Colonial Provision to Caribbean Paradise (And Back Again) When you sip a piña colada on a Caribbean beach and watch coconut palms sway in the breeze, you’re not experiencing nature untouched by history. You’re looking at a 500-year-old colonial landscape design that never went away. The coconut

The Colonial Lie Hiding in Your Produce Section THE LIE IN THE PRODUCE SECTION Walk into almost any grocery store in the United States and you will find a display of smooth, orange root vegetables with a sign above them that says “yams.” These are not yams. They have never been yams. And the fa

From Imported Ice to Electrical Vulnerability Ice is often perceived as neutral. A technological convenience that improves comfort without carrying social meaning. Yet in Puerto Rico, the history of ice and refrigeration reveals a layered story about colonial trade, infrastructure dependence, fo

Power, Politics, and the Political Economy of Food Culinary authenticity is often invoked as a cultural virtue. Restaurants advertise it. Consumers seek it. Communities defend it. Yet within food studies and anthropology, authenticity is not treated as a stable category but as a socially constru

The Hamburger in Latin America: Power, Politics, and Culinary Adaptation What is a hamburger? At its most basic structural level, a hamburger is a cooked ground beef patty placed between two pieces of bread. That definition matters. It distinguishes the hamburger from steak sandwiches or othe

Loíza and Piñones: Afro-Puerto Rican Foundations of Puerto Rico’s Culinary Identity To understand Puerto Rican cuisine as a historical system rather than a collection of popular dishes, one must begin in Loíza. Not because Loíza is folkloric or picturesque (though it is), but because it is struc

U.S. “Influence” on Puerto Rico’s Cuisine: Colonial Policy, Economic Constraint, and Culinary Intelligence Puerto Rican cuisine is often discussed through nostalgia: corned beef with white rice and a fried egg, pastelillos de pizza from the beach kiosko, Bayamon’s street hot dogs, a side of mayo

Spanish Influence Was Not a Flavor Choice. It Was a Power Structure. When Puerto Rican cuisine is discussed in popular food media, Spanish influence is often framed as a benign inheritance. Olive oil, garlic, pork, wheat, and rice are described as gifts, refinements, or civilizing upgrades to an

The Indigenous Foundations of Puerto Rico’s Cocina Criolla If I took rice off a Puerto Rican plate, would our culture disappear? For many people, the instinctive answer is yes. Rice feels essential, foundational, inseparable from Puerto Rican identity. But that instinct reveals something impo

Moorish Systems, Enslaved Knowledge, and the Survival Logic of Arroz con Gandules Puerto Rico’s Cocina Criolla did not emerge from abundance, leisure, or creative freedom. It formed under colonial rule, economic restriction, and racialized systems designed to extract labor rather than sustain life

Puerto Rican food did not emerge from abundance, leisure, or free choice. Cocina Criolla is a response to colonial rule. It is a food system engineered to survive Spanish imperial policies that controlled land, labor, trade, and access to nourishment. To understand why Puerto Rican plates look t

The Great Depression, Hunger, and the Quiet Lessons Still Sitting on Our Plates The Great Depression is often remembered through stock market crashes, breadlines, and black-and-white photographs of desperation. But beneath the images is a quieter truth: the Great Depression was a food crisis bef

Long before refrigeration, before industrial agriculture, people learned to manipulate time by harvesting food at its peak and suspending it in salt, acid, or fermentation. Pickling wasn’t a trend. It was a strategy against hunger, climate, and uncertainty. Archaeological evidence shows that ear

Yeast is one of humanity’s oldest collaborators. Before we had written language, we had fermentation. Civilizations learned to work with a microscopic organism that transformed grains into bread, fruit into alcohol, and dough into something alive with memory. Yeast is not just a tool. It is a compa

Every Puerto Rican carries a quiet, inherited memory in their bones. A kind of chronosonder wisdom whispered between generations: nos salvamos con lo que tenemos. That line is not romantic nostalgia. It is a survival blueprint shaped by policy, by scarcity, and by the political decision to hold us

When I say “pancita” I’m pointing to more than a soup. I’m talking about guts, literally and metaphorically. I mean the tripe soup that shows up in kitchens, street-stands and family gatherings across Mexico and the Mexican diaspora, known by some as menudo. As #Ra ícesOnTheRoad brought me to

It’s October, that can only mean that the air smells like cinnamon and capitalism! Every café hums with frothy nostalgia, every cup a marketing spell cast by global giants. Pumpkin spice isn’t just a flavor, it’s a centuries-long echo of conquest and a map marking bloody colonialism. Gourds, the

Food deserts aren’t accidents. They’re the predictable result of redlining, racial capitalism, and decades of disinvestment in Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities. A map of supermarket closures almost perfectly overlaps with a map of neighborhoods once marked “hazardous” by the Home Owners’ L

What unites broth, soup, stew, and chowder? They are all part of what I call the Soup Family. Each has its own rules, textures, and rituals, but their shared DNA tells a larger cultural story. Soup, at its core, has always been food of hard times. A way to transform scraps, bones, peels, and “le

When we talk about national development in Latin America and the Caribbean, the conversation usually turns to GDP, exports, military power, or governmental stability. But there’s another measure that often gets overlooked: the women who grow our food, run markets, and keep families nourished. Wo