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Ruth Masuka
University of Toronto
FAS Double Major in Diaspora & Transnational Studies and Peace, Conflict & Justice, 
Minor in Music History & Culture

In one of his infamous speeches, Castro challenged 
Cubans with the question: “Why should we eat peaches? 
We were made to think that peaches were the best thing 
going and when we’d visit someone’s house they’d offer 
us peaches. So we all thought that...peaches were better 
than mangoes, but peaches are expensive and foreign 
and mangoes are sweeter, cheaper, and much better.” 
Castro’s words spoke to how food, as an instrument of 
identity formation, allegiances, and community solidari-
ty, is an intrinsic part of Cuba’s history. In a Cuban 
context, food and cuisine can be understood as a site of 
resistance given the daily role food has in defining 
Cubanness. Its function goes beyond a mere biological 
necessity of nourishment and can be understood as a 
signifier of cultural capital, economic mobility, and 
social status. This paper seeks to demonstrate the ways 
in which food is so intertwined with music, religion, and 
other social institutions that it has become a storytelling 
practice of  the narrative of Cuba’s complex and 
nuanced historical, political, and socioeconomic reali-
ties. Food is not just a matter of what appeals to some-
one’s taste, but a matter of what appeals to someone’s 
ideologies. Cuba’s cuisine is an informant in understand-
ing the intersections between the choices of individuals, 
communities, and the state-at-large.

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Cuba, food, 
revolution, cuisine, identity

B I O

Ruth Masuka is a 3rd year student studying the intersections of peace and justice practic-
es and art. Her research focuses on the use of non-institutional domains and informal 
spaces as catalysts for bottom-up group consciousness, capacity-building and communi-
ty organizing. 

© 2021 Ruth Masuka
Caribbean Studies Students’ Union, Canada - https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/

                       This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 
                       To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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     Pilcher, J. M. (2012). Eating à la Criolla: Global and Local Foods in Argentina, Cuba, and Mexico. IdeAs, (3). 
doi:10.4000/ideas.406
     Delgado, E. (2009, November 20). A Cuban Committees of Defense of the Revolution Celebration. Retrieved from: 
https://havanatimes.org/other-galleries/a-cuban-cdr-celebration/
     Paponnet-Cantat, C. (2003). The Joy of Eating: Food and Identity in Contemporary Cuba. Caribbean Quarterly, 49(3), 
11-29. doi:10.1080/00086495.2003.11672221
     Ibid
     Ibid 
     Folch, C. (2008). Fine Dining: Race in Prerevolution Cuban Cookbooks. Latin American Research Review, 43(2), 205-223. 
doi:10.1353/lar.0.0029

 

       

 

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Even prior to Cuba’s era of revolution, 
food served as a vehicle of hegemony, 
identity, and rebellion. The Spanish 
colonial regime made fervent efforts to 
replace indigenous foodways to no avail as 
the native cuisine was better suited to the 
physical environment and was strongly 
defended by the local population. 
Although their attempts to suppress 
indigenous cuisine proved to be mostly 
futile, it was still the perspective of 
Spanish imperialists that to eat too much 
of native foods was a return to the barba-
rism of the native people. Similarly, in the 
mass plantations, where African slaves 
were subject to inhumane treatment and 
forbidden from communicating, food 
became a medium of memory and tradi-
tion. Cuisine, as conceptualized by food 
anthropologist Sidney Mintz, is “the 
ongoing foodways of a region, within 
which active discourse about food sustains 
both common understandings and reliable 
production of the foods in question.”  
Applied to the Cuban context, cuisine can 
be understood as a site of resistance given 
the daily role food has in defining Cuban-
ness. Its function goes beyond a mere 
biological necessity of nourishment and 
can be understood as a signifier of cultural 
capital, historical relevance, economic 
mobility, and social status.

An example of a meal that remains a 
Cuban staple in the present-day, congri 
(rice and black beans) likely finds its roots 
in neighboring Haiti in the combination of 

the words “Congo” and “rice” (riz, 
French). This suggests the name came 
from when rice and beans was a common 
meal for slaves as it provided sustenance 
and protein.  Through the conucos y crías 
system, some plantation owners provided 
tiny plots of land to slaves to grow their 
own food rather than having to provide 
them food.  This allowed for the preserva-
tion of African farming practices and 
produce. Beyond maintaining identity 
through the land, African food traditions 
were fortified through song with hymns 
sung during the long grueling work slaves 
endured daily.  The close association 
between food, music, and Afro-Cuban 
existence illustrates how culinary and 
melodic practices have served as forms of 
resistance against dominant ideologies 
even preceding the Revolution.  In many 
ways, the culture of the revolution was 
nourished in these everyday acts of 
defiance in sustaining African and indige-
nous food heritages against the colonial 
regime. Through these and other exam-
ples, this research seeks to demonstrate the 
importance of food and cuisine as a fluid 
representation of Cuban identity and 
values at the intersections of individual, 
community-based, and state-level choices.

