Nationalism and Cuban identity are forming through messages rooted in cookbooks found between 1857 and 1960, sometimes with conflicting notions due to highly debated topics such as cubanidad (Cuban identity) and the suppression of race.
About our origin
In the 1930s, yuca was classified under Afro-Cuban recipes along with other starchy tubers and vegetables (such as yams).
There were several other cookbooks around that period and earlier, however, these were largely written by elite Cuban women of European descent, likely omitting ingredients associated with Africa like yuca.
This highlights the connection yuca has with Cubans of African descent (and probably also with mixed-race Cubans).
Don Fernando Ortiz, a Cuban essayist and scholar of Afro-Cuban culture, writes about the impact of American foods like yuca on African diets and cooking when he traveled to the 'New World', changing the narrative that it was actually American foods that impacted a diet largely preserved from African origins (rather than African foods that came to impact a 'Cuban' diet).
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when yuca was appropriated as part of a racially ambiguous Cuban diet.
In a time of disparity, the lines between foods labeled from Africa and from Europe begin to blur. In post-Revolution Cuba, Cuban food merges into one and is redistributed as a cuisine for all.
