Sabores Olores y Colores

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EL BOLI, Para el youtuber costeño Carlos José Suárez, ¿UN MANJAR el ‘Tocne’, el boli tiene el poder de devolverlo COSTEÑO a su infancia. “Recuerdo ir a la tienda de ‘doña QUE PIERDE Cila’, cerca a mi casa, en el barrio La Pradera en VIGENCIA? Montería, y comprar, igual que mi hermana, primos y vecinos, bolis de corozo, de coco, de guayaba agria † Son las 2 de la tarde, la temperatura sobrepasa o de ‘kola’ con leche. Era un producto económico, los 34 grados centígrados, sientes cómo el sol te accesible a todos nosotros, niños de un barrio pica, necesitas algo para refrescarte y entonces… estrato 2, cuando comprar una gaseosa era un lujo aparece una gama de colores congelados ante que no te dabas todos los días”. tus ojos. Eliges tu favorito: el de corozo, lo tomas, sientes cómo tus dedos se congelan y al llevarlo a Para el ‘Tocne’ la escasa producción de boli hoy tu boca mmm… una ola de frescura al instante. Lo puede obedecer a la industrialización y a los saboreas, sientes que vuelves a vivir y le sacas el tratados de libre comercio, pues: “ahora los niños ‘jugo’ a tu boli, chupándote hasta el plástico que lo pupis comprarán helado de macadamia o frutos envuelve. rojos”, dice él. El boli es tan popular como la empanada de huevo. Pero, esperen un momento: antes de hablar de por Es tan rico que nadie se resiste a saborear uno qué el boli está ‘en vía de extinción’, respondamos y ha marcado la infancia de más de un costeño. una pregunta básica: ¿Cómo entró a hacer parte Este clásico alimento, que no necesita muchos de la gastronomía del Caribe Colombiano? Nos ingredientes para su preparación, está en peligro responderá Karina Castro Pomares, ingeniera de de extinción, o eso parece con la cantidad alimentos de la Universidad de Cartagena. de productos ‘refrescantes’ que nos vende la publicidad. “El boli nace como una opción refrescante en la Costa Caribe, pero este antojo alimentario no solo Los caribeños lo sabemos, pero igual explicaré por es propio de esta región, sino también de otros si algún cachaco se antoja de leer esta Faceta: los países de Latinoamérica. En países como Panamá, bolis son jugos (ojalá de pulpa de fruta) congelados. México y Venezuela preparan también este tipo de Han existido desde siempre y muchas veces son congelados. Efectivamente, con los años, el boli ha (¿O eran?) preparados por nuestras abuelas para surtido una evolución con la industrialización de degustar tardes de juegos o aquel ‘antojito’ que los alimentos y ante la demanda de conseguir algo disfrutábamos cuando éramos niños, a la salida del fácil y rápido para comer, se han creado otro tipo de colegio. presentaciones de estos congelados”. La ingeniera destaca que esta ‘legendaria chuchería’ contiene un gran aporte nutricional. “Antes veíamos un consumo masivo de boli, pero ese boli que se preparaba de forma artesanal, es decir, ese jugo congelado que envasamos en una bolsa de plástico y que al estar hecho a base de fruta y una fuente acuosa (agua) tiene unos componentes que constituyen un gran aporte nutricional”, expone. 103

Castro Pomares enfatiza en que este producto Helda se pasea por el Centro pregonando sus bolis y casero y económico sí aporta a la demanda tiene clientes de todos los estratos y edades. energética que requiere el ser humano, pues es libre de conservantes y químicos. “Hasta los extranjeros me compran. Una vez una joven peruana se animó a probar uno y quedó † Fue tanto el auge del boli en los años noventa, por fascinada. Así que antes de partir a su país vino ejemplo, que