignments and the promise of job security faded (Green, “Silent” 131).
As the fall in wages attracted foreign investors, the livelihood of the Mexican workers in the maquiladoras was dramatically impacted. As presented in the film ‘Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos’ the treatment of the workers in Mexican maquiladoras violated basic human rights. They were treated poorly, harassed by supervisors, not offered proper security to work efficiently without injury, and women were subject to inappropriate pregnancy checks. In Faces of Latin America Green adds that women are most impacted by these conditions as they are met with conflict and violence. Women, mostly aged 16-25, are more likely to work in such conditions in an attempt to provide for their family (Moffatt 19). Journalist Allison Moffatt also writes, “the factories share high standards for quality and low standards for the treatment of employees” (19). The employers of the factories take advantage of the women by only offering part-time work for lower wages; further, they were not offered labour contracts, which increased the instability of their family structure (“Faces” 53). Women workers were also terrorized by their male supervisors who verbally abused them, restricted bathroom breaks and assaulted them while commuting to work as recounted in ‘Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos’. In Cuidad Juarez, a city riddled with maquiladoras, there have been hundreds of murders inflicted on the women working in this industry since the 1990s (Moffatt 20). These are just a few accounts of the horrific treatment Mexican people are met with while working under the umbrella of NAFTA. These companies operated under the guise of NAFTA with no global monitoring of their violations to the Mexican people. The workers are victimized yet have no other options but to endure such treatment as their families and job security are at risk.
The impact of globalization and promise of free trade continues to exploit the lands and people of Mexico. While NAFTA was promoted on a platform of economic boosts and equality between nations, Mexico was dealt a blow to their self-sufficiency and labour sovereignty. The issues surrounding the liberalization of maize and the rise of maquiladoras are two examples that illustrate the social, economic and political harms of NAFTA and the spread of neoliberalism. Nearly 25 years later, the same neoliberal tactics are still being used to victimize smaller economies and markets across Latin America. Mexico has continued to suffer at the hands of foreign companies who were invited into their lands. The social debt built on the backs of underrepresented Mexicans, largely indigenous, requires reparations into the damage left because of NAFTA. Like most issues involving Latin American, it is complicated.
Works Cited
Green, Duncan. Silent Revolution: The Rise and Crisis of Market Economics in Latin
America. 2nd ed., Monthly Review Press, 2003
Green, Duncan. Faces of Latin America. 4th ed., Monthly Review Press, 2013.
Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos. Directed by Saul Landau and Sonia Angulo, United
States, 2003
Moffatt, Allison. “Murder, Mystery and Mistreatment in Mexican Maquiladoras: It Is
Never Too Late to Make a Difference.” Women & Environments International Magazine, no. 66–67, 2005, p. 19. EBSCOhost,login.ezproxy.langara.bc.ca/
Nadal, Alejandro and Timothy A. Wise. “The Environmental Costs of Agricultural
Trade Liberalization: Mexico-U.S. Maize Trade Under NAFTA.” Working Group on Development and Environment in the Americas. June 2004. https://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/DP04NadalWiseJuly04.pdf. Accessed 4 Nov. 2018
Nápoles, Pablo Ruiz. “Neoliberal Reforms and Nafta in Mexico.” Economía UNAM,
Vol. 14, May 2017, pp. 75–89. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.eunam.2017.06.004.
Otero, Gerardo. “Neoliberal Globalization, NAFTA, and Migration: Mexico’s Loss of
Food and Labour Sovereignty.” Journal of Poverty, 15:4, pp. 384-402. JSTOR,
“Seeds carry a lot of knowledge…” Chef Enrique Olvera
This quote by Chef Olvera is the underline theme of this entire class. Each unit we dive into a new Indigenous community and learn about their foods and traditions. What connects each group, and often includes shared experiences, is that food holds traditional knowledge and keeps Indigenous communities connected to their ancestors. In the last unit we learned how the Garinagu people hid cassava plants in their clothing as they were being forcibly displaced from their ancestral land. By doing so, they maintained their traditional foodways for future generations and continued their cultural dependency on cassava.