 

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     Paponnet-Cantat 2003
     Ibid
     Dawdy, S. L. (2002). ‘La Comida Mambisa’: Food, farming, and Cuban identity, 1839-1999. New West Indian Guide / 
Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 76(1-2), 47-80. doi:10.1163/13822373-90002543
     Ibid
     Paponnet-Cantat (2003)

 

       

 

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It is important to note the food imageries 
specific to the Cuban context and their 
origins. Colonial legacies are still evident 
within Cuba’s cuisine. Although Cuba’s 
geography and climate would make it 
more conducive to being a fish-eating 
population, Cubans still tend to have a 
taste for meat.  However, at the start of 
Castro’s Revolution, killing cows for meat 
consumption was outlawed due to the need 
for milk as well as transportation.  More 
importantly, this shift in food patterns 
reflects a political connotation against 
traditional colonial cuisine. Another food 
product with clear colonial connotations is 
sugar. The cooking of sweet dishes came 
to resemble the gayapo (sugar cane juice) 
slaves were given as their only food while 
working the plantation.  José Martí, the 
infamous writer and considered the father 
of Cuban independence, conveyed a clear 
distaste for sugar in his works, preferring 
the wild honey used to make “Cuba-Li-
bre”. This was a symbolic rejection of the 
colonial economy and a celebration of 
both a free land and free people. 

As the fever of revolution spread through-
out Cuba, food imageries transformed 
from traditional colonial dishes to the 
produce of the people. Stews like ajiaco 
and caldoza, arising from African heritage, 
illustrate the shift from a cuisine once 
defined by slave labor and hegemonic 
forces to foodways reflective of the variety 
of the Cuban population. Prepared with 
whatever available produce native to the 
land, the stew models the multidimension-
al identity and the continual struggle 

against hegemonic forces. Another funda-
mental ingredient that serves as a para-
digm of culture and identity in Cuba are 
viandas, which cover the numerous root 
vegetables native to Cuban soil. They are 
believed to hold medicinal powers and 
have also been an integral part of small-
holder independent farming in Cuba.  
These foods are accompanied by the 
emblematic drinks in Cuba, especially 
coffee, rum, and beer. Coffee, being a 
mainstay of the economy, marks the 
closing of a meal and a sense of communi-
ty and social inclusion.  Beer has grown in 
meaning as a signifier of special occasions 
and the transition from work to social 
times of leisure. To speak of Cuban food 
traditions without the mention of rum 
would make for an incomplete narrative. 
As one of the most enduring legacies of 
the sugar and slave economy, rum has 
come to the transfer of power into the 
people’s hands and with that, the resources 
of the land. 

 It is important to note that Cubans often 
prefer homemade rum or from local 
sources like neighbors, although lower 
quality, to brand names like Havana Club, 
as a testament to the devotion of local 
products and the communal network. 
Food’s value in times of revolution is 
celebrated by Cubans to this day. Such as 
commemorating historical moments like 
the 1960 Committees of Defense of the 
Revolution (CDR), which was the largest 
mass organization in Cuban history. 
Annually, caldoza, the cultural stew of 
Cuba, is assembled among communities 

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     Dawdy (2002)
     Fuster, M. (2015). Writing Cuisine in the Spanish Caribbean: A Comparative Analysis of Iconic Puerto Rican and Cuban 
cookbooks. Food, Culture & Society, 18(4), 659-680. doi:10.1080/15528014.2015.1088195
     Anderson, B. R. (1982). Imagined communities. London.
     Pilcher (2012).

 

       

 

12

using the produce everyone has to offer, 
symbolizing the revolutionary bond 
between the nation, neighborhoods, and 
homes. The linkages between specific 
foods and other daily activities of Cuban 
life exemplify both the individual and 
communal construction of identity. 

