Visit [Link]

com to download the full version and

explore more ebooks

Food Culture in South America Food Culture around

the World First Edition Jose Rafael Lovera

_____ Click the link below to download _____

[Link]
america-food-culture-around-the-world-first-edition-
jose-rafael-lovera/

Explore and download more ebooks at [Link]

Here are some recommended products that might interest you.
You can download now and explore!

The Food and Culture Around the World Handbook 1st Edition
Helen C. Brittin

[Link]
handbook-1st-edition-helen-c-brittin/

[Link]

American Tuna The Rise and Fall of an Improbable Food

Volume 37 California Studies in Food and Culture First
Edition Smith
[Link]
improbable-food-volume-37-california-studies-in-food-and-culture-
first-edition-smith/
[Link]

The History and Culture of Japanese Food 1st Edition

Ishige

[Link]
food-1st-edition-ishige/

[Link]

Adequate Food for All Culture Science and Technology of

Food in the 21st Century 1st Edition Wilson G. Pond

[Link]
and-technology-of-food-in-the-21st-century-1st-edition-wilson-g-pond/

[Link]
Culinary Nostalgia Regional Food Culture and the Urban
Experience in Shanghai Mark Swislocki

[Link]
culture-and-the-urban-experience-in-shanghai-mark-swislocki/

[Link]

Local Food Environments Food Access in America 1st Edition

Kimberly B. Morland

[Link]
america-1st-edition-kimberly-b-morland/

[Link]

Local food environments food access in America Second

Edition Kimberly B. Morland

[Link]
america-second-edition-kimberly-b-morland/

[Link]

Mapping the Tasteland Explorations in Food and Wine in

Argentinean and European Culture 1st Edition Matias Bruera

[Link]
food-and-wine-in-argentinean-and-european-culture-1st-edition-matias-
bruera/
[Link]

Supersized strange tales from a fast food culture 1st ed

Edition English

[Link]
food-culture-1st-ed-edition-english/

[Link]
 Food Culture in

South America
JOSE RAFAEL LOVERA
Translated by Ainoa Larrauri

Food Culture around the World

Ken Albala, Series Editor

GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut - London
Library of Congress Cataloging^in-Publication Data
Lovera, Jose Rafael.
Food culture in South America / Jose Rafael Lovera ; translated by Ainoa Larrauri.
p. cm. — (Food culture around the world, ISSN 1545-2638)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-313-32752-1 (alk. paper)
1. Cookery, Latin American. 2. Cookery—South America. 3. Food habits—South
America. I. Title. II. Series.
TX716.A1L68 2005
641.598—dc22 2005005501
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2005 by Jose Rafael Lovera
All rights reserved. N o portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005005501
ISBN: 0-313-32752-1
ISSN: 1545-2638
First published in 2005
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, C T 06881
A n imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
[Link]
Printed in the United States of America

T h e paper used in this book complies with the

Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Illustrations by J. Susan Cole Stone.
T h e publisher has done its best to make sure the instructions and/or recipes in this book
are correct. However, users should apply judgment and experience when preparing reci-
pes, especially parents and teachers working with young people. T h e publisher accepts no
responsibility for the outcome of any recipe included in this volume.
 Contents

Series Foreword by Ken Albala vii

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Timeline xv
1. Historical Overview 1
2. Major Foods and Ingredients 39
3 . Cooking 77
4. Typical Meals 93
5. Eating Out 127
6. Special Occasions 137
7. Diet and Health 153
Glossary 165
Resource Guide 167
Bibliography 175
Index 177
This page intentionally left blank
 Series Foreword

The appearance of the Food Culture around the World series marks a
definitive stage in the maturation of Food Studies as a discipline to reach
a wider audience of students, general readers, and foodies alike. In com-
prehensive interdisciplinary reference volumes, each on the food culture
of a country or region for which information is most in demand, a remark-
able team of experts from around the world offers a deeper understanding
and appreciation of the role of food in shaping human culture for a whole
new generation. I am honored to have been associated with this project
as series editor.
Each volume follows a series format, with a chronology of food-related
dates and narrative chapters entitled Introduction, Historical Overview,
Major Foods and Ingredients, Cooking, Typical Meals, Eating Out, Spe-
cial Occasions, and Diet and Health. Each also includes a glossary, bibli-
ography, resource guide, and illustrations.
Finding or growing food has of course been the major preoccupation of
our species throughout history, but how various peoples around the world
learn to exploit their natural resources, come to esteem or shun specific
foods and develop unique cuisines reveals much more about what it is
to be human. There is perhaps no better way to understand a culture, its
values, preoccupations and fears, than by examining its attitudes toward
food. Food provides the daily sustenance around which families and com-
munities bond. It provides the material basis for rituals through which
people celebrate the passage of life stages and their connection to divinity.
Vlll Series Foreword

Food preferences also serve to separate individuals and groups from each
other, and as one of the most powerful factors in the construction of iden-
tity, we physically, emotionally and spiritually become what we eat.
By studying the foodways of people different from ourselves we also
grow to understand and tolerate the rich diversity of practices around the
world. What seems strange or frightening among other people becomes
perfectly rational when set in context. It is my hope that readers will
gain from these volumes not only an aesthetic appreciation for the glo-
ries of the many culinary traditions described, but also ultimately a more
profound respect for the peoples who devised them. Whether it is eating
New Year s dumplings in China, folding tamales with friends in Mexico or
going out to a famous Michelin-starred restaurant in France, understand-
ing these food traditions helps us to understand the people themselves.
As globalization proceeds apace in the twenty-first century it is also
more important than ever to preserve unique local and regional traditions.
In many cases these books describe ways of eating that have already begun
to disappear or have been seriously transformed by modernity. To know
how and why these losses occur today also enables us to decide what tradi-
tions, whether from our own heritage or that of others, we wish to keep
alive. These books are thus not only about the food and culture of peoples
around the world, but also about ourselves and who we hope to be.

Ken Albala
University of the Pacific
Writing this book has been a challenge and a pleasure at the same time. A
challenge, because great efforts were necessary to compress the vast infor-
mation represented by the food culture of more than 12 countries. And a
pleasure, because for years I have been dedicated to the study of this topic
and because, as a South American, I am pleased to be given the opportu-
nity to spread this culture in the United States. Many people have made
contributions to this book. It would be impossible to mention them all,
but I want to refer to some of them either by name or in a general way, to
all of whom I express my most sincere gratitude. Both the editor of this se-
ries, Ken Albala, and the acquisitions editor of Greenwood Press, Wendi
Schnaufer, not only allowed me to be the author of this book, but also
patiently read each of the chapters, making suggestions and encouraging
me constantly throughout the work. I particularly want to express my pro-
found appreciation for the contribution of the numerous friends—experts
on the gastronomy of the different South American countries—who have
conversed with me during the journeys I have undertaken for a number
of years to the different zones of the continent. I must also express my
gratitude to two persons who worked as my research assistants, namely
Cordelia Arias Toledo and Marilyn Sivira, who were also involved in the
transcription of the manuscript. Similarly, I need to mention Ainoa Lar-
rauri, whom I hired to translate the manuscript—a task she performed to
my satisfaction. I had fruitful long talks with her aimed at guaranteeing
X Acknowledgments

that the English version accurately expressed my ideas and the informa-
tion I had gathered. I also want to thank Graciela Valery de Velez, among
other people, for help with recipes. I hope I have fulfilled the objective
of spreading the South American food culture, while I assume the entire
responsibility for any possible defects of my work.
 Introduction

Giving a detailed account of South American food culture is a challeng-

ing task. This continent comprises more than 10 countries, its inhabitants
do not all speak the same language, and the food traditions of the different
societies vary in some ways. People's diets are not only the result of certain
traditions—cultural heritage, cooking techniques, and so on—but they
are also strongly related to the geographical environment. The vast South
American continent can roughly be divided into four large zones, taking
into consideration geographical and cultural characteristics: the Andes,
the Llanos and Pampas, Amazonia, and the coastal areas.
The Andean region starts from western Venezuela and runs in a southerly
direction along Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina,
down to Tierra del Fuego. The Andes can be considered South America's
backbone. They feature a great number of mountains, plateaus, hillsides,
and valleys. Countless rivers run from their highlands, while perennial
snows cover their summits. Almost all climates can be found in this elon-
gated region, from hot to cold. It was the cradle of the only urban cultures
that existed in the region in pre-Hispanic times and, traditionally, the
place where the largest number of inhabitants would settle. Headquarters
of the most developed agricultural systems in ancient South America, the
Andes are the birthplace of the potato, which is a staple food of the con-
tinent, and the place where corn and beans were grown—two key foods
that were never totally displaced despite the transculturation process that
took place with the arrival of the Europeans.
Xll Introduction

The Llanos and Pampas zone not only refers to the Venezuelan and
the Argentinean plains, but also includes, by extension, the Brazilian and
Uruguayan ones, which can be put on an equal footing for the purposes of
the general classification that is being proposed here, although they are not
exactly equal. This zone features vast expanses of mostly plains—some of
which were seabeds, according to geologists—stretching from the central
region of Venezuela and running along northeastern Colombia, southern
Brazil, Uruguay, and practically halfway through Argentina, between the
Andes and the Atlantic coasts (from east to west) and between the At-
lantic Ocean and Patagonia (from north to south). These vast plains have
herbaceous vegetation and an average height of about 1,000 feet. The
climate in the Venezuelan and Colombian Llanos is mostly hot, whereas
that of the Pampas is temperate to continental. These regions were not
peopled by sedentary tribes; neither were they home to any urban culture
during pre-Hispanic times. With the arrival of the Europeans, cattle and
horses were introduced in the New World and reproduced copiously in
the Llanos and Pampas, to such an extent that their inhabitants—the
llaneros and the gauchos—are typically regarded as stockbreeders.
Amazonia, in a very broad sense, stretches to the north and to the south
of the equator and comprises the Guianas; southern Venezuela; southeastern
Colombia; parts of Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Paraguay; and the northern
half of Brazil. It is characterized mainly by lowlands covered by forest and
crossed by countless rivers, among which the most important are the Ama-
zon and the Orinoco. The climate is predominantly tropical. The zone had
been occupied by a few wandering tribes before the arrival of the Europeans
and, even today, is the least populated area in South America. A typical
foodstuff of this zone is cassava root, which is still a staple in the region.
The coastal zone, making up the continental perimeter and charac-
terized by lands at sea level, can be divided into three subregions: the
Atlantic coasts, which more or less stretch from the Guianas to Tierra del
Fuego; the Caribbean coasts, which actually correspond to the borderline
that runs from the mouth of the Orinoco River to Panama, but which for
cultural reasons generally include the shores of the Guianas; and finally
the Pacific coasts, which stretch from the borderline between Colombia
and Panama to Tierra del Fuego. This coastal zone has a variable climate,
but this is the area through which the Europeans entered the continent
and therefore was the home of the first settlements they founded. As it is
next to the sea, this zone has always profited from its bounty.
The arbitrary division here must only be taken as a guide that facilitates
locating typical South American dishes and as a simplified form of what
Introduction xin

could be called a gastronomical map of South America. Gaining a clear

picture of South American food culture requires first familiarizing oneself
with the history of its people, who are the result of a strong biological and
cultural mixing process that took place during the last 500 years. This
process gave rise to a new society with particular foodways that include
a mixture of the different cultures involved. Nowadays, the foods that
were mainly used by the Indians still play an important role in the South
American cuisine, though along with other foods that were brought by
the successive immigrations that took place during those five centuries. It
is particularly important to highlight that the South American region fea-
tures dishes, cooking techniques, and thus food habits, which have played
a role throughout history almost without modification for time immemo-
rial. Therefore, historical references are of key importance—or, rather,
are necessary for the understanding of a reality in which the past is still
alive.
Historically regarded as a woman's work, food preparation is in recent
times also performed by men. There are still two ways in which cooking
can be considered: in rural parts, the practices of the colonial times are
still in use; in urban areas, modernization brought about by urban sprawl
and new cultural transfers has transformed cooking.
South Americans eat at least three times in a day. The mealtimes vary
within the continent; there are differences among the countries. Dinner
is perhaps the most important of the three meals. In any case, the dishes
that are typical for each of these three occasions will be presented insofar
as is possible.
Most meals are eaten at home, but there have been food vendors on the
streets, in the markets, and even along the pathways since colonial times.
During republican times, restaurants, cafes, and other public food stands
began to appear, which led people—especially in a city—to spontane-
ously or by necessity start eating out more frequently.
South Americans celebrate a great number of both secular and religious
events that involve food. For many of these celebrations, special dishes
are served.
Regarding nutrition, South Americans preserve some ancient traditions
from the pre-Columbian or the colonial times, but they also have up-to-
date dietary knowledge—especially in the cities. Studies have been done
on the calorie content of the typical diet of tropical lands, as well as on
the nutritional values of the staple foods. In contemporary times, certain
socioeconomic problems have brought about changes in the food habits,
which have had important effects on the population's health.
This page intentionally left blank
 Timeline

6000-3000 B.C. Gourds (Curcubita pepo) are present in Peru.

5800 B.C. Beans (Phaseolus lunatus) are present on the central coast of
Peru.

5000 B.C. Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) are cultivated in the Andean

zone.
4000 B.C. Corn pollen is present in Ecuadorian Amazonia.

