UC Berkeley

The purpose of this research is to trace food practices, landscape changes, and cuisine changes in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico for the last century (1919-2018) relating them to the processes of colonial racial capitalism and sovereignty. Since the mid-twentieth century, Puerto Rico has gone from being a mostly agricultural archipelago to an archipelago where there is barely any agriculture and that imports 85% of the food it consumes. This transformation was led by the development strategies that were initiated in 1947, under the political banner of bringing a better quality of life to the archipelago. However, there is a lack of specific knowledge of how agriculture was abandoned, and political narratives tend to blame individuals who did not want to continue farming. Most people are familiar with the result, which is the 85% importation of food, but not how these changes relate to sociopolitical and economic decisions, broadscale inequities, and day-to-day cooking practices.This dissertation illustrates how the abandonment of subsistence agriculture and the development strategies of industrialization by invitation could have been purposeful and necessary steps for establishing a secure market for U.S. food products in Puerto Rico. This is especially so since after World War II, U.S. agriculture experienced an increased growth in the production of surplus products due to Green Revolution technologies. While this was happening in the U.S. mainland, agriculture was being abandoned in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, and national identities and “traditional” dishes (cuisine), many of which are composed of imported ingredients, were becoming emblemized and institutionalized as part of “Puerto Rican culture.” To explore the material traces left of past food practices, I analyzed archival records for the period from 1919-2018. These included agricultural censuses, importation and exportation records, cookbooks, historical photographs, advertisements, art, among others. I also mapped data from the agricultural censuses in ArcGIS to better understand agricultural landscape changes throughout time. Then, I analyzed how these food practices relate to the processes of colonial racial capitalism and sovereignty, and the role cuisine plays in the perpetuation or breaking of broader political-economic systems. I conclude with some final thoughts of the role that cuisine and land accessibility play in food sovereignty and decolonization efforts.