Entre sambumbes, saberes e sabores : cultura alimentar e escravidão no Vale do Cauca, Nova Granada (1750-1851)

Abstract

The present study aim to address and characterize the food system of enslaved and freed people from the Cauca’s River Valley, in New Granada, between the years of 1750 –last phase of the transatlantic slave trade- up to 1851 –year in wich the slavery was abolish. The Valley was a region inserted that belonged to the Popayán Province/Gobernation, and characterized for receive West African captives as workforce for cattle and sugar cane plantations. Therefore, we seek, with this research, to identify the food practices of the Africans and their descendants who worked as slaves in the plantations and city houses of the Cauca Valley, taking into account the West Africa food systems that have moved ans experienced transcultural processes across the Atlantic Ocean. This study was made by analising novels inserted in the Costumbrismo movement, written in the 19th century by elite men who lived and experiences the slave system of the Cauca Valley. In addition, we worked with foreign travellers reports, who arrived in New Granada during the chosen perios, and who, in their books, described the different products, preparations and forms of consumption of both enslaved and freed, as well as of the neogranadine society, in general. So, this is an attempt to understand how Africans and their descendants in the Cauca Valley fed in the social context-how the contact with different cultures caused their food systems to move and transform, incorporating new products and techniques.