3000 B.C. Corn {Zea mays) spreads from Central America to North and
South America.
2500 B.C. Algae is consumed in coastal Peru.
2000 B.C. Peanuts (Arachis hypogea L.) are cultivated in Peru.

2000-1900 B.C. Potatoes are cultivated in Peru. Perhaps they were domesti-
cated in Venezuela by this time.

1400-900 B.C. Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is cultivated in Colombia and

Venezuela.

Corn is cultivated on the Pacific coast and the western moun-

tain range of Ecuador and Peru, the eastern and central moun-
tain range of Bolivia, and the northern mountain range of
Argentina.

1000-900 B.C. Potatoes are cultivated in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecua-
dor.
XVI Timeline

Sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) are cultivated in Venezuela,

Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

700 B.C. Aztecs and Incas are the first to be credited with trading and
consuming of tomatoes.

600-500 B.C. Squash (Cucurbita maxima) is present in Argentina.

500-600 A.D. Cassava is domesticated in Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana,

and Brazil.

600-700 Squash is present in northern Chile.

1400-1500 Terrace cultivation (andenes) is practiced in the Andean zone.

1498 Italian explorer Christopher Columbus catches sight of the

South American coasts for the first time when he sails into the
Gulf of Paria, between Venezuela and Trinidad.

1500-1600 Sorghum (Sorghum vulgare) from Africa is introduced to Bra-

Wheat (Triticum spp.) is cultivated in Venezuela, Colombia,

Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.

The cultivation of rice (Oryza sativa) begins in Venezuela, Bra-

zil, and Bolivia.

Bananas (Musa spp.) are domesticated in Colombia, Ecuador,

Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia.
Yams (Dioscorea alata), native to Africa, are brought to Brazil,
Peru, Guyana, and Suriname along with the African slaves.
Sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) is cultivated in Venezuela,
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina.

Sweet potatoes are cultivated in Guyana, Suriname, French

Guiana, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina.

1500 Expedition led by Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvarez Cabral

reaches the coasts of Brazil.

1509 Spanish navigator Juan de la Cosa, sailing for Spain, arrives in

Turbaco, Colombia.

1516 In February, Juan Diaz de Soils, a Spanish navigator, reaches

the mouth of the River Plate in Argentina.

1519 Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan catches sight of the

coasts of Brazil, particularly the Cape of San Agustm.
Timeline xvii

1520 The Portuguese start producing sugar in Brazil.

1521 Brother Bartolome de las Casas founds the first mission on the
mainland, in Cumana, Venezuela.

1524 Inca prince, Huayna Capac, dies in Quito and his sons Huascar
and Atahualpa start fighting each other for control of the em-
pire.

1527 Spanish conqueror Juan de Ampies founds the city of Coro in

western Venezuela.

1532 Francisco Pizarro, a Spanish conqueror, finally arrives in Peru

and manages to take control of the Inca Empire. Portuguese nav-
igator Martim Afonso de Sousa establishes a colony in Brazil.

1542 The Viceroyalty of Peru is created.

1546 Francisco de Orellana carries out the Amazon River expedi-

tion.

1555 Andres Laguna's work Pedacio Dioscorides Anazarbeo, acerca

de la materia medicinal y de los venenos mortiferos (Pedacio Di-
oscorides Anazarbeo, Concerning Medicinal Material and
Deadly Poisons), one of the most famous books on medicinal
plant repertoires, is published in Antwerp, Belgium.

1569 Colonists in Brazil enjoy a diet largely based on the dish known
as feijoada completa, a kind of cassoulet.

1590 The work Historia natural y moral de las Indias (The Natural
and Moral History of the Indies) by Jesuit missionary Jose de
Acosta is published in Seville, Spain.

1615 Cacao (Thebroma cacao L.) is first cultivated in coastal Venezu-

ela.
1677 Cacao is cultivated in Brazil.
1700-1800 Planned cultivation of rye (Secale cereale) takes place in Brazil
and Argentina.
Oats (Avena sativa) are introduced by the Europeans to Colom-
bia, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina.

1714 The Dutch bring coffee plants to Suriname.

1717 Viceroyalties of New Granada and Brazil are created.

1741 The existence of coffee in the province of Caracas (Venezuela)

is pointed out.
 Timeline

1776 Viceroyalty of the River Plate is created.

1800-1900 In the early nineteenth century, the book Cozinheiro Imperial ou

Nova arte do cozinheiro e do copeiro em todos os seus ramos (Impe-
rial Cook, or the New Art of Cooks and Butlers in All of Their
Fields) is published in Rio de Janeiro under the initials R.C.M.,
with a second edition in 1843.

1810 O n April 19, a governing junta is installed in Caracas.

O n July 20, a Patriotic Junta is installed in Bogota.

The independence of Buenos Aires is proclaimed on May 25.

In Santiago de Chile, independence from Spain is declared

with the installation of the governing junta on September 18.

1811 O n July 5, the Independence Declaration of Venezuela is

signed.

1816 The Congress of Tucuman meets on July 19 and declares the

independence of the United Provinces of the River Plate (now
Argentina and Uruguay).

1818 In Venezuela, the German physician J.G.B. Siegert develops

his amargo de Angostura, a beverage that improved digestive
well-being and that was then used in cocktails.
The Battle of Maipu allows for Chile's proclamation of inde-
pendence with the victory of the patriots.

1819 Simon Bolivar's victory in the Battle of Boyaca seals Colom-

bia's independence.
1820 The independence of Ecuador is declared.
1821 Simon Bolivar's victory in the Battle of Carabobo seals the in-
dependence of Venezuela.

Peru's independence is proclaimed on July 22.

1822 The Cry of Ipiranga takes place on September 7. The inde-

pendence of Brazil from the Portuguese Crown is proclaimed.
A monarchic regime is adopted, led by Don Pedro I, who is
proclaimed Brazil's emperor on December 12.

Antonio Jose de Sucre's victory in the Battle of Pichincha seals

the independence of Ecuador.

1824 Antonio Jose de Sucre and Simon Bolivar's victory in the Bat-
tle of Ayacucho seals the independence of Peru.
Timeline XIX

1828 The book Elementos de Hijiene (Elements of Hygiene) by Jose

Felix Melizalde is published in Bogota, Colombia.

1848 The Manual del cocinero prdctico (Handbook of the Practical

Cook) by Antonia and Isabel Errazuriz is published in Val-
paraiso, Chile.

1853 The work Manual de artes, oficios, cocina y reposteria (Handbook

of Arts, Trades, Cooking, and Baking) is published in Bogota,
Colombia.

1861 The text entitled Cocina campestre (Country Cooking) is pub-

lished in Venezuela as part of the work El agricultor venezolano
(The Venezuelan Farmer) by Jose A. Diaz.

1866 The Manual de buen gusto que facilita el modo de hacer los dulces,
budines, colaciones y pastas y destruye los errores en tantas rece-
tas mal copiadas (Handbook of Good Taste that Facilitates the
Preparation of Sweet Dishes, Puddings, Cookies, and Pastries,
and Eliminates the Mistakes Made During the Copying of So
Many Recipes), by Valentin Ibanez, is published in Arequipa,
Peru.

1868 The first edition of the work Coleccion de medicamentos indige-

nas (Collection of Native Medicines), by Geronimo Pompa, is
published in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela.

1889 Brazil is proclaimed a republic on November 15.

1890 Juana Manuela Gorriti's work Cocina eclectica (Eclectic Cui-

sine) is published in Argentina.
1893 El cocinero prdctico (The Practical Cook) is published in Quito,
Ecuador, under the initials A . G .

1900-2000 In the early twentieth century, the first electrical appliances

(gas and kerosene stoves, fridges) start to be imported to South
America, mainly from the United States.

1928 First institute for nutritional matters in South America, the

Instituto de Nutricion de Argentina, is founded.

1931 Brazil establishes a National Coffee Department. The collapse

of the world coffee market brings about an economic disaster
and helps precipitate a revolt in the southern provinces. The
Coffee Department aims to supervise the destruction of large
quantities of Brazil's chief export item in order to maintain
good prices in the world market.
XX Timeline

1945 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is founded.

1950s Importation of electric stoves, blenders, and other household

appliances such as microwaves begins to increase, while the
food industry also begins to expand (canned and frozen foods
and pasteurized milk, among others).

1970s-2004 Professional culinary art schools are founded in South America.

 1
Historical Overview

The South American continent, which begins with the eastern border of
the Republic of Panama, has a total area of more than 7 million square
miles, roughly twice as large as the United States. This vast territory rep-
resents 12 percent of the earth's surface. It consists of 12 independent
countries and a French colony. From north to south, these countries are
Venezuela, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia,
Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, plus the French overseas depart-
ment called French Guiana. The South American population amounts
to slightly more than 350 million inhabitants (almost 6 percent of the
world's population), 75 percent of whom currently live in cities. Two
languages are mainly spoken in this continent: Spanish and Portuguese.
However, in some regions people commonly speak indigenous languages,
such as Quechua and Aymaran (Peru and Bolivia) or Guarani (Paraguay).
Catholicism is the major religion.
Since this sociopolitical scene is the result of a lengthy history, its fun-
damental cultural and historical milestones are provided for the context
needed to understand South American food culture.

THE PEOPLE
Giving a historical account of the current South American societies is
not an easy task, because they go back thousands of years and are char-
acterized by considerable complexity and cultural variety. Therefore, the
2 Food Culture in South America

most relevant aspects will be presented, as well as examples that would

allow the most comprehensive overview as possible. Many issues related
to the history of this continent remain controversial. There are still de-
bates on the origins of the human being in the Americas and, particularly,
the first inhabitants of that region. There are some areas, such as the trop-
ical rain forest, that lack a precise historical account, because not enough
archaeological excavations have been carried out there. Besides, there are
still important gaps concerning the post-Colombian period, especially in
terms of regional history.

Indigenous Peoples
According to archaeologists and anthropologists, the vast continental
territory called South America was settled by successive waves of im-
migrants coming from Central America and the Pacific Islands. Most
specialists agree that the first settlers of the North American continent
arrived from Asia through the Bering Strait during the Pleistocene Era
(40,000-35,000 B.C.) and that they continued south along the Pacific
coast of North America toward Mexico, Central America, and South
America. They were primitive people using roughly carved stone tools.
They were nomadic hunter-gatherers, who traveled along the route as
they acquired their means of subsistence. Though at a slow pace, this first
migration wave eventually reached the southern end of the continent. In
the years that followed, approximately 12,000-10,000 B.C., a second wave
of settlers entered through the same northern point. They also owned
lithic tools, but these were somewhat more developed. This second wave
more or less followed the same route to the south.
Other scholars believe another migration wave entered through the
southern part of the continent on the side of the Pacific Ocean. These
experts argue that there are cultural similarities between Polynesians and
South American Indians, including the use of artificial irrigation, the pro-
duction of chicha (a cold drink made with corn), chieftaincy, the triangu-
lar plaited sail, and the sweet potato, among others.
Those people who went to live in South America underwent a cultural
evolution, and some of them even carried out agricultural practices. For
example, archaeologists have found evidence of both the cultivation of
potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) on Peru's Cordillera Oriental and Cordil-
lera Central (eastern and central mountain ranges), which can be traced
to around 8000-6000 B.C., and of corn (Zea mays) in Ecuador and Peru to
around 3100-1750 B.C. There is also indication of the growing of manioc
Historical Overview 3