Beyond the varied meanings of Cuban 
foods, there is a strong link between the 
local farmers who cultivate the land. 
Known as sitierios, the very existence of 
the owners of small plots of land entailed a 
form of resistance against colonial forces 
that have now replaced by capitalist forces 
of globalization. Given the long era of 
slavery in Cuba, land ownership has 
always been a reflection of autonomy and 
independence. Following their crusade for 
freedom, former African slaves purchased 
small farms to produce food for their 
families. At the start of Castro’s Revolu-
tion, the figure of the peasant farmer 
became the Cuba hero. The province of 
Oriente, where 41% of sitieros were 
Afro-Cuban was entitled the “most Cuban 
region of all of Cuba.”  With agrarian 
reform and food security being main 
priorities of the socialist government, 
small farmers embodied emancipation and 
self-sufficiency. The overlap of the 
ex-slave, sitiero, and soldier, is once again 
a testimony to the multiplicity of Cuban 
character. 

A valuable source of knowledge in appre-
ciating the nuanced dimensions of food in 
Cuba is cookbooks. If understood as a 
historical document, cookbooks serve as 

“windows into kitchens of the past.”   It 
was a common strategy of colonial 
governments to use written text to legiti-
mize their rule while simultaneously 
marginalizing existing native cultures.  
The kitchen was by no means excluded 
from this. This is especially of significance 
in Cuba, where cooking knowledge 
historically took the form of oral practices 
rather than written form. Earlier cook-
books reflect the forced notions of Cuban 
identity which revolved around European 
cosmopolitan cuisine. Later editions begin 
to include traditional African dishes along 
with the foodways of the Taíno people, the 
principal inhabitants of Cuba. The 
presence of Cuban produce like viandas 
was of great symbolic importance as a 
shift of power from the periphery. During 
the Revolution, the cookbook became a 
text fraught with political implications. 
Nitza Villapol, a Cuban cookbook author 
who was a staunch advocate of the social-
ist government, created recipes using the 
foods rationed by, for example, offering a 
way to make tamales out of the imported 
Russian oats.  Food as a mechanism of 
patriotism, in turn, makes the cookbook a 
tool of the production of ideologies. The 
cookbook transformed a national cuisine 
into a nationalist cuisine.

The political praxis of food arguably 
reached its height during the Período 
especial also known as the Special Period 
in Time of Peace at the start of the 1990s. 
What was meant to be a temporary phase 
of crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union, 
Cuba’s largest partner in both trade and 

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     Wilson, M. (2012). Moral Economies of Food in Cuba. Food, Culture & Society, 15(2), 277-291. doi:10.2752/175174
412x13233545145345
     Alfonso, I. D. (2014). We are What We Now Eat: Food and Identity in the Cuban Diaspora. Canadian Journal of Latin 
American and Caribbean Studies, 37(74), 173-206. doi:10.1080/08263663.2012.1100600
    Paponnet-Cantat (2003)
    Altieri, M. A., Companioni, N., Canizares, K., Murphy, C., Rosset, P., Bourque, M., &  Nicholls, C. I. (1999). The greening 
of the ''barrios'': Urban agriculture for food security in Cuba.Agriculture and Human Values, 16(2), 131-140
    Ibid
    Buchmann, C. (2009). Cuban Home Gardens and Their Role in Social-Ecological Resilience. Human Ecology, 37(6), 
705-721. doi:10.1007/s10745-009-9283-9

       

 

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ideologies, lasted up until the turn of the 
century. The communal practices of 
preparing and eating food were reduced to 
attempts to fulfill increasingly unmet 
physical demands of nourishment.  
Although the food rationing system was 
meant to provide a sufficient standard of 
food items, it was more optimistic than 
realistic and forced Cubans to meet their 
needs through the black market. Due to the 
illicit nature of meeting food needs, the 
very acts of preparing, consuming, and 
enjoying food was limited to behind the 
closed doors of the family kitchen, shroud-
ing a once communal and social space 
with secrecy because it did not operate 
according to legal norms.  This era, also 
referred to as “La temporada de vaca 
flaca” (Skinny Cow Period), caused mass 
anxiety over food that induced a moral 
dilemma as Cubans found themselves torn 
between feeding their immediate family or 
sharing what little they had with friends 
and neighbors. This social erosion was 
captured in a common saying of the time: 
“ si una visita no avisa, es un caos político; 
no se puede atender de la manera que 
quieres.” (an unannounced visit is political 
chaos; it can't be looked after as one would 
wish it)  While the physical effects of food 
scarcity were drastic, the social ramifica-
tions of the crisis went to show food’s 
function as a site of community organiza-
tion. 