In Mexico, maize is that essential food. Maize is a mother seed. It serves as the center of subsistence and commerce. It is eaten in a variety of ways, and the production of maize plays an important role in the lives of Mayan communities, past and present. Maize is medicine and used for textiles. Additionally, it holds religious and symbolic value. The stories of Indigenous communities in present-day Mexico unfold in the husks and kernels of the thousands of varieties of corn.
Over the last decades, and entirely due to NAFTA, the production and dependability on maize has challenged the livelihood of Indigenous communities and marginalized communities in Mexico who depend on maize for survival. Because of the global production of corn, the US has stolen the market and flooded it with GMO corn. Due to the US’s control of the price and distribution of corn, yellow corn is cheaper to import to Mexico than it is to produce using domestic farms and growers of white corn. This is an oversimplified summary of how neoliberalism and globalization has impacted the Indigenous foodways of Indigenous communities but it speaks volumes to the weight of free markets. The fact that the ancestral crop that took thousands of years to cultivate and domesticate in Mexico is no longer the key producer of this crop is so wild and quite frankly, brutal. Further, corn goes from a variety crop to a monocrop in less than 30 years pushing it into possible extinction as we juggle climate change and environmental shifts.
As I take a step back and return to Chef Olvera, I think the most important thing about this particular episode of Chef’s Table is community. Chef Olvera gives nod to his upbringing, the taco vendors in Mexico City who make the best tacos, and he gives attention to the traditional agricultural practices being used. From the cultivation of agave to the use of molcajete and the foods eaten in the harshest of times, Chef Olvera does not stray from his true identity and purpose behind his restaurant: using seeds of experience to frame his dishes.
Lastly, I imagine visiting the Maya Garden at UBC would have been a part of our in-class learning. It makes me super sad to think we might miss out on sharing time with the families cultivating this garden. Hopefully, we can all meet again soon or have a distant visit to the garden later in the term if it’s not too much trouble for the community there. I did not know this garden was a thing until reading about it this term and I gotta say, how incredibly happy it makes me feel to see Latinx peoples imagining and cultivating their own communities within Vancouver. It’s truly an inspiration to someone like me who feels every inch of the distance between me and my family in PR.
First and foremost, my roots are in the Caribbean. Having the opportunity to learn about Indigenous peoples foodways has been so incredibly meaningful to me. I find myself connecting my experiences, and the experiences of my family, with the themes and takeaways in this class. Obviously discourse about colonialism cannot be omitted when talking about the histories of Indigenous peoples anywhere and it certainly causes generational trauma in families living in or being from the Caribbean. That being said, learning how other cultures thrived and continue to thrive is so impactful. My family has lived in Puerto Rico for many generations. We have a long history with our own colonization and the violence inflicted by our ‘ally’ the United States. We are essentially at the disposable of political platforms that dehumanize our existence and belittle our worth. Generations of this rhetoric has created an extreme case of diasporic racialization for Puerto Ricans living off island.
My mother was the first person in my whole family to leave the island. She moved to NY on scholarship at 16 with no English or family in the US. She met my father and created her own community of PRs in Spanish Harlem. Racism towards Puerto Ricans has always been a part of the social dynamic in New York, especially in Manhattan. NY has always been the landing place for a lot of latinx communities looking for new beginnings. Unfortunately, these communities are the most marginalized people and are outcasted in society (Like my mother, who was racially discriminated against when applying for jobs after high school or when she applied for my birth certificate and they assumed there was not a father in the picture.)
We call this our diaspora as many are displaced from their homeland, seen as strangers in their new land and torn between their old traditions and new cultures.
How do we maintain our cultures in new homes that do not reflect how we see ourselves? Community.
When I watched the short Native Dish video about durudia tortillas, it got me thinking about the community my mother cultivated when she was in NY. Puerto Rican (and other latinx communities like Cubans, Dominicans, Haitians and Ecuadorians) found themselves living in the same neighbourhoods in NYC. The predominately Puerto Rican Spanish Harlem was home to my father’s family who took my mother in as their own. In this community she practiced and maintained parts of her culture with her new chosen family. A lot of that included making the foods her mother taught her when she was young like pasteles, with the other mothers in the community. By sharing her traditions with that of her founded community in NY, she was able to maintain a grasp on the roots of her homeland similar to how Isha celebrates her culture with her friends and family. My mother cooked every night of the week and always made sure I was in the kitchen with her listening to her memories in the kitchen with my abuela.