(Manihot esculenta) in Colombia and Venezuela, dating back to approxi-

mately 1500 B.C.
Such agricultural development implied that these people had adopted a
sedentary lifestyle. This is how the first villages and cities started to appear
in some areas. When one comes to this point in history, it is almost in-
evitable to think about the Inca Empire, but it is important to make clear
that long before this domination took place, a number of other important
cultures had existed, which are referred to as the pre-Inca cultures. Some
of the most significant are the Chavin culture (1000-200 B.C.), which
settled on the northern part of the Andean mountain range (Cordillera
Andina) of what is now Peru and is considered to be the oldest Andean
culture; the Paracas culture (400-100 B.C.) and the subsequent Nazca cul-
ture (0-800 A.D.), which took hold along the southern coast of Peru and
the north of Chile; the Mochica civilization (0-600 A.D.) and the Tiahua-
naco or Tiwanacu culture (100-1000 A.D.), which settled in what is now
Bolivia; the Huari people (600-1100 A.D.), who had an influence on the
Peruvian northern, central, and southern mountains; and the Chimu cul-
ture (900-1400 A.D.). Other cultures developed in what is now Venezuela
and Colombia, namely the Timoto-Cuica and the Chibcha or Muisca cul-
tures, which settled in the altiplano central (central high plateau), and the
Tayrona culture, which took hold in the mountain range known as Sierra
Nevada de Santa Marta. The empire found by Europeans when they ar-
rived on the Pacific coasts of South America (i.e., the Inca Empire) had
extended all the way from the border of Colombia and Ecuador (in the
north) down to central-northern Chile (in the south). They were a rigor-
ously structured civilization in terms of their political organization. The
ruling sovereign was the Inca emperor; just below him was his family and
the military, which he used to preserve his power; then followed a great
number of officials and farmworkers. They did not have a writing system,
but they kept numerical and factual records with an accounting system
they had invented of knots on strings of different length and color called
quipus. Cities and villages surrounded by fields had developed in this vast
land, where everything was linked by an extraordinarily built and pre-
served road system. Two main roads went from north to south—one along
the coast and the other one along the mountain—with various intersec-
tions at the most important and strategic points. Along these trails there
were carefully spaced way stations called tambos that served as storehouses
and shelters for the messengers and the soldiers, who needed to rest and
stock up with provisions. In cities such as Cuzco and Quito, apart from
ordinary housing, they had built enormous palaces, temples, and fortresses
4 Food Culture in South America

with stone slabs so finely cut that they fit perfectly when put together. Even
today, there are traces of those magnificent buildings in the Peruvian and
Bolivian Andes. The emperor was considered a direct descendant of God,
so he married his sisters to guarantee pure-blood descendants. By the third
decade of the sixteenth century, the Inca emperor had died without hav-
ing decided which one of his two sons—Huascar or Atahualpa—would be
the next emperor, so the two brothers fought each other for control of the
empire and in the process placed its unity at risk.
Specialists in historical demography have not agreed yet on the number
of inhabitants of the Inca Empire. However, some of them accept the hy-
pothesis that this empire comprised no fewer than 30 million people. It is
very difficult to estimate the rest of the pre-Columbian South American
population, because it was represented by nomadic tribes and a cluster of
villages that have been identified only by means of unsystematic archaeo-
logical excavations, and because chroniclers of the conquest period have
not provided useful data on the issue.
A great number of tribes emerged in the rest of the continent (in the
Venezuelan coast and plains, the Orinoco-Amazonas region and the rest
of Brazil) and did not achieve the level of urban development that char-
acterized the Inca. They preserved a nomadic lifestyle or settled in small
villages made up of huts or bohios. A very similar panorama character-
ized Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, where the Guarani and the Char-
rua people constituted the main ethnic groups. In Chile, the Araucanian
people were the most relevant ethnic group, and finally, in the Southern
Cone, there were the Patagonians. The wide range of names and loca-
tions was a result of the existence of different cultures, among which were
different levels of agricultural development and culinary practices. This
was more or less the map of the South American ethnic groups before the
arrival of the Europeans.
Some of the cuisines of the South American indigenous population
will now be described. For simplicity, a general overview will be pre-
sented instead of a detailed account of the variety of diets recorded by
the very different native cultures in the past. Their diet was based on the
use of corn and cassava, supplemented with some leguminous plants as
well as animal proteins obtained through hunting and fishing or through
the domestication of animals, plus the use of a natural sweetening sub-
stance: honey. Their cuisine barely contained fats. Hot pepper was the
condiment of choice, although in the Andean region they used certain
herbs like huacatay, as well as rock salt; in the coastal regions they used
sea salt, though always in small quantities. The indigenous people knew
Historical Overview 5

how to make the best use of fire. They had learned how to cook their
food by placing it directly upon the heat or grilling it on wooden sticks
(barbacoa) in order to smoke it. They sometimes just placed their food
over the embers or on flat pottery made of fired clay (budares or aripos),
or even covered the food with leaves and buried it to cook it over stones
that had been previously stacked and heated by a fire until ready to be
used as a heat source (pachamanca). According to some chroniclers, they
built clay containers with their hands, which they used to boil liquids
by placing them over three stones of similar size that surrounded their
fires, although most of the time boiling was achieved by dropping hot
stones inside the pots. In the Andean region they mastered practices
to preserve certain foods like camelidae meat or game, as well as tubers
and fruits that used to be dried by exposure to the sun or to the very low
temperatures of the high plateaus called paramos. Their cooking utensils
included baskets; stone knives and axes; mortars or metates; wooden grat-
ers and spoon-like spatulas; containers made of certain dried fruits, like
the fruit of the totumo or calabash tree (Crescentia cujete) or the pumpkin
(Cucurbita maxima); and pottery.
The Indians did not use any tables, because they ate sitting on the
ground, putting the containers on leaves. They were not used to talking
or drinking water during meals. In the Andean region they ate three times
a day, while the tribes of the tropical zone only had two meals.
Their dishes were not as simple as it is commonly believed. Some good
examples of this sophistication would be the preparation of the casabe
and the cachiri (from Amazonia), as well as the arepa, the humita and the
chicha (from the Andes). The casabe is a bread made from bitter cassava
(Manihot esculenta)—a tuber that contains lethal hydrocyanic acid. Pre-
paring it involves using meticulous techniques, which range from shred-
ding the pulp and squeezing out the poisonous juice (yare), to then baking
big round flat breads about half a centimeter (1/4 inch) thick from the
obtained flour (catibia) on round clay griddles.
Such extraordinary culinary techniques should be considered innova-
tions of high value, taking into account that countless humans relied upon
the end product for sustenance for at least two millennia. The casabe was
also the first food the Indians could put into storage, which provided them
with a means of survival during shortages.
Corn (Zea mays)—another staple food in the indigenous cuisine—was
used for the preparation of different dishes. Making arepas (another type
of native bread) required the application of a number of techniques: first,
the grains had to be removed from the corncobs once they had been dried;
6 Food Culture in South America

then, they had to be boiled and ground in the metate until a dough was
obtained, which was shaped into small flat balls and then cooked on a
budare placed over the embers. The humita or huminta was a bread bun
made from fresh corn (choclo) wrapped in its leaves and then boiled. As
for the chicha, its preparation required not only separating the kernels
from the corncobs, but also fermenting and grinding the corn, which was
often performed by women who chewed it.
It did not take long for this scene to change when the Europeans ar-
rived and extended their dominance, which implied the extermination of
a large number of natives by means of simple elimination, the transmis-
sion of diseases that did not previously exist in the continent, the pasture
of camelidae (llama, vicuna, and alpaca), and the changes made to the
land farming system and the diet itself.

Europeans
In 1498 Italian navigator Christopher Columbus decided to embark on
his third journey, in order to return to the islands he had "discovered"
six years earlier. In the beginning of August of that same year, he acci-
dentally landed in the south coast of the island of Trinidad because of a
miscalculation, and sailed into the Gulf of Paria near the mouth of the
Orinoco River, where he sighted for the first time the north coasts of
South America. At first, he thought he had landed in the coast of a huge
island. It was not until some time later that he realized he had reached a
continent. This geographical fact was confirmed with the subsequent voy-
ages of Columbus and other sailors serving the king and queen of Spain.
This region comprising the east, north, and west coasts of Venezuela was
called Tierra Firme (mainland). Following in Columbus's footsteps, the
Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci also decided to travel to the new
continent, although he claimed he had reached its coasts before Colum-
bus, in 1497. This man is particularly interesting because the New World
Columbus had discovered was named after Vespucci. How is this possible?
In 1507, in a small town of Lorraine called Saint Die, a group of scholarly
men decided to revise Ptolemy's well-known Geography, and since they
had read Vespucci's letter regarding his journey and his claim of having
found a New World, they decided to include it at the end of the treatise,
which was published in 1507 under the title Cosmographiae Introductio. It
stated that a new continent had been discovered and they decided to des-
ignate it America in honor of the Florentine seafarer. They also included
in this work a world map made by one of the editors, Martin Waldseemul-
Historical Overview 7

ler, in which the word "America" was used to name the recently discov-
ered lands that corresponded to South America. But it was not until 1538,
when the famous cartographer Mercator published his well-known Atlas,
that this name started to be applied also to the north portion of the New
World. Since then, there was not only a South America, but also a North
America. The work published in 1507 was so successful that in that same
year seven editions had been produced, which enabled the quick spread-
ing of the name America.
The remarkable discoveries carried out at the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury and thereafter were due to the actions taken by the kingdoms of
Spain and Portugal—the only European nations that were relevant naval
powers at that time. They were known for the large number of extraor-
dinarily courageous and vigorous domestic and foreign sailors, explorers,
and soldiers who had decided to serve these nations, winning for them
most of the discovered lands. Soon after the explorations began, a great
rivalry broke out between the Spanish and the Portuguese regarding the
rights they had or would have in the future over the New World. As was
usual at that time, the two rivals decided that their controversy on the
possible rights to conquer and colonize those lands would be settled by
the then pope, Alexander VI. In May 1493, the pope issued a bull called
Inter caetera, which drew an imaginary line on the globe 100 leagues west
of the Azores islands and granted the Spanish all lands to the west of
the line and the Portuguese those on the east. This line was later moved
270 leagues further west with the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in June
1494 by the monarchs of the two rival countries. The division decreed
by this agreement extended 48 degrees west of the Greenwich Meridian.
Taking into consideration that people did not know what the geography
of the South American continent was like at that time, it is particularly
remarkable that this dividing line coincided almost precisely with a series
of well-defined natural obstacles that extended from north to south. The
most important of these obstacles was the vast Amazonian rain forest,
which buffered against a collision between the two European powers for
many years.
So the Spanish and the Portuguese started to conquer territories and
establish colonies within the limits that had been set for them. This was
an easier enterprise for the Spanish, because they found well-organized
government systems dependent on a central power, like in the case of
Nueva Granada (now Colombia) and Peru, which enabled them—by
taking control over the supreme centers of power—to dominate the rest
of the population, which was accustomed to submitting to authority
8 Food Culture in South America

without resistance. Before the end of the sixteenth century, the Spanish
colonial empire had reached its peak in terms of geographic expansion.
Between 1520 and 1590 no fewer than 60 cities were founded, among
which are the capitals of the Spanish-speaking countries that exist today,
except for Montevideo, which was founded in 1726. These capital cit-
ies were Quito (1534), Lima (1535), Buenos Aires (1536), Asuncion
(1537), Bogota (1538), Santiago de Chile (1541), La Paz (1548), and
Caracas (1567).
Around 25,000 Spaniards are estimated to have traveled from Spain
to South America from 1493 to 1600. However, the white population
residing in this portion of the New World is said to have amounted to
85,500 inhabitants by the year 1570, while the African slaves, mestizos (a
mix of indigenous and white), and mulattoes (a mix of black and white)
numbered 169,000. The estimated number of the indigenous population
was some 5,750,000. This demographic description reveals the growing
number of Spanish descendants, as well as a significant increase in the
number of descendants resulting from the mix of Spanish and the rest of
the population. It also shows that there was still a very large number of
indigenous people.
The Portuguese are said to have proceeded at a slower pace, as they had
to deal with rebel tribes located in what is now Brazil and spread through-
out large expanses of land. They settled along the Atlantic coasts and
were left exposed to attacks from indigenous tribes from the interior or
from other European sailing nations coming from the sea, as was the case
of the French and the Dutch. During the same period used to account for
the number of cities founded by the Spanish, the Portuguese only man-
aged to establish 11 new cities. Three of them are still very important
nowadays: Pernambuco (1536), Bahia (1549), and Rio de Janeiro (1565).
They would have probably been more successful if they had not embarked
on the project of establishing and maintaining an empire in the East In-
dies at the same time. Besides, Portugal's population and resources were
much smaller than those of the Spanish.
The contingent of conquerors and colonizers was heterogeneous. As for
Spain, there were Andalusians, Castilians, Catalans, Basques, Aragonese,
and Galicians. It can be said that the notion of the "Spanish people"
emerged in the Americas, because the different Iberian countries that
embarked on the venture of colonizing it had to remain together in the
new lands as a whole block in order to be able to confront the indigenous
people. Especially during the first years, those who set sail for the new
continent were men who left their families in Europe or who were single.
Historical Overview 9

