Dystopias in the kitchen: an analysis of the origins of Puerto Rican identity through the culinary discourse in the Chronicles of the Indies

Abstract

Going back to the tradition of the Chronicles of the Indies we open the doors to a past where the imposition of Eurocentric ideals shows how colonialism seized and took control of daily life at all levels, transplanting old schemes in this new and sometimes ‘exotic’ space of the Americas. Precisely, many aspects of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ culture would collide, multiple ideas would be refuted, despised, others would vanish, many would remain in the silence of the defeated, while others would be transformed and assimilated for what eventually would reveal itself as indications of the idea of a Puerto Rican identity. Following the case of the Chroniclers of the Indies and their literary manifestation that arises from the experience in daily life on the Island of San Juan Bautista, we will approach the idea of a Puerto Rican dystopia as reflected from the use of culinary discourse and metaphors during the Spanish regime. Sections of the controversial Diario de Colón, in addition to meddling in selected works of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Fray Damián López de Haro and Fray Íñigo Abbad and Lasierra, will be analyzed from this culinary perspective. This will take into consideration the great literary paradox where gastronomic rhetoric is a key to understand the dystopia that is revealed in the reading of these texts, while being crucial elements of propaganda that claims a sense of normalcy in the apparent world of chaos of the noble savage.