The most important connection I made this week was the culture and significance behind the ereba traditions and the Puerto Rican tradition of making pasteles. Pasteles have a long history in Puerto Rico and are made only on special occasions. The task of making pasteles falls on the women in the family as is the tradition similar to the gender roles in Garinagu culture. The process is similar to ereba but certainly not as intense in terms of labour. For the masa: cassava, yautia, plantain, green bananas, and calabaza are grated by hand using traditional tools. (Many families have modernized the making of pasteles by using food processors but not in the Figueroa family). Meat is filled in the masa, it is wrapped in a banana leaf and boiled, similar to making tamales. Making the masa is a rite of passage. As soon as girls are old enough (or basically have the finger dexterity to peel plantains) they are taught the family’s recipe from their generations of mothers. As stated in the reading, Garinagu people also consider ereba a rite of passage that creates a kinship system between women in a community. The collaborative efforts in making ereba is important because it symbolizes a unity amongst the Garinagu families. This brings us back to community…there is a fabric that binds most marginalized Indigenous communities in the Caribbean and it usually involves food. Food is nostalgia, it is tradition, it is connection between parent and child and it is community.
Lastly, I wanted to connect all my thoughts this week to one of the keywords from our group assignments: syncretism, which can be defined as the amalgamation of different cultures.
I have blended my own cultures, having been raised in the United States from Puerto Rican families and now living in Canada. My stepmother is 1st generation Mexican and I have spent 90% of my life a part of her traditions and culture especially when I lived in California. While this is a bland example of how syncretic my culture is, it does highlight how travels in life can shape the traditions you pass on or uphold. In a more historic reference, and tying this to the readings, we read about the journey the Garinagu people took, while forcibly, from St. Vincent to Honduras and now spread across the globe. Amalgamation is a great word in the development of their culture and traditions because it was a great blending of a lot of journeys that dictates what knowledges are kept and traditions are continued over time.
A great site to visit for an example of how pasteles are made:
This week’s readings on the Shipibo- Konibo people was quite eye opening in terms of providing a great example of cultural appropriation due to globalization. As discussed in the readings, the rubber boom in the Peruvian Amazon had a direct relationship with Ayahuasca Shamanism becoming the million-dollar industry it is today. It was in the establishment of reducciones that resulted in the transfer and exchange of cultures in the region that soon expanded into the global sector of communication. As a lot of things in Latin America or in Indigenous cultures, the western world appropriates ‘traditional’ cultures as their own for capitalistic value.
Enter Gringo Shamanism.
Ethnotourism fetishizes the ‘authentic Indigenous experience’ and determines how Indigenous cultures can be ‘marketed’ to extract capital from western (and by that, I mean colonial) states. The affects of extracting and appropriating Indigenous cultural experiences are immense. Firstly, it dilutes the significance of Ayahuasca Shamanism and misinforms the masses about its role in Indigenous lifeways. Second, it boasts of the ‘authentic’ Indigenous experience without discourse on colonialism, the enslavement of Indigenous peoples or how cultural appropriation has had a role in the loss of Indigenous knowledge.
I think the second point is most important, as Prof Smith mentions as well, because it ignores the histories Indigenous peoples have had for over 500 years since the Conquest. It severs the New World from any responsibilities to acknowledge wrongdoings or to acknowledge the violent histories these peoples have had for centuries. More specifically for the Shipibo Konibo people, the ignores the incredible exploitation, past and present, of their communities.
This is a common trend in a lot of ‘other’ cultures especially as travel has become accessible over time. Tourism is all about the ‘authentic’ experience and immersing yourself amongst ‘the people’. It is less about appreciating the cultures and more about making it your own. This can be dangerous because it presents the idea that anything in this world can be occupied by anyone else regardless of their relationship to the culture. There is this inherent ownership western cultures have with the Indigenous cultures that silences their history and exoticizes their ‘humble’ lives like animals at a zoo. This requires the Indigenous communities to then perform their culture for the eyes of outsiders who are exploiting their culture for entertainment purposes.
All that being said, one part about this week’s lecture challenges the idea of cultural appropriation and the idea of ‘authentic’ or ‘traditional’ experience: Part of Shipibo culture is about appropriating other cultural forms into their traditions and in their art forms. If the Shipibo people can borrow aspects from other cultures, when is appropriating considered good or bad? Is it even appropriating?