This was a military undertaking. They had to fight their inhabitants to

win new lands and subjugate them. So the number of European women
who went to South America was not significant. This factor contributed
to the mixing that took place between the Spanish and the indigenous
people.
Giving a general account of the European conquerors' diet is as chal-
lenging as describing that of the natives. In fact, this task would even
result in a more significant distortion of reality, because by the fifteenth
century the Iberian Peninsula—only referring to the Spanish and the
Portuguese—featured very precise and well-differentiated gastronomic re-
gions. These regions were so different that it is very difficult to generalize
in order to present a diet that applies to all the Iberian societies. Geog-
raphers have developed a gastronomic regionalization that could be used
to give an account of the European diet, although it dates from the twen-
tieth century. It records food traditions and habits that could perfectly
apply to the time before the discovery of the Americas if some adjust-
ments are made. In this sense, a main difference has been set between the
Mediterranean and the so-called Central European diets. The Mediterra-
nean diets include those of the former kingdoms of Andalusia, Granada,
Murcia, Valencia, Aragon, Catalonia, New Castile, a fair portion of Old
Castile, Leon, Galicia, Asturias, the Basque Country, Navarre, and a large
strip of land on the north of Aragon along the Pyrenees, as well as central
and southern Portugal. The basic difference between these two diets is
the use of lipoids: the Mediterranean cuisine is characterized by the use
of vegetable fat, specifically olive oil, while the Central European one
is known for that of animal fat, specifically lard or butter. Actually, the
Mediterranean diet is basically vegetarian, whereas the Central European
diet is meat-based.
A number of other differences in these two cuisines could be certainly
mentioned here, but the common gastronomic features represent a diet
similar to that of the Iberian conquerors who came to the New World.
The most important common features are the use of wheat and wine.
Wheat is Europe's grain of choice when it comes to making any type of
bread. All Iberian regions use it, although barley, rye, and oats were also
commonly used with that purpose, but to a lesser extent. In any case,
wheat has played the most important role, because since the beginnings
of Christianity it has been associated with religion, as bread made of
wheat was the only one that could be used for transubstantiation (i.e.,
consecrated in the Mass and considered to be the body of the risen Jesus).
Grapes are another key component of the European food culture. Wine
10 Food Culture in South America

was incorporated into religion too, as it was declared holy to represent

the blood of Christ in the Eucharistic sacrament, again by means of its
transubstantiation.
Apart from these two basic elements, some others that also featured
in the conquerors' typical diet, though to a lesser extent, are European
tubers (mainly turnips and carrots), bulbs (garlic, onions, chives, shallots,
leeks), stalks (celery, borage), leafy vegetables (cabbage, chard, spinach,
lettuce, endive, thistle), other garden vegetables (eggplant, cucumber, red
cabbage, squash), products from the orchard (citrus, figs, pomegranates,
almond fruit, peaches, quinces, olives), legumes (chickpeas, broad beans),
rice, and a great variety of aromatic plants (oregano, coriander, parsley,
thyme, marjoram, rosemary, bay, mint) and others that were used as con-
diments (saffron, capers). As for the meat, there were (in order of impor-
tance) pork, beef, sheep, goat, poultry, and some game such as partridge,
wild boar, and venison. It is also essential to mention a great variety offish
and shellfish caught in the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and
the different freshwaters.
Salt and honey were very ubiquitous in Iberian dishes. Later, they also
started using cane sugar, as a result of the Arab influence. In the book
Libro de agricultura, written by Abu Zacaria in the twelfth century, there
are already records of sugar production. The use of some spices from the
Far East—such as pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon—also spread
throughout the peninsula.
The Iberian cooking utensils were mainly made of metal or fired clay.
The cutlery was made of iron, as were gridirons, frying pans, cauldrons,
skewers, mortars, ladles, spoons, skimmers, and carving knives and forks.
Some saucepans were made of copper. Pitchers, deep pans, plates, trays,
and so on were made of china. Bottles, glasses, and different types of bowls
were made of glass. Some silver pieces should be also mentioned, as well
as mortars that were made of stone or wood.
Iberians cooked on stoves using different methods: stewing, frying, bak-
ing, or roasting.
The peninsular food culture was first influenced by the Goths, the
Greeks, and the Romans in ancient times. Then the Arabs came and cer-
tainly left their mark as a result of their long domination in a significant
portion of the territory.
The Iberian culinary practices had been recorded since the early Mid-
dle Ages in cookbooks that had been written by hand in royal courts and
convents. The books written in the convents are especially significant,
because many of the religious orders that established houses and con-
Historical Overview 11

vents in the South American continent brought with them their food
culture.

Africans
Throughout history all conquests have been characterized by the pres-
ence of violence, and that of the Americas was no exception. The indig-
enous people not only submitted to the authority of the Europeans, but to
a greater extent they were also enslaved by them. The natives were forced
into hard labor, which resulted in a considerable decrease in their popula-
tion. Although the Spanish monarchs decreed laws to protect the natives,
many atrocities were committed because of the failure to adhere to those
laws. Especially in the warm regions, the decrease in the indigenous popu-
lation—and the subsequent lack of labor force to work in agriculture and
mining—gave rise to the trade of African slaves, who were brought to the
continent to supplement such deficiency or simply because they were con-
sidered to be more resistant to arduous labor and the inclemency of the
weather. Africans were brought everywhere throughout the Spanish and
Portuguese empires. However, the largest contingents were brought to the
equatorial region. This new demographic element, which was culturally
heterogeneous, was another ingredient for the mixing that in the end re-
sulted in an extremely diverse population in terms of features and color.
The blacks who were brought to South America were native to the
lands stretching from below Cape Verde down to the Cape of Good Hope,
bounded by the vast Atlantic coast to the west. It remains unknown ex-
actly how far into the interior of Africa the Europeans penetrated in order
to get slaves. The largest contingents of black slaves who were brought
to the ports to be sold had probably been found in Africa's interior. The
major source area was generically called Guinea. Nevertheless, some of
the slaves brought to Brazil—where the slave trade carried on until the
middle of the nineteenth century—are said to have been exported from
Mozambique and even from some other African locations. A number of
scholars who have researched the slave trade from Africa to the American
continent have made partial estimates regarding the number of Africans
who were brought to South America from the beginning of the conquest
to the middle of the nineteenth century. The number of slaves trans-
ported to Brazil, for example, has been estimated at 4 million, whereas
those delivered in the former Spanish Empire (now the South American
Spanish-speaking countries) are said to have amounted to 2.5 million.
Although the estimates on these issues remain hypothetical, almost all
12 Food Culture in South America

historians agree that the number of slaves carried from Africa to South
America was much larger than that of the Europeans who crossed the
Atlantic with that same destination. However, not all South American
colonies belonging to the Spanish Empire experienced the same influx of
African slaves. For example, Venezuela and Colombia faced the arrival
of a greater number of Africans than those brought to Peru and Chile.
Before slave trade took place in Africa, the continent featured the coex-
istence of many cultures with their own typical diets. Although it cannot
be said that they were similar in every respect, they can all be integrated
for the purpose of this book, presenting a general picture of the African
food habits based on the many common characteristics they showed. For
example, vegetables played a key role in all African diets. Meat was not a
significant food for most of them, as it was often eaten by rich tribe chiefs,
the nobility, and a few hunting tribes. The great majority of Africans did
not eat it—only very little and on formal occasions. Some tribes, such as
the Jolofo and the Mandingo, raised cattle, sheep, and goats. Sheep and
goat were eaten more frequently, as their meat was thought to be supe-
rior to that of cattle. This was probably due to the fact that cattle used
to be attacked by the tsetse fly. The animals that were mostly hunted by
the African tribes were the antelope, the oryx, the gazelle, and the hare.
There were also certain groups who basically hunted giraffes, hippopota-
muses, and elephants. They fished to such an extent, both in the sea and
in freshwaters, that fish must be included in this general account of the
African food culture.
The diet of the people living in most parts of these areas depended on
agriculture, which they practiced through techniques as rudimentary as
those used by the Indians in South America. The African diet featured
the following key ingredients: three native grains, namely millet (Pen-
nisetum typhoideum), sorghum (Sorghum vulgare), and a wild rice variety
(Oriza glaberrima); a rhizome, namely yams (Dioscorea alata); a number of
legumes, namely cowpeas (Vigna sinensis), broad beans (Viciafaba), chick-
peas (Cicer arietinum), and lentils (Lens culinaris); as well as squashes,
eggplants, cabbages, cucumbers, onions, and garlic. Their typical fruits
were melons, watermelons, tamarinds, dates, figs, baobab fruits (Adansonia
digitata), pomegranates, lemons, and oranges. As sweetening substances
they used honey and, to a lesser extent, cane sugar, whose cultivation was
introduced in earlier times (the eleventh century) by the Arabs and then
(in the fifteenth century) expanded by the Portuguese. Africans used very
little salt and seasoned their food with a variety of pepper (Piper guineense)
and ginger. They also used palm oil (from Elaeis guineensis) and a marga-
Historical Overview 13

rine from a tree called karite (Elaeis guineensis), although sesame oil also
played a role to a lesser extent.
Africans used very few utensils to prepare their foods. They used grind-
ing stones, big pounding mortars, dried pumpkins used as bowls, wooden
containers and spoons, iron-made knives, and the skin of goats sewed into
bags to store grain. They were accustomed to sitting on the ground to eat.
They would put their food inside containers generally made of vegetables
and place them on leaves they put on the ground.
The stories told by travelers and slave traders, along with the concep-
tions the Europeans had of the blacks well from the start—that they were
strong and had robust constitutions—are why they considered them fit to
do the hardest labor, and are what could be a reason to believe that the
African diet was highly nutritional.

Other Immigrations
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a series of pro-independence
movements started to emerge, which later on consolidated and put an end
to the Spanish domination in the 1820s. Those were the years of the
so-called Wars of Independence, which not only caused much shedding
of blood in the battlefields and the collapse of the Spanish administra-
tion, but also inner migrations, like that of Venezuelans traveling to the
south (until they arrived to Peru, Bolivia, or Chile) under the leadership
of Simon Bolivar. As is the case in any migration process, people do not
travel alone; they carry their customs with them and learn new habits.
Without a doubt, this situation laid the foundations for people to get to
know each other's traditions, especially food habits. It is very common,
therefore, to find Venezuelan recipes in Peruvian traditional cookbooks
or Peruvian delicacies within the Venezuelan cuisine. This is the case of
bienmesabe (a dessert prepared with eggs, sugar, and coconut) or chupe (a
soup similar to the North American chowders).
Brazil was an exception, because it did not gain its independence by
means of a war, but merely through political arrangements. When Na-
poleon's troops invaded the Iberian Peninsula, threatening the Braganza
monarchy of Portugal, King Joao VI fled with the whole royal family to
Brazil, where he ruled until 1821, when he could return to Lisbon, as Por-
tugal had been recovered. He left his son Pedro as regent in his vast New
World dominion. In the following year, the latter decided to declare Brazil
to be independent of Portugal and was proclaimed constitutional emperor
of the new country.
14 Food Culture in South America

Once they had consolidated the political and social process of their in-
dependence from the Iberian Peninsula, the South American countries
strove to establish new trade relationships with Europe, trying to enter
the international economic system. It is important to make a distinc-
tion between the experience of Brazil and that of the remaining territory
that belonged to the Spanish Empire, because the former did not fight
a bloody battle to gain independence, as was the case of the Spanish-
speaking countries. W h e n Brazil became an independent empire ruled
by a descendant of the Braganza family, the immigration policy carried
out in this new country was aimed at encouraging European immigrants
to go to Brazil. In the case of the colonies that had belonged to Spain,
the War of Independence took a long period of time—a bit more than
a decade—during which the immigration policy came to a halt and the
native population decreased because of the enormous loss of life caused
by the conflict. Once this last war had been overcome and the adminis-
trative issues had more or less returned to normal, European immigration
was fostered, playing a more significant role since the 1830s, which is
precisely the moment when the first immigration wave began. Based on
the argument that "peopling means ruling," the South American coun-
tries stimulated the import of technology and foreign human capital that
was able to operate it without having to train the local population, which
would have been a slow and expensive process. More than 70 percent
of the 59 million Europeans who left their continent with overseas des-
tinations between 1824 and 1924 went to North America, whereas 21
percent chose Latin America. Half of these 11 million people decided to
go to Argentina, a third chose Brazil as their destination, and a twentieth
went to the small country of Uruguay.
A first migration wave (1835-57) quietly manifested in South America
within the framework of governmental policies aimed at the establish-
ment of farming and craft-based colonies, most of which did not succeed
as expected, resulting in a fall in the population. This first European mi-
gration wave mainly headed for the United States. The colonies of Euro-
peans that had settled in South America during the first migration flood
especially included Swiss, German, French, Irish, Welsh, Spanish, and
Italian people, who totaled several tens of thousands of immigrants. Brazil
received the largest number of them, followed by Uruguay, Argentina,
Chile, Peru, and Venezuela.
The second migration wave lasted until 1930 and was more significant
than the first one. The farming population of less industrialized Euro-
pean countries massively migrated to the South American continent, as
Historical Overview 15

well as some Asian contingents from China, India, Syria, and Lebanon,
who arrived both in the north and the south of South America. The
Japanese mainly went to Brazil. Within this period, there was a better
situation in the South American countries, which helped them host a
large number of immigrants. In 1880 Europe started to suffer a strong
demographic pressure that could not be offset by the less industrialized
countries of the Mediterranean or Eastern Europe. As a result, an even
larger contingent of people started to migrate to the new continent—a
trend that lasted until 1935. Within the framework of this transoceanic
immigration movement, Argentina was the leading country in terms
of the number of immigrants received, which amounted to 3.4 million
between 1881 and 1935. Then followed Brazil, which received 3.3 mil-
lion immigrants between 1872 and 1940. Most of these people were Ital-
ian (the largest contingent), Spanish, Portuguese, French, and—though
in smaller amounts—Russian, Turkish, Yugoslavian, Polish, German,
English, and Japanese, among other nationalities. In Argentina, at least
three-fourths of the total number of immigrants decided to settle per-
manently.
A third migration movement was triggered by the Spanish Civil War
and World War II. In those countries that received the most immigrants,
such as Brazil and Argentina, the migration of foreigners into their
countries was restricted. Out of the 7,092,000 European emigrants who
traveled overseas between 1946 and 1957, 1,757,400 arrived in South
America. However, the region soon reopened as an immigration destina-
tion, first to Spanish citizens, who headed for Chile and Venezuela during
and after the Spanish Civil War, and then to other European citizens flee-
ing their countries in the postwar period, who chose the most attractive
places of the continent from 1946 to 1960, namely Argentina, Brazil, and
Venezuela.
The Asian immigrants started to arrive in South America in the mid-
nineteenth century. A n example would be the Chinese, who were hosted
by Peru starting in 1849. Between 1859 and 1874, 87,000 Chinese en-
tered the country, most of them becoming part of the agricultural labor
force. By 1876, Asians represented 1.9 percent of the total population of
Peru, according to the census carried out that year.
The turcos—who were not Turks, incidentally, but mainly Syrian and
Lebanese that were so called because of their Middle Eastern origin—
started to arrive to South America in 1870. They specialized in retail
and peddling, which is the reason why they would have to endure some
hostility thereafter. Nevertheless, they showed a great capacity to adapt
16 Food Culture in South America

