Women food writers in authoritarian regimes: upholding and subverting power in Cuba’s batistato and Paraguay’s stronato

ABSTRACT

This article examines the role of female food writers in codifying cuisine in authoritarian regimes in Cuba (batistato, 1952–1958) and Paraguay (stronato, 1954–1989), providing examples of the way in which food discourse can both support and resist authoritarian power. As an everyday practice, the preparation and consumption of food offered the State the opportunity to promote, through the discursive codification of cuisine, official views of the nation as racially homogeneous (Paraguay) or as site of modernity, modeled on the United States (Cuba). The texts of four female cuisine writers (Josefina Velilla de Aquino, Graciela Martínez, Nitza Villapol and Adriana Loredo) are analyzed, to elucidate how each of them upheld or subverted the official discourse.

KEYWORDS:

• Authoritarianism
• Cuba
• Paraguay
• Guarani
• cookbook
• women

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Adriana Loredo is one of the many pseudonyms writer Rosa Maria Zell (1910–1971) used for her journalistic texts. Under her real name, she published poetry and short stories with limited success.

2. Villapol, in fact, never hid her disdain for cooking. She considered that spending too much time cooking was a waste of time, hence the title of her books and program: “Cocina al minuto” (Cooking in a minute). It was Villapol’s assistant, Margot Bacallao, who more often than not decided the cooking method, while Nitza took notes and then faced the cameras. Bacallao, an Afro-Cuban woman, played an essential, though barely acknowledged role in the program.

3. At the same time, however, Louis A. Pérez Jr reports a parallel tendency to “affirm national identity” consuming Cuban-made products, with advertisers stressing “the virtues of locally produced merchandise” (2012, 483).

4. Ajiaco, a traditional soup considered the embodiment of Cubanness because of its mixing of Indigenous, African, Chinese, and Spanish cooking, is also paid surprisingly little attention. Contrastingly, in the post-Revolution editions of Cocina al minuto, an entire section is devoted to ajiaco.

5. In the area of Hispanic food studies, a number of scholars have turned their attention to the way in which this notion of culinary fusion often intensifies racial and social inequalities. About Peru, Amy Cox writes of a recent “example of heritage making around food to investigate the ways in which gender and race are connected to national imaginaries of cultural mestizaje and ideals of modernity” (2020, 1).

6. So’o iosopy is a beef mince soup; chipá is a cheese-flavored bun.

7. Pastel mandi’o are small empanadas; payagua mascada are rissoles; chipa so’o is stuffed cornbread; mbeju is a mandioca pancake with cheese.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lara Anderson

Lara Anderson is Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on Peninsular and Transhispanic Food Studies and her latest monograph (University of Toronto Press) looks at food discourse as a site of control and resistance during the first two decades of the authoritarian Franco regime. She has published a number of articles on food, politics and gender in Spain, and has written also about the place of food studies in University-language programs.

Carlos Uxo

Carlos Uxo is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University, Australia. His research focuses on Cuban literature, cultural policies, and society. He is the author of two monographs (on Cuban crime fiction, and on representations of Afro-Cuban characters in Cuban narrative fiction) and has published a number of articles on internet policies in Cuba, and contemporary Cuban and Spanish literature.