While the Special Period perpetuated and 
exacerbated food insecurity, it also provid-
ed a return from the government’s invest-
ments in education and social services. At 
the onset of the crisis, Cuba accounted for 
only 2% of the Latin American population 
but 11% of the region’s scientists.  Cuban 
agronomists, supported by agricultural 
government policies in favor of develop-
ing local, grassroots solutions, produced 
technologies to improve systems of both 
rural and urban farming in matrimony 
between environmental sciences and the 
needs of the people. In both a figurative 
and literal sense, agricultural reform 
flourished through the community 
networks where exchanging produce and 
goods was a common occurrence. In sharp 
contrast in the United States of America 
where millions of empty homes, unoccu-
pied skyscrapers, and vacant parking lots 
are held tightly by corporations, the Cuban 
government turned over private land 
unless it was put to use.  Through such 
policies, hundreds of unused lots, many 
previously overrun with garbage, have 
been transformed into green spaces and 
sites of food production. This also allowed 
for a rebuilding of community ties lost due 
to food scarcity as gardeners would share 
the fruits of their labor with neighbors and 
friends. The pride of self-reliance and the 
generosity one could show because of it 
soon made home gardens a reflection of 
the owner’s sociocultural status, health, 

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     Wilson (2012)
     Deere, C. D., & Royce, F. S. (2019). Provisioning Cuba’s Private Restaurants: Linking Tourism and Agriculture. Tourism 
Planning & Development, 16(6), 675-695. doi:10.1080/21568316.2019.1569120
     Thiemann, L., & Spoor, M. (2019). Beyond the “special period”: Land reform, supermarkets and the prospects for 
peasant-driven food sovereignty in post-socialist Cuba (2008–2017). Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue 
Canadienne Détudes Du Développement, 40(4), 546-563. doi:10.1080/02255189.2019.1632174

       

 

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and their commitment to the well-being of 
their families and communities.  At a 
macro-level, these gardens also reflected a 
dedication to the land and in this sense, an 
extension of the revolutionary notion of 
reaping what one sows. 

Cuba currently finds itself, along with the 
rest of the world, at a critical juncture. The 
dominant systems of capitalism have been 
called into question due to its incapacity to 
mediate crisis, the ongoing climate crisis, 
and recurring global financial catastro-
phes. Cuba’s geopolitical position has 
always made it a case study in how two 
opposing systems co-exist, creating 
polarities between Cuba as a place for 
Cubans and Cuba as an economic space 
“with both affinity and aversion to metro-
politan capital, commodities, and values.”  
Food serves as another site of negotiation 
between these two discrepancies. Looking 
toward the island’s future in a post-pan-
demic recovery, tourism as one of Cuba’s 
major economic sectors will be critical. 
Restaurants, once looked down upon as 
capital enterprises pandering to the West, 
were revived with Raul Castro’s economic 
reform policies and have in turn shown the 
potential role of self-employment activi-
ties in fostering a productive Cuban 
economy.  Beyond the added economic 
benefits, paladres, the private restaurants 
often catered for international visitors,  
facilitate investments into peasant farmers 
and urban gardeners through restaurant 
purchases. Cuban agrarian policies and the 
growth of urban gardening have exempli-
fied how a crisis-induced solution of 

small-scale agriculture and peasant agency 
can be consolidated and further stimulated 
in a phase of economic recovery.  At a 
microlevel, Cuban practices of eating have 
once again become an act of defiance 
towards the new dominant ideologies of 
globalization and neoliberalism as 
consumers’ adaptation to normative 
pressures for convenience, casualness, and 
speed, implicit in practices of the fast-food 
industry, has drastically altered food 
habits, family life, and consumption 
rituals.  In between community and 
commodity, food can be understood as an 
indicator of Cuba’s future political and 
socioeconomic systems. 

If these narratives of food tell us anything, 
it tells us this: the authenticity of Cubans 
lie in the people. In the words of Cuba’s 
national hero, José Martí, “the wine is 
sour, but it is our wine.” Food as a form of 
storytelling, neighborhood building, and 
defying dominant systems of power goes 
to show how the everyday acts of Cubans 
are embedded with liberation and solidari-
ty. It is democracy in its most potent form, 
as everyone must eat. How one goes about 
doing so is a testament to their values, 
community ties, and a broader sense of 
loyalty to different institutions. The variety 
of Cuban cuisine is a reflection to the 
complexities and nuances of Cuban 
identity that come together, at times in 
conflict and at times in harmony, to create 
a rich, vivid and unique imagery rooted in 
the people and the land they cultivate. 

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