to the new environment, to some extent due to their physical appearance,

which was very similar to that of the Southern Europeans.
While in Argentina most immigrants were European, Brazil recorded
a very significant immigration flow of Japanese starting in 1908. Their
contribution in terms of the number of immigrants began to grow in a
slow but progressive manner, until they became the leading immigrant
group and the foreign population that had mostly (92 percent) decided
to permanently settle in that country. Japanese immigrants, along with
European ones, settled on family farms located in Sao Paulo State. This
contributed considerably to the intensification and diversification of ag-
ricultural practices in that region—coffee being the most important agri-
cultural product.
At that time, a great number of workers called "coolies" started to arrive
from India. Some of them had been tricked into traveling to South Amer-
ica. In most cases, they escaped from the sugarcane or coffee harvest, or
from the laying of railroad tracks to go to the cities, thereby becoming a
floating population group that specialized in trade and street peddling and
contributed their food habits to some South American countries.
These immigration movements influenced the food culture of the con-
tinent by reinforcing the European culinary habits (i.e., their use of wheat
and wine, along with their meat-based diet). They did not have the same
influence everywhere. It depended on the number of immigrants who ar-
rived to each place, who mostly ended up settling in the cities. While the
Asian immigrants—especially Chinese and Japanese—influenced Peru's
and Brazil's food cultures, the Guianas and eastern Venezuela were more
influenced by the food habits brought from India, out of which the most
remarkable contribution is perhaps the use of curry, which remained un-
known in the rest of the continent for a long time. It is also important to
mention the contribution made by those coming from the Middle Eastern
Arab countries, as they helped—along with some Sephardic Jewish im-
migrants—to spread the enjoyment of some of their typical dishes, such
as unleavened bread, the sweets prepared with honey and almonds, and
lamb.
The establishment of restaurants was basically carried out by Italians
and Spaniards, who wanted to make their typical dishes known. Since
1950, the Chinese also made incursions into the meal-service business,
in which they proved to be very successful, so much so that it can be said
that it is almost impossible to find a South American village or city with-
out a Chinese restaurant. The type of Chinese food that prevailed in most
South American countries was Cantonese. Some of the dishes became
Historical Overview 17

very well known, such as spring rolls; rice or noodles with pork, beef, or
chicken and vegetables (seasoned with soy sauce); and desserts such as
small Chinese oranges and lychees.

Five Centuries of Mixing

During the 500 years that followed Columbus's arrival, a biological as
well as cultural mixing took place. The combination of the various food
cultures had a different evolution and intensity depending on the time
period—whether it was the colonial or the republican times—and the
immigration movement taking place. The process was much more intense
during the colonial times than afterward, but nowadays South Americans
are still suffering changes in their food habits, which are not so much a
consequence of the immigration of people anymore, but of the spreading
of food habits that are related to the "American way of life" that gains
ground thanks to the technological developments in the communication
networks and to the penetration of transnational food corporations.

Colonial Times
The mixing process was more intense in colonial times. A n expert in
the field of the conquest and its cultural effects in Latin America stated
the following:
In the field of folk culture, in a somewhat limited sense of the term, the processes
at work in the acceptance or rejection of the Spanish elements by Indian cultures
are less clear than in the two foregoing categories. We are dealing here with areas
of culture not of primary concern to State and Church and with areas of culture
in which obvious superiority either does not exist or cannot be easily recognized.
This is an area in which chance, and perhaps the personality of unusual individu-
als, both Spanish and Indian, seems to have played an unusual role. With re-
spect to such things as dietary patterns, superstitions, folk medicine, folklore, and
music, Spanish traits found themselves in competition with indigenous traits,
and often with no clear advantage.1
At first, the conquerors depended on the indigenous population to get
their food, so they got used to eating corn, cassava, and potatoes, as well as
tropical fruits such as pineapple, guava and soursop, among others. How-
ever, they never abandoned the hopes they had of reproducing their food
culture in the new lands, so as soon as they managed to pacify a territory
and establish cities, they started to transfer the vegetables and animals of
Europe to the new continent. An example of what Europeans brought to
18 Food Culture in South America

South America within this agricultural colonization process would be the

harvest of sugar cane and the processing techniques to obtain sugar from
it. This product faced fierce rejection by the indigenous people. Some
chroniclers of that time recorded that this sweetening substance would
not only make them feel sick, but also cause stomach problems, so they
considered it to be a cause for illness. Indians had a very similar reaction
toward meat, be it pork, beef, or sheep.
The Spanish were used to eating a lot and at least three times a day,
mainly because they had suffered real hardship in their homeland in the
past. So they tried to impose their dietary patterns on the indigenous pop-
ulation from the start, but these people had always been moderate in their
eating habits and suffered greatly. Some of them even died because of
the health-related problems arising from this imposition. Father Joseph de
Acosta, in his book entitled Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Natural
and Moral History of the Indies), wrote that one of the key causes for the
fall of the indigenous population may have been this change in their diet
imposed by the conquerors. 2 Nevertheless, it seems that the conquerors
never considered this to be a cause for an increase in mortality, as they
held that the products and food habits they were used to in Europe were
superior to those of the indigenous people. Their way of thinking is illus-
trated in the following quotation from a defender of the Spanish coloniza-
tion, the Jesuit Jose Nuix y Perpifia, in 1780:

The arts and the industry were brought to those people by the Spanish. They im-
mediately provided them with the tools needed to work the land and to manufac-
ture the most utilitarian goods. The deserts were filled with the animals needed
for agricultural, culinary and other practices. New fruits suddenly appeared on
the landscape, while the fields fulfilled the expectations and desires of the new
growers. The forests had been abandoned; the laborious hunting and hazardous
fishing practices were no longer carried out. The Natives did not live in their huts
anymore, but in comfortable and healthy dwelling places. They started to eat more
nutritious, delicious and ordinary food [italics added]; they stopped being naked and,
at the end, they were ashamed of their previous condition.3

This opinion is certainly typical of the conquerors' way of thinking and

does not exactly correspond to what really happened. Especially in the
countries with predominantly indigenous population (Colombia, Ecua-
dor, Peru, and Bolivia), most of the natives maintained their pre-His-
panic food habits for centuries. It is true, though, that a food hierarchy
was established, according to which the European edible plants (wheat,
grapevines, and olives) were considered to be superior to those of the New
World (corn, cassava, and beans).
Historical Overview 19

However, there is no doubt that after all this rejection, the Indians
adopted some of the European foods, while the Europeans definitely ac-
cepted many of the native ones as part of their culinary repertoire. For
example, in the beginning of the conquest, Europeans replaced quince
(Cydonia vulgaris Pers) with guava (Psidium guajava Raddy) to be able to
prepare the typical Spanish jam. They also began to use annatto (Bixa
orellana L.) because of the lack of saffron (Carthamus tinctorius L.), which
was very much used by the Spanish to dye their foods.
During the eighteenth century new tree species were brought to South
America. One of them, and probably the most important one, is the
mango (Manguifera indica L.), which acclimatized so quickly and spread so
effectively throughout the whole equatorial region of the continent that
many people thought it was native to the New World—although it had
originated in India, as its name suggests. Another tree that was brought to
the continent—in this case from the Pacific Islands—was the breadfruit
tree (Artocarpus communis Forst.), which is usually associated to the fa-
mous Bounty ship sent to transplant it; the nutmeg (Myristica fragrans L.)
and the tamarind (Tamarindus indica L.) were also some of these "trans-
oceanic plants."
By the eighteenth century, the cultural-mixing process that has been
referred to had brought about a type of cuisine that was practiced by the
members of the South American societies called criollas, as they in turn
resulted from the mixing of the various ethnic groups. There is a phrase
that has been found in documents dating from that century that helps to
define what this type of cuisine is about, namely "eating the country's own
way."

Republican Times
During the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, as already
mentioned, South America received new waves of immigration, which
allowed for the arrival of some other new foods. The influx of Europeans
at that time, for example, gave a boost to import trade, allowing for the
entrance of beer, turkeys raised in North America, and some tree species
like those of mandarin, grapefruit, and macadamia. New animals also ar-
rived in South America during this period, including fish such as trout and
salmon. These were mainly bred in the Andean region, from Venezuela
and Colombia (trout) down to Chile and Argentina (trout and salmon).
Other important transplants were those of soy, sorghum, and fruits such as
kiwis and raspberries.
20 Food Culture in South America

But perhaps the most important innovation that took place in South
America during the twentieth century regarding food habits was the
emergence of fast food, as a result of the basically urban trend toward
the adoption of the "American way of life." The first food that emerged
within this context in South America was the hot dog, which came to be
so successful—always in the urban environment—that by 1930 one could
already buy hot dogs in food stands on the street. The hamburger would
come next and rapidly spread throughout the region. Compared to the
hot dog, it was preferred in later times, because it was promoted by large
multinational corporations. Today, fast food restaurants selling hamburg-
ers in any South American city within everyone's price range has without
doubt resulted in its remarkable popularization.
It is also remarkable that there have been some interesting cases of
indigenous fast foods. In Venezuela, the arepas (type of breads made with
corn) have been the most popular food for as long as memory can recall.
They started to be sold in the 1950s in small restaurants called areperas,
where one could have them with either cheese, shredded or stewed meat,
black beans, or many other fillings, plus a batido (fruit shake). This snack,
which one could have very quickly and even standing, was equivalent to
a complete meal. These types of small restaurants can compete with and
sometimes even overshadow those selling foreign fast food.

EVOLUTION OF AGRICULTURE AND STOCK BREEDING

The inhabitants of South America, like those of the other continents,
have gone through all the different evolutionary stages throughout history
concerning their relationship with the environment. Such stages have
not excluded each other, but have rather overlapped during the transition
phases. As a result, different ways of life coexist nowadays, ranging from
gatherer tribes to contemporary agro-industrial enterprises. In between
these two extremes, intermediate agricultural and stock-breeding prac-
tices are found in the region even today. So anyone who would travel
throughout the whole South American region to conduct research on the
issue would certainly be in touch with all the different traces that make up
the history of agriculture. Some manifestations of the most representative
milestones in the evolution of food procurement will be presented here
in chronological order, with a brief description of some of them, as well as
remarks on their technological evolution since then and how the various
ways of life have survived until the present.
The first example to be introduced is that of the foraging peoples,
whose description has triggered much discussion among anthropologists.
Historical Overview 21

The pre-Columbian agricultural practices, especially the small produc-

tion units called conucos (in Venezuela and Colombia), chacras (in Ecua-
dor, Peru, and Chile), or rogas (in Brazil), will be particularly referred to.
Then, terrace cultivation, known as andenes in the whole South Ameri-
can Andean region, will be mentioned. There will of course be allusions
to the production units that appeared with the arrival of the Europeans,
that is, the haciendas (plantations) that allowed for the flourishing of the
colonial agriculture characterized by the production of many commercial
fruits, such as cacao and coffee. This evolution culminates in the creation
of plantations devoted to agro-industry. Finally, the domesticated animals
will be discussed, both those native to the New World and those brought
by the Europeans to be part of their farms and stockyards.

Gathering, Hunting, and Fishing

The early studies in ethnology considered the so-called primitive peo-
ples to be essentially nomadic and gatherers. Later, they were also referred
to as hunters and fishermen. These categories have been used for a long
time to describe them, but modern anthropologists have concluded that
it is very unlikely that those peoples had simply been gatherers or solely
gatherers, hunters, and fishermen, as research on such ways of life has
shown that the primitive peoples developed the domestication of plants
to a certain extent due to their foraging needs. So if one of these groups
specialized in the gathering of a certain type of fruit, it would then gain
knowledge—through practice and observation—on the growth of the
plants that produced that specific type of fruit, as well as on the appro-
priate time of year to harvest them. These people would even start to
introduce changes to the plants, paving the way for their domestication.
A similar process took place regarding their habits and the distribution
of animals throughout the lands. This basic relationship with nature that
was aimed at searching for ways to meet their needs for food provision,
clothing, and housing led to the development of agricultural and stock-
breeding practices that would result in the establishment of the group in a
fixed place and, therefore, in its transition to civilization.
The nomadic peoples living principally from gathering, hunting, and
fishing inhabited the vast rain forest area lying in the basins of the Ori-
noco and the Amazon rivers. Some examples are the ethnic groups from
the linguistic families Tupi-Guarani and Arawak, who were established in
the areas between the two rivers. But those peoples who resided on the
lands near the rivers—which were prone to flooding—developed simple
agricultural practices thanks to natural irrigation in a relatively short
22 Food Culture in South America

time. Some of these primitive tribes are still found in Venezuela, Brazil,
Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. They have preserved their pre-Columbian
Neolithic lifestyle with very little change. An example of the current
times would be the Nukak peoples, who are part of the Maku group along
with other hunter-gatherer tribes of the northwestern part of the Amazon
basin. These people first came into contact with missionaries in the 1980s.
Even though they incorporated the use of metal utensils like pots and ma-
chetes, they continued living according to their old customs in general
terms. Their staple food is cassava, which they now combine with other
manufactured products such as threshed rice, refined sugar, and pasta they
buy in town stores. They are still hunters, and their favorite game includes
monkey, bdquiro (peccary), terrapin, lapa (paca) or agouti, and certain
birds. They have significant knowledge of plants, and it can be said that
they are on the way to becoming farmers.