Obviously, there is a HUGE difference between shaping your lifeway to include elements from other cultures versus paying thousands of dollars to take ayahuasca for the ‘high’ of it. There is also a huge difference between going to the Amazon and supporting a community-based lodge versus getting the brew from some dude on the internet in the United States. But it does beg the question, can cultural appropriation have a positive outcome?
Taking a look at the keywords for this week’s reflection, I realized all these terms intersect in one capacity or another. For me, the most important thing, is food security and food sovereignty. I, along with a few others in this course, am taking a Latin American Literature and Environment course taught by Profe Alessandra Santos. In that class, we read a short introduction from author Eduardo Galeano from his well-known book Open Veins of Latin America. In it he makes many a connection to how little food security or sovereignty Latin America has had since the Spanish Conquest:
“Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into European— or later United States— capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power. Everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral-rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources.” (12) (If you have not read this book, I highly recommend! Galeano has a way of being poetically just with his writing)
This quote has always stuck with me because it perfectly encapsulates the degree of influence from outside powers in Latin America. Over the last 500 years we have seen an extreme amount of exploitation in Latin America. First from colonization and then multinational occupation of Latin American resources. In terms of food, indigenous communities have dealt with a loss of food autonomy or sovereignty at the hands of failing economies. Small farms and communities cannot compete with the large free market, which is predominantly controlled by high political powers like the United States. A lot of land in Latin America is used for cash-cropping or resource extraction that benefits outside influence more while leaving local communities to suffer. For example, the impacts of extractive resources like oil. Local communities, largely indigenous, deal with the long term environmental and health risks of oil extraction of their land while the transnational corporations make the big bucks, often free of environmental liability. Because of neoliberal policies and foreign interference, food self-sufficiency is at a all time low in Latin America.
A lot of things lead to an overwhelming lack of food security in Latin America: rising food prices, inaccessibility to supply, economical failures, lack of public and social funding, an unbalanced access to wealth, extreme poverty for the most marginalized, food deserts, unfair trade agreements, landlessness, environmental change and the global impact of GMO foods just to name a few things. Not to mention the current VERY REAL impact on how COVID has shaped food insecurity in Latin America.
There are resistances though to the rise of food insecurity in Latin America. People are protesting food cost inflations in Mexico as the prices for corn increases, which is a staple ingredient of the national diet. More and more communities are popping up working together to be self-sufficient, sustainable and to regain autonomy over their land and lives, like the Zapatista autonomous communities in Mexico.
Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Scribe Publications, 2009.
There’s lots to talk about, which I am sure we will cover in our discussion section tomorrow, so I am only going to highlight the main takeaway from this week’s readings.
“Indigenous Knowledge, Traditional Knowledge and the Colonization of Indigenous Studies”
Last year I took an intro to Aboriginal Studies course at Langara. Coming from a place like the US, where indigenous culture and history is erased almost entirely from the curriculum, I thought it was incredibly important to participate in this class as a newcomer settling in Canada. (side note: take a look at Trump’s plan for a ‘Patriotic Education’ curriculum). One of the biggest topics we covered was the colonization of traditional knowledge. The idea of colonizing traditional knowledge stems from a “The West” vs “The Rest” idea of Eurocentric power over ‘others’. Over centuries of forced assimilation, colonizers attempted to erase traditional knowledge, mostly through violence. After stealing, appropriating and commodifying indigenous knowledge as property of the West, we are now attempting to decolonize education.
What the authors touch on briefly in the introduction, and obviously continue to break down the variables of colonized education in future topics, is the idea that “white settlers make their [own] experience the center of life and work.” (14). Researchers come in and ask indigenous communities for ‘contacts’ and ‘networks’ and to do the labour for them having not formally been invited or asked to be a part of their community (12). Because they are researching such a topic like decolonization, whether it be indigenous studies or anthropological, there is this sense of ownership over the indigenous knowledge in the community when in reality, they do not have the same relationship with the nature and culture nor is it their right to be there. These researchers can never fully grasp or understand that their presence in that moment of asking the community to perform for them IS colonizing their traditional knowledge. It is important to note that by coming into an indigenous community as a non-indigenous person means that your lens is obscured by your own cultural experiences and your being there is not for them but for your own interests. In fact, it is more about cultural appropriation than cultural appreciation.