Simple Agricultural Practices

The infant agriculture practiced by South Americans before the arrival
of Columbus was based on the slash-and-burn farming method, which in-
volves clearing a patch of forest by cutting the trees and shrubs and setting
them on fire, in order to make the land fit to grow the crops. Even though
the nutrient-rich ashes served as natural fertilizers, the soil was depleted
in a relatively short time period, so they had to clear a new land patch and
shift their cultivation. This traveling form of agriculture was in keeping
with the nomadic lifestyle of primitive farmers.
The agricultural tools used were almost entirely limited to the macana
(a solid wooden sword-like weapon with fire-hardened sharp edges) and
stone axes used to cut down the trees, as well as the digging stick. The
latter was used to dig holes where cuttings (as for cassava), root sprouts
(potatoes), or seeds (corn) would be inserted. They did not know of the
plow, nor did they scatter seeds. Their small sown fields or conucos are still
found in some regions of South America. They have been used to harvest
crops in almost the same way for as long as memory can recall, although
in republican and more recent times they started to be fought as they were
considered a bad agricultural practice. Traditionally, the crops grown in
conucos were cassava or corn, beans, and pumpkins, and later also fruit
trees, both native (guava, soursop, etc.) and foreign (citrus and banana).

Developing Agriculture
The development of the South American agriculture mainly took place
in the Andean region by the sedentary peoples that established clusters of
Historical Overview 23

villages, like the Timoto-Cuica (Venezuela), important kingdoms like the

Chibcha (Colombia), and, last but not least, the Inca Empire or Tawuan-
tinsuyo (Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia). The agricultural practices recorded
in the Andean region included irrigation; fertilization, with guano (bird
droppings) in Peru, or manure from llamas, vicunas, and alpacas; terrac-
ing (necessary in those mountainous lands); and seed (corn) and tuber
(potato) selection. The terraces built on the mountain slopes were par-
ticularly significant; they were called andenes because they were typical of
the Andean mountain range. This system involved the creation of various
levels at different heights, where they could experiment on the cultiva-
tion of different species. This allowed them to find out which was the best
habitat for the cultivation of certain seeds, as was the case of the various
corn and potato varieties. The Andean peoples did not have plows either,
so they also used the digging stick to break up the land, as did their fellow
peoples from the tropical rain forest.
The Inca Empire not only recorded significant agricultural practices,
but also a very effective system of storage and distribution of crops, along
with an organized farming regime that allowed for an alternation of the
harvest of the emperor's lands with that of communal and even private
holdings.

Commercial Agriculture
The arrival of the conquerors brought about the establishment of pro-
duction units that were larger than the conucos and generally devoted
to only one kind of crop, while the andenes were abandoned to a great
extent. These new units were the haciendas, which were mainly used to
grow fruits destined for exportation. They were also intended for the cul-
tivation of highly demanded cultures that would be sold in the domestic
market. Europeans brought the plow, which was only used on flat or less
rough terrains. This was an unknown tool in the New World, and the type
brought by the Europeans to their colonies was the one used in Andalu-
sia (Spain). Plows were pulled by oxen yoked by the horns and mainly
used in the sugar-cane plantations—a plant native to Asia that had been
brought by the Arabs to Spain through the African northern coast, and
then transferred to the Americas.
The other important fruits cultivated in the haciendas were cacao (na-
tive to South America, according to the latest paleobotanical studies) and
coffee (native to Asia, and introduced in the eighteenth century in the
Caribbean region and then in Brazil and the rest of the continent). Due
to their intrinsic characteristics, the cultivation of these two cultures did
not allow for much mechanization, except for the processing phase. The
24 Food Culture in South America

harvest had to be performed manually, as did the weeding and the planta-
tions' maintenance.
The haciendas had been established by the conquerors and their descen-
dants, and since the agricultural practices carried out in them were of an
extensive nature, their owners were always keen to extend their holdings
however possible. This is how large estates came into existence. Within
the vast haciendas there continued to be conucos, small chacras, or rogas,
as the farmworkers and even slaves were allowed to have their own sown
fields, both for their subsistence and in order to provide the neighboring
haciendas and villages with food products that were called "the fruits of
the country." The evolution of the haciendas not only resulted in the
appropriation of vast expanses of land, but also in the establishment of
facilities to process the fruits: trapiches or ingenios (i.e., sugar-cane mills),
and oficinas or talleres (for cacao and coffee processing). It was in these
places that mechanization took place, at first depending on the force of
the humans or beasts (oxen, mules, and donkeys), then on steam, and
finally on electric power.
The haciendas were real power and population centers. Especially in
Brazil, cities originated mainly as a result of the plantations established
both by colonists and missionaries.

The Agro-Industry
In the middle of the twentieth century, modern production units
started to be founded, featuring a much higher degree of mechanization
and an economic organization aimed at producing fruits on a large scale
to be processed in the newly established food industries. A great techno-
logical transfer had taken place, which was aimed, in the food sector, at
the production of canned and packed foods—flours and other precooked
products—to meet the demands of the growing urban population. This
form of agricultural production began to gradually overshadow the role
of the haciendas, and it is currently the most important food-production
source. At this stage of the process, a great number of foreign corporations
with highly developed know-how arrived in the Americas. The large
agro-industrial companies started to compete with the hacendados (land-
owners) and, obviously, with the still surviving conuqueros (smallholders)
too. Canned foods were already used when these large foreign enterprises
were established; since the end of the nineteenth century, consumption
of canned foods had become a habit because of the growing importation
of these types of products. Large sugar and corn mills, along with factories
Historical Overview 25

of sardine and other canned fish, are some good examples of this new stage
that transformed the plantation world that had prevailed for a couple of
centuries.
In any case, none of the breakthroughs in the field of agriculture that
have been briefly presented here completely replaced the previously exist-
ing forms of land use, which is why old and modern agricultural practices
coexist today.

Domesticated Animals in Pre-Columbian Times

When the Europeans first arrived in South America, they thought the
domestication of animals had not yet taken place. Very soon, though,
as they conquered that part of the New World, they realized that the
domestication of animals and even stock breeding already existed there.
The native practices were very specific. They featured a whole hierarchy
of shepherds. Colonial chroniclers recorded in their stories the existence
of certain animals that had been incorporated by the Indians into their
everyday life, giving these animals names based on the similarities they
showed with the European ones, as they often did with most of the new
things they found in the Americas. For example, when they saw the cam-
elidae from the New World they called them earneros del Peru (Peru's rams)
or earner os de la Tierra (rams of the land), because they produced wool as
well as the rams from the Old World did; they considered certain mute
canines without hair to be "dogs," and certain web-footed birds that lived
mainly in lands below 1,200 meters (4,000 feet) to be "ducks."

Camelidae
These distant relatives of camels are the llama, vicuna, alpaca, and
guanaco. The former three had all been tamed by the natives, while the
last one was a wild animal they usually hunted. They all dwelled in the
Andean region and endured domestication not only to become beasts of
burden, but also to serve as a source of wool and meat.
The llama (Lama glama) was bred by the Incas, who were known to
have been shepherds. This practice allowed them to be promoted up to
a high social standing, as those who carried out pasturage activities were
organized in a hierarchy that ranged from simple herders to pasturage
chiefs—the latter enjoying great prestige. These animals were considered
to be holy and were often sacrificed in religious ceremonies, but they were
also used as a source of meat—called charqui once salted and dried—and
26 Food Culture in South America

as beasts of burden. The wool they produced was not of excellent quality
and was only used to make ponchos for the community. Due to the strict
organization that characterized the Inca Empire, llama sacrifices required
previous special authorization of the Inca emperor; those who infringed
this rule were harshly punished.
The alpaca (Lama pacos) is said to have originated in the Andes near
Lake Titicaca (between Peru and Bolivia), although they are nowadays
found in other highlands of Peru and Bolivia. Whereas the llama used
to be the Incas' beast of burden of choice, the alpaca was its main source
for fiber production. While the llama prefers living in dry, arid, and not
extremely cold environments, the alpaca needs to live in humid and even
swampy cold areas endowed with fresh pastures. Alpacas are shorn when
they reach two years of age—an activity that is always carried out during
the rainy season, as this is the time of the year when their fleece is the
cleanest. Alpaca wool is so fine that there were unsuccessful attempts to
transfer this species to Spain during colonial times. Other attempts were
also made in later times—in the middle of the nineteenth century—to
acclimatize alpacas in Australia, but they were not successful either. Al-
paca wool has been one of Peru's most important export items since 1836,
when the Englishman Titus Salt discovered a way of manufacturing very
fine cloth from this raw material. Like with the llama, the alpaca meat
is dried and salted with culinary purposes. About 18 kilograms of usable
meat can be obtained from a well-developed male specimen, while female
ones only produce about 9 kilograms. But these are not the only purposes
that alpacas can serve: their dried excrement can be used as fuel, which is
of great importance, taking into consideration that firewood is scarce in
the areas where they reside.
The vicuna (Vicugna vicugna)—very similar to the llama in terms of
its physical appearance—is the smallest among the South American ca-
melidae and also the most graceful and elegant. Its wool is as soft as silk
and is of a light brown color that is known as "vicuna color." It resides in
the Andean highlands, near the snowcapped mountains, up in the high,
humid grasslands. While this delicate animal is used to prepare a highly
prized cured meat, its preciousness comes from its wool. N o wool is as fine
and as delicate as that of the vicuna, which is why in the times of the Inca
Empire only the emperor and his family could wear clothes made from vi-
cuna. During the Spanish domination and then the republican times, vi-
cunas became endangered due to the expansion of uncontrolled hunting,
leading to successive banning of this practice and to the establishment of
strict regulations for its processing.
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
 JOHN PATERSON THE GOLFER.
In the Canongate, nearly opposite to Queensberry House, is a
narrow, old-fashioned mansion, of peculiar form, having a coat-
armorial conspicuously placed at the top, and a plain slab over the
doorway containing the following inscriptions:

‘Cum victor ludo, Scotis qui proprius, esset,

Ter tres victores post redimitus avos,
Patersonus, humo tunc educebat in altum
Hanc, quæ victores tot tulit una, domum.’

‘I hate no person.’

It appears that this quatrain was the production of Dr Pitcairn, while

the sentence below is an anagram upon the name of John Patersone.
The stanza expresses that ‘when Paterson had been crowned victor
in a game peculiar to Scotland, in which his ancestors had also been
often victorious, he then built this mansion, which one conquest
raised him above all his predecessors.’ We must resort to tradition
for an explanation of this obscure hint.
 Golfers’ Land.
Till a recent period, golfing had long been conducted upon the Links
of Leith.[251] It had even been the sport of princes on that field. We
are told by Mr William Tytler of Woodhouselee that Charles I. and
the Duke of York (afterwards James II.) played at golf on Leith
Links, in succession, during the brief periods of their residence in
Holyrood. Though there is an improbability in this tale as far as
Charles is concerned, seeing that he spent too short a time in
Edinburgh to have been able to play at a game notorious for the
time necessary in acquiring it, I may quote the anecdote related by
Mr Tytler: ‘That while he was engaged in a party at golf on the green
or Links of Leith, a letter was delivered into his hands, which gave
him the first account of the insurrection and rebellion in Ireland; on
reading which, he suddenly called for his coach, and leaning on one
of his attendants, and in great agitation, drove to the palace of
Holyrood House, from whence next day he set out for London.’ Mr
Tytler says, regarding the Duke of York, that he ‘was frequently seen
in a party at golf on the Links of Leith with some of the nobility and
gentry. I remember in my youth to have often conversed with an old
man named Andrew Dickson, a golf-club maker, who said that, when
a boy, he used to carry the duke’s golf-clubs, and run before him,
and announce where the balls fell.’[252]

GOLFERS ON LEITH LINKS.

Page 320.
Tradition reports that when the duke lived in Holyrood House he had
on one occasion a discussion with two English noblemen as to the
native country of golf; his Royal Highness asserting that it was
peculiar to Scotland, while they as pertinaciously insisted that it was
an English game as well. Assuredly, whatever may have been the
case in those days, it is not now an English game in the proper
sense of the words, seeing that it is only played to the south of the
Tweed by a few fraternities of Scotsmen, who have acquired it in
their own country in youth. However this may be, the two English
nobles proposed, good-humouredly, to prove its English character by
taking up the duke in a match to be played on Leith Links. James,
glad of an opportunity to make popularity in Scotland, in however
small a way, accepted the challenge, and sought for the best partner
he could find. By an association not at this day surprising to those
who practise the game, the heir-presumptive of the British throne
played in concert with a poor shoemaker named John Paterson, the
worthy descendant of a long line of illustrious golfers. If the two
southrons were, as might be expected, inexperienced in the game,
they had no chance against a pair, one member of which was a good
player. So the duke got the best of the practical argument; and
Paterson’s merits were rewarded by a gift of the sum played for. The
story goes on to say that John was thus enabled to build a
somewhat stylish house for himself in the Canongate, on the top of
which, being a Scotsman, and having of course a pedigree, he
clapped the Paterson arms—three pelicans vulned; on a chief three
mullets; crest, a dexter hand grasping a golf-club; together with the
motto—dear to all golfers—Far and Sure.
It must be admitted there is some uncertainty about this tale. The
house, the inscriptions, and arms only indicate that Paterson built
the house after being a victor at golf, and that Pitcairn had a hand in
decorating it. One might even see, in the fact of the epigram, as if a
gentleman wit were indulging in a jest at the expense of some
simple plebeian, who held all notoriety honourable. It might have
been expected that if Paterson had been enriched by a match in
which he was connected with the Duke of York, a Jacobite like
Pitcairn would have made distinct allusion to the circumstance. The
tradition, nevertheless, seems too curious to be entirely overlooked,
and the reader may therefore take it at its worth.
 [LOTHIAN HUT.
The noble family of Lothian had a mansion in Edinburgh, though of
but a moderate dignity. It was a small house situated in a spare
piece of ground at the bottom of the Canongate, on the south side.
Latterly it was leased to Professor Dugald Stewart, who, about the
end of the last century, here entertained several English pupils of
noble rank—among others, the Hon. the Henry Temple, afterwards
Lord Palmerston.[253] About 1825 building was taken down to make
room for a brewery.
About the middle of the last century, Lothian Hut was occupied by
the wife of the fourth marquis, a lady of great lineage, being the
only daughter of Robert, Earl of Holderness, and great-
granddaughter of Charles Louis, Elector Palatine. Her ladyship was a
person of grand character, while yet admittedly very amiable. As a
piece of very old gossip, the Lady Marchioness, on first coming to
live in the Hut, found herself in want of a few trifling articles from a
milliner, and sent for one who was reputed to be the first of the class
then in Edinburgh—namely, Miss Ramsay. But there were two Miss
Ramsays. They had a shop on the east side of the Old Lyon Close,
on the south side of the High Street, and there made ultimately a
little fortune, which enabled them to build the villa of Marionville,
near Restalrig (called Lappet Hall by the vulgar). The Misses Ramsay,
receiving a message from so grand a lady, instead of obeying the
order implicitly, came together, dressed out in a very splendid style,
and told the marchioness that every article they wore was ‘at the
very top of the fashion.’ The marchioness, disgusted with their
forwardness and affectation, said she would take their specimens
into consideration, and wished them a good-morning. According to
our gossiping authority, she then sent for Mrs Sellar, who carried on
the millinery business in a less pretentious style at a place in the
Lawnmarket where Bank Street now stands. (I like the localities, for
they bring the Old Town of a past age so clearly before us.) Mrs
Sellar made her appearance at Lothian Hut in a plain, decorous
manner. Her head-dress consisted of a mob-cap of the finest lawn,
tied under her chin; over which there was a hood of the same stuff.
She wore a cloak of plain black silk without any lace, and had no
bonnet, the use of which was supplied by the hood. Mrs Sellar’s
manners were elegant and pleasing. When she entered, the
marchioness rose to receive her. On being asked for her patterns,
she stepped to the door and brought in two large boxes, which had
been carried behind her by two women. The articles, being
produced, gave great satisfaction, and her ladyship never afterwards
employed any other milliner. So the story ends, in the manner of the
good-boy books, in establishing that milliners ought not to be too
prone to exhibit their patterns upon their own persons.]
 HENRY PRENTICE AND POTATOES.
No doubt is entertained on any hand that the field-culture of the
potato was first practised in Scotland by a man of humble condition,
originally a pedlar, by name Henry Prentice. He was an eccentric
person, as many have been who stepped out of the common walk to
do things afterwards discovered to be great. A story is told that
while the potatoes were growing in certain little fields which he
leased near our city, Lord Minto came from time to time to inquire
about the crop. Prentice at length told his lordship that the
experiment was entirely successful, and all he wanted was a horse
and cart to drive his potatoes to Edinburgh that they might be sold.
‘I’ll give you a horse and cart,’ said his lordship. Prentice then took
his crop to market, cart by cart, till it was all sold, after which he
disposed of the horse and cart, which he affected to believe Lord
Minto had given him as a present.
Having towards the close of his days realised a small sum of money,
he sunk £140 in the hands of the Canongate magistrates, as
managers of the poorhouse of that parish, receiving in return seven
shillings a week, upon which he lived for several years. Occasionally
he made little donations to the charity. During his last years he was
an object of no small curiosity in Edinburgh, partly on account of his
connection with potato culture and partly by reason of his oddities.
It was said of him that he would never shake hands with any human
being above two years of age. In his bargain with the Canongate
dignitaries, it was agreed that he should have a good grave in their
churchyard, and one was selected according to his own choice. Over
this, thinking it as well, perhaps, that he should enjoy a little quasi-
posthumous notoriety during his life, he caused a monument to be
erected, bearing this inscription:
 ‘Be not anxious to know how I lived,
But rather how you yourself should die.’

He also had a coffin prepared at the price of two guineas, taking the
undertaker bound to screw it down gratis with his own hands. In
addition to all this, his friends the magistrates were under covenant
to bury him with a hearse and four coaches. But even the designs of
mortals respecting the grave itself are liable to disappointment.
Owing to the mischief done by the boys to the premature
monument, Prentice saw fit to have it removed to a quieter
cemetery, that of Restalrig, where, at his death in 1788, he was
accordingly interred.
Such was the originator of that extensive culture of the potato which
has since borne so conspicuous a place in the economics of our
country, for good and for evil.
It is curious that this plant, although the sole support of millions of
our population, should now again (1846) have fallen under
suspicion. At its first introduction, and for several ages thereafter, it
was regarded as a vegetable of by no means good character, though
for a totally different reason from any which affect its reputation in
our day. Its supposed tendency to inflame some of the sensual
feelings of human nature is frequently adverted to by Shakespeare
and his contemporaries; and this long remained a popular
impression in the north.[254]
 THE DUCHESS OF BUCCLEUCH AND
MONMOUTH.
It is rather curious that one of my informants in this article should
have dined with a lady who had dined with a peeress married in the
year 1662.
This peeress was Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, the
wife of the unfortunate son of Charles II. As is well known, she was
early deserted by her husband, who represented, not without
justice, that a marriage into which he had been tempted for reasons
of policy by his relations, when he was only thirteen years of age,
could hardly be binding.
The young duchess, naturally plain in features, was so unfortunate
in early womanhood as to become lame in consequence of some
feats in dancing. For her want of personal graces there is negative
evidence in a dedication of Dryden, where he speaks abundantly of
her wit, but not a word of beauty, which shows that the case must
have been desperate. [This, by the way, was the remark made to me
on the subject by Sir Walter Scott, who, in the Lay of the Last
Minstrel, has done what Dryden could not do—flattered the duchess:

‘She had known adversity,

Though born in such a high degree;
In pride of power and beauty’s bloom,
Had wept o’er Monmouth’s bloody tomb.’]

Were any further proof wanting, it might be found in the regard in

which she was held by James II., who, as is well known, had such a
tendency to plain women as induced a suspicion in his witty brother
that they were prescribed to him by his confessor by way of
penance. This friendship, in which there was nothing improper, was
the means of saving her grace’s estates at the tragical close of her
husband’s life.
It is curious to learn that the duchess, notwithstanding the terms on
which she had been with her husband, and the sad stamp put upon
his pretensions to legitimacy, acted throughout the remainder of her
somewhat protracted life as if she had been the widow of a true
prince of the blood-royal. In her state-rooms she had a canopy
erected, beneath which was the only seat in the apartment,
everybody standing besides herself. When Lady Margaret
Montgomery, one of the beautiful Countess of Eglintoune’s
daughters, was at a boarding-school near London—previous to the
year Thirty—she was frequently invited by the duchess to her house;
and because her great-grandmother, Lady Mary Leslie, was sister to
her grace’s mother, she was allowed a chair; but this was an
extraordinary mark of grace. The duchess was the last person of
quality in Scotland who kept pages, in the proper acceptation of the
term—that is, young gentlemen of good birth, who acquired
manners and knowledge of the world in attending upon persons of
exalted rank. The last of her grace’s pages rose to be a general.
When a letter was brought for the duchess, the domestic gave it to
the page, the page to the waiting-gentlewoman (always a person of
birth also), and she at length to her grace. The duchess kept a tight
hand over her clan and tenants, but was upon the whole beloved.
She was buried (1732) on the same day with the too-much-
celebrated Colonel Charteris. At the funeral of Henry, Duke of
Buccleuch, in the year 1812, in the aisle of the church at Dalkeith,
my informant (Sir Walter Scott) was shown an old man who had
been at the funeral of both her grace and Colonel Charteris. He said
that the day was dreadfully stormy, which all the world agreed was
owing to the devil carrying off Charteris. The mob broke in upon the
mourners who followed this personage to the grave, and threw cats,
dogs, and a pack of cards upon the coffin; whereupon the
gentlemen drew their swords, and cut away among the rioters. In
the confusion one little old man was pushed into the grave; and the
sextons, somewhat prompt in the discharge of their duty, began to
shovel in the earth upon the quick and the dead. The grandfather of
my informant (Dr Rutherford), who was one of the mourners, was
much hurt in the affray; and my informant has heard his mother
describe the terror of the family on his coming home with his clothes
bloody and his sword broken.
As to pages—a custom existed among old ladies till a later day of
keeping such attendants, rather superior to the little polybuttoned
personages who are now so universal. It was not, however, to be
expected that a pranksome youth would behave with consistent
respect to an aged female of the stiff manners then prevalent.
Accordingly, ridiculous circumstances took place. An old lady of the
name of Plenderleith, of very stately aspect and grave carriage, used
to walk to Leith by the Easter Road with her little foot-page behind
her. For the whole way, the young rogue would be seen projecting
burs at her dress, laughing immoderately, but silently, when one
stuck. An old lady and her sequel of a page was very much like a
tragedy followed by a farce. The keeping of the rascals in order at
home used also to be a sad problem to a quiet old lady. The only
expedient which Miss —— could hit upon to preserve her page from
the corruption of the streets was, in her own phrase, to lock up his
breeks, which she did almost every evening. The youth, being then
only presentable at a window, had to content himself with such chat
as he could indulge in with his companions and such mischief as he
could execute from that loophole of retreat. So much for the parade
of keeping pages.
 CLAUDERO.
Edinburgh, which now smiles complacently upon the gravities of her
reviews and the flippancies of her magazines, formerly laughed
outright at the coarse lampoons of her favourite poet and
pamphleteer, Claudero. The distinct publications of this witty and
eccentric personage (whose real name was James Wilson) are well
known to collectors; and his occasional pieces must be fresh in the
remembrance of those who, forty or fifty years ago (1824), were in
the habit of perusing the Scots Magazine, amidst the general gravity
of which they appeared, like the bright and giddy eyes of a satyr,
staring through the sere leaves of a sober forest scene.
Claudero was a native of Cumbernauld, in Dumbartonshire, and at
an early period of his life showed such marks of a mischief-loving
disposition as procured him general odium. The occasion of his
lameness was a pebble thrown from a tree at the minister, who,
having been previously exasperated by his tricks, chased him to the
end of a closed lane, and with his cane inflicted such personal
chastisement as rendered him a cripple, and a hater of the clergy,
for the rest of his life.
In Edinburgh, where he lived for upwards of thirty years previous to
his death in 1789, his livelihood was at first ostensibly gained by
keeping a little school, latterly by celebrating what were called half-
mark marriages—a business resembling that of the Gretna
blacksmith. It is said that he, who made himself the terror of so
many by his wit, was in his turn held in fear by his wife, who was as
complete a shrew as ever fell to the lot of poet or philosopher.
He was a satirist by profession; and when any person wished to
have a squib played off upon his neighbours, he had nothing to do
but call upon Claudero, who, for half a crown, would produce the
desired effusion, composed, and copied off in a fair hand, in a given
time. He liked this species of employment better than writing upon
speculation, the profit being more certain and immediate. When in
want of money, it was his custom to write a sly satire on some
opulent public personage, upon whom he called with it, desiring to
have his opinion of the work, and his countenance in favour of a
subscription for its publication. The object of his ridicule, conscious-
struck by his own portrait, would wince and be civil, advise him to
give up thoughts of publishing so hasty a production, and conclude
by offering a guinea or two to keep the poet alive till better times
should come round. At that time there lived in Edinburgh a number
of rich old men who had made fortunes in questionable ways
abroad, and whose characters, labouring under strange suspicions,
were wonderfully susceptible of Claudero’s satire. These the wag
used to bleed profusely and frequently by working upon their fears
of public notice.
In 1766 appeared Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, by Claudero, Son
of Nimrod the Mighty Hunter, &c., &c., opening with this preface:
‘Christian Reader—The following miscellany is published at the desire
of many gentlemen, who have all been my very good friends; if
there be anything in it amusing or entertaining, I shall be very glad I
have contributed to your diversion, and will laugh as heartily at your
money as you do at my works. Several of my pieces may need
explanation; but I am too cunning for that: what is not understood,
like Presbyterian preaching, will at least be admired. I am regardless
of critics; perhaps some of my lines want a foot; but then, if the
critic look sharp out, he will find that loss sufficiently supplied in
other places, where they have a foot too much: and besides, men’s
works generally resemble themselves; if the poems are lame, so is
the author—Claudero.’
The most remarkable poems in this volume are: ‘The Echo of the
Royal Porch of the Palace of Holyrood House, which fell under
Military Execution, anno 1753;’ ‘The Last Speech and Dying Words of
the Cross, which was Hanged, Drawn, and Quartered on Monday the
15th of March 1756, for the horrid crime of being an Incumbrance to
the Street;’ ‘Scotland in Tears for the horrid Treatment of the Kings’
Sepulchres;’ ‘An Elegy on the much-lamented Death of Quaker
Erskine;’[255] ‘A Sermon on the Condemnation of the Netherbow;’
‘Humphry Colquhoun’s Last Farewell,’ &c. Claudero seems to have
been the only man of his time who remonstrated against the
destruction of the venerable edifices then removed from the streets
which they ornamented, to the disappointment and indignation of all
future antiquaries. There is much wit in his sermon upon the
destruction of the Netherbow. ‘What was too hard,’ he says, ‘for the
great ones of the earth, yea, even queens, to effect, is now
accomplished. No patriot duke opposeth the scheme, as did the
great Argyll in the grand senate of our nation; therefore the project
shall go into execution, and down shall Edina’s lofty porches be
hurled with a vengeance. Streets shall be extended to the east,
regular and beautiful, as far as the Frigate Whins; and
Portobello[256] shall be a lodge for the captors of tea and brandy.
The city shall be joined to Leith on the north, and a procession of
wise masons shall there lay the foundations of a spacious harbour.
Pequin or Nanquin shall not be able to compare with Edinburgh for
magnificence. Our city shall be the greatest wonder of the world,
and the fame of its glory shall reach the distant ends of the earth.
[257] But lament, O thou descendant of the royal Dane, and chief of
the tribe of Wilson; for thy shop, contiguous to the porch, shall be
dashed to pieces, and its place will know thee no more! No more
shall the melodious voice of the loyalist Grant[258] be heard in the
morning, nor shall he any more shake the bending wand towards the
triumphal arch. Let all who angle in deep waters lament, for Tom
had not his equal. The Netherbow Coffee-house of the loyal Smeiton
can now no longer enjoy its ancient name with propriety; and from
henceforth The Revolution Coffee-house shall its name be called.
Our gates must be extended wide for accommodating the gilded
chariots, which, from the luxury of the age, are become numerous.
With an impetuous career, they jostle against one another in our
streets, and the unwary foot-passenger is in danger of being crushed
to pieces. The loaded cart itself cannot withstand their fury, and the
hideous yells of Coal Johnie resound through the vaulted sky. The
sour-milk barrels are overturned, and deluges of Corstorphin cream
run down our strands, while the poor unhappy milkmaid wrings her
hands with sorrow.’ To the sermon are appended the ‘Last Speech
and Dying Words of the Netherbow,’ in which the following laughable
declaration occurs: ‘May my clock be struck dumb in the other world,
if I lie in this! and may Mack, the reformer of Edina’s lofty spires,
never bestride my weathercock on high, if I deviate from truth in
these my last words! Though my fabric shall be levelled with the
dust of the earth, yet I fall in hope that my weathercock shall be
exalted on some more modern dome, where it shall shine like the
burnished gold, reflecting the rays of the sun to the eye of ages
unborn. The daring Mack shall yet look down from my cock, high in
the airy region, to the brandy-shops below, where large graybeards
shall appear to him no bigger than mutchkin-bottles, and mutchkin-
bottles shall be in his sight like the spark of a diamond.’ One of
Claudero’s versified compositions, ‘Humphry Colquhoun’s Farewell,’ is
remarkable as a kind of coarse prototype of the beautiful lyric
entitled ‘Mary,’ sung in The Pirate by Claud Halcro. One wonders to
find the genius of Scott refining upon such materials:
‘Farewell to Auld Reekie,
Farewell to lewd Kate,
Farewell to each ——,
And farewell to cursed debt;
With light heart and thin breeches,
Humph crosses the main;
All worn out to stitches,
He’ll ne’er come again.