The authors also talk about how decolonizing and decolonization are trendy terms with no backbone towards change. Doing ‘decolonizing’ research on indigenous land and people, even with a positive intention, is still building a insider/outsider relationship with the community. It is important to think about the many aspects that intersect in a settler/colonized relationship like language, resources, racism, stolen land and sexism. To begin ‘decolonizing’ anything, you must change the power structure within the relationship, and you must acknowledge the history that built this hierarchy in the first place. Most importantly, understand how you play a role.
So, my first ending question goes back to our first class discussion: What makes research ethical and how can we decolonize our course in a meaningful way?
Second, how can we relate the topic of performative decolonization to what is happening with the Black Lives Matter, Indigenous Lives Matter movement currently happening in Canada and the US?
Works Cited (informally)
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda, and Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. “Introduction.” Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View. Edited by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang, Routledge, 2018, pp. 1-23.
“I am from” poem (adapted from Rubí Orozco Santos)
I am from yuatía,
From concrete buildings of Brooklyn,
and the Puget Sound.
I am from pilon,
tough and essential,
aromatic and sweet.
From vast and demanding,
From Emilia,
and Hector.
from culantro,
and moss.
I am from the caldero,
searing and seasoned,
sofrito,
roots,
and making pasteles.
Hi Everyone, I am Grey Figueroa-Mercado. I am Puerto Rican and most of my family lives in Ponce, Puerto Rico or the southern U.S. states. I am currently living in East Van, in the Chinatown neighbourhood. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, but have spent a lot of my life moving around to all the corners of North America: Ponce, San Diego, Orlando, Houston, Portland, Wrangell (Alaska) and most recently Seattle. I spent 8 years in Seattle working mostly in the coffee and restaurant industry, where I primarily opened new coffee shops/concept. I moved to Vancouver in 2016, where I began working in the beer industry as a restaurant and operations manager. Now I work for a small family-owned brewery in Strathcona doing sales, social media and marketing.
My interests are in film and photography and I am passionate about food. I mostly make desserts and am obsessed with all forms of barbecue. I am always willing to swap recipes and talk tips.
I decided to go back to school 2 years ago for two reasons: I wanted to prove to myself and set an example to my siblings that academics are achievable no matter the time. I am the only Figueroa or Mercado to attend college. Second, to use this opportunity to learn and reclaim my culture and identity. My major is Spanish, and I will likely minor in Film Studies. After my studies, I plan to live in Puerto Rico with my family for some time volunteering in disaster relief and rebuilding communities. I am also working towards opening up my own food truck with my mom where we will bring Puerto Rican sandwiches to Vancouver (and soft serve, because why not).
Other fun facts: I have 7 siblings, my favourite food is apple sauce and soft serve ice cream (sometimes together); I have a pretty big lego collection; I want to make silent short films; I am named after Gandalf and my favourite style of beer is a brown ale.
I just want to say that I am super looking forward to sharing space together with each of you in whatever capacity we are able in these times. I am most excited for hearing people’s own perspectives and experiences on how food intersects in their lives and culture.
The Taíno diet consisted of more than eighty different cultivated plants and vegetables including beans, gourds, corn, palm fruits, 
As we learned in our studies of the Garifuna peoples, yuca required a strenuous production due to the poisonous hydrocyanic acid found in the root. The process involves peeling the skin and grating the flesh on a guayo, a grater made of wood. The grated shreds are placed in a basket to release all the poisonous juices. The paste is then dried into a flour and cooked on a clay griddle, or burén, to make yuca bread or casabi. The burén was made of red loam and burnt conch shells (Keegan 4).
represented different phases of life: Maboyas, the Lord of the Dead ruled the underworld; Guabancex controlled the winds and demanded respect; and Jurakán, the storm god, who unleashed his powers when Guabancex was not respected. Does Jurakán sound familiar? The word hurricane stems from the warrior’s name in Indigenous mythology and represents Guabancex’s wrath. The Taínos believed that worshipping these gods with offerings would protect them from illness, hurricanes and misfortunes (Keegan 6).