Farewell to old Dido,

Who sold him good ale;
Her charms, like her drink,
For poor Humph were too stale;
Though closely she urged him
To marry and stay,
Her Trojan, quite cloyed,
From her sailed away.

Farewell to James Campbell,

Who played many tricks;
Humph’s ghost and Lochmoidart’s[259]
Will chase him to Styx;
Where in Charon’s wherry
He’ll be ferried o’er
To Pluto’s dominions,
’Mongst rascals great store.

Farewell, pot-companions,
Farewell, all good fellows;
Farewell to my anvil,
Files, pliers, and bellows;
Sails, fly to Jamaica,
Where I mean long to dwell,
Change manners with climate—
Dear Drummond, farewell.’
 Netherbow.
It is not unworthy of notice that the publication of Dr Blair’s Lectures
on Rhetoric and the Belles-lettres was hastened by Claudero, who,
having procured notes taken by some of the students, avowed an
intention of giving these to the world. The reverend author states in
his preface that he was induced to publish the lectures in
consequence of some surreptitious and incorrect copies finding their
way to the public; but it has not hitherto been told that this
doggerel-monger was the person chiefly concerned in bringing about
that result.
Claudero occasionally dealt in whitewash as well as blackball, and
sometimes wrote regular panegyrics. An address of this kind to a
writer named Walter Fergusson, who built St James’s Square,
concludes with a strange association of ideas:

‘May Pentland Hills pour forth their springs,

To water all thy square!
May Fergussons still bless the place,
Both gay and debonnair!’

When the said square was in progress, however, the water seemed
in no hurry to obey the bard’s invocation; and an attempt was made
to procure this useful element by sinking wells for it, despite the
elevation of the ground. Mr Walter Scott, W.S., happened one day to
pass when Captain Fergusson of the Royal Navy—a good officer, but
a sort of Commodore Trunnion in his manners—was sinking a well of
vast depth. Upon Mr Scott expressing a doubt if water could be got
there, ‘I will get it,’ quoth the captain, ‘though I sink to hell for it!’ ‘A
bad place for water,’ was the dry remark of the doubter.
 QUEENSBERRY HOUSE.
In the Canongate, on the south side, is a large, gloomy building,
enclosed in a court, and now used as a refuge for destitute persons.
This was formerly the town mansion of the Dukes of Queensberry,
and a scene, of course, of stately life and high political affairs. It was
built by the first duke, the willing minister of the last two Stuarts—he
who also built Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, which he never
slept in but one night, and with regard to which it is told that he left
the accounts for the building tied up with this inscription: ‘The deil
pyke out his een that looks herein!’ Duke William was a noted
money-maker and land-acquirer. No little laird of his neighbourhood
had any chance with him for the retention of his family property. He
was something still worse in the eyes of the common people—a
persecutor; that is, one siding against the Presbyterian cause. There
is a story in one of their favourite books of his having died of the
morbus pediculosus, by way of a judgment upon him for his
wickedness. In reality, he died of some ordinary fever. It is also
stated, from the same authority, that about the time when his grace
died, a Scotch skipper, being in Sicily, saw one day a coach-and-six
driving to Mount Etna, while a diabolic voice exclaimed: ‘Open to the
Duke of Drumlanrig!’—‘which proves, by the way,’ says Mr Sharpe,
‘that the devil’s porter is no herald. In fact,’ adds this acute critic,
‘the legend is borrowed from the story of Antonio the Rich, in
George Sandys’s Travels.’[260]
It appears, from family letters, that the first duchess often resided in
the Canongate mansion, while her husband occupied Sanquhar
Castle. The lady was unfortunately given to drink, and there is a
letter of hers in which she pathetically describes her situation to a
country friend, left alone in Queensberry House with only a few
bottles of wine, one of which, having been drawn, had turned out
sour. Sour wine being prejudicial to her health, it was fearful to think
of what might prove the quality of the remaining bottles.
The son of this couple, James, second duke, must ever be
memorable as the main instrument in carrying through the Union.
His character has been variously depicted. By Defoe, in his History of
the Union, it is liberally panegyrised. ‘I think I have,’ says he, ‘given
demonstrations to the world that I will flatter no man.’ Yet he could
not refrain from extolling the ‘prudence, calmness, and temper’
which the duke showed during that difficult crisis. Unfortunately the
author of Robinson Crusoe, though not a flatterer, could not insure
himself against the usual prepossessions of a partisan. Boldness the
duke must certainly have possessed, for during the ferments
attending the parliamentary proceedings on that occasion, he
continued daily to drive between his lodgings in Holyrood and the
Parliament House, notwithstanding several intimations that his life
was threatened. His grace’s eldest son, James, was an idiot of the
most unhappy sort—rabid and gluttonous, and early grew to an
immense height, which is testified by his coffin in the family vault at
Durisdeer, still to be seen, of great length and unornamented with
the heraldic follies which bedizen the violated remains of his
relatives. A tale of mystery and horror is preserved by tradition
respecting this monstrous being. While the family resided in
Edinburgh, he was always kept confined in a ground apartment, in
the western wing of the house, upon the windows of which, till
within these few years, the boards still remained by which the
dreadful receptacle was darkened to prevent the idiot from looking
out or being seen. On the day the Union was passed, all Edinburgh
crowded to the Parliament Close to await the issue of the debate,
and to mob the chief promoters of the detested measure on their
leaving the House. The whole household of the commissioner went
en masse, with perhaps a somewhat different object, and among the
rest was the man whose duty it was to watch and attend Lord
Drumlanrig. Two members of the family alone were left behind—the
madman himself, and a little kitchen-boy who turned the spit. The
insane being, hearing everything unusually still around, the house
being deserted, and the Canongate like a city of the dead, and
observing his keeper to be absent, broke loose from his
confinement, and roamed wildly through the house. It is supposed
that the savoury odour of the preparations for dinner led him to the
kitchen, where he found the little turnspit quietly seated by the fire.
He seized the boy, killed him, took the meat from the fire, and
spitted the body of his victim, which he half-roasted, and was found
devouring when the duke, with his domestics, returned from his
triumph. The idiot survived his father many years, though he did not
succeed him upon his death in 1711, when the titles devolved upon
Charles, the younger brother. He is known to have died in England.
This horrid act of his child was, according to the common sort of
people, the judgment of God upon him for his wicked concern in the
Union—the greatest blessing, as it has happened, that ever was
conferred upon Scotland by any statesman.

Allan Ramsay’s Shop, High

Street.
Charles, third Duke of Queensberry, who was born in Queensberry
House, resided occasionally in it when he visited Scotland; but as he
was much engaged in attending the court during the earlier part of
his life, his stay here was seldom of long continuance. After his
grace and the duchess embroiled themselves with the court (1729),
on account of the support which they gave to the poet Gay, they
came to Scotland, and resided for some time here. The author of the
Beggar’s Opera accompanied them, and remained about a month,
part of which was given to Dumfriesshire. Tradition in Edinburgh
used to point out an attic in an old house opposite to Queensberry
House, where, as an appropriate abode for a poet, his patrons are
said to have stowed him. It was said he wrote the Beggar’s Opera
there—an entirely gratuitous assumption. In the progress of the
history of his writings, nothing of consequence occurs at this time.
He had finished the second part of the opera a short while before.
After his return to the south, he is found engaged in ‘new writing a
damned play, which he wrote several years before, called The Wife
of Bath; a task which he accomplished while living with the Duke of
Queensberry in Oxfordshire, during the ensuing months of August,
September, and October.’[261] It is known, however, that while in
Edinburgh, he haunted the shop of Allan Ramsay, in the
Luckenbooths—the flat above that well-remembered and classical
shop so long kept by Mr Creech, from which issued the Mirror,
Lounger, and other works of name, and where for a long course of
years all the literati of Edinburgh used to assemble every day, like
merchants at an Exchange. Here Ramsay amused Gay by pointing
out to him the chief public characters of the city as they met in the
forenoon at the Cross. Here, too, Gay read the Gentle Shepherd, and
studied the Scottish language, so that upon his return to England he
was enabled to make Pope appreciate the beauties of that delightful
pastoral. He is said also to have spent some of his time with the
sons of mirth and humour in an alehouse opposite to Queensberry
House, kept by one Janet Hall. Jenny Ha’s, as the place was called,
was a noted house for drinking claret from the butt within the
recollection of old gentlemen living in my time.
 Jenny Ha’s Ale-House.
While Gay was at Drumlanrig, he employed himself in picking out a
great number of the best books from the library, which were sent to
England, whether for his own use or the duke’s is not known.
Duchess Catherine was a most extraordinary lady, eccentric to a
degree undoubtedly bordering on madness. Her beauty has been
celebrated by Pope not in very elegant terms:

‘Since Queensberry to strip there’s no compelling,

’Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen.’

Prior had, at an early period of her life, depainted her irrepressible

temper:
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

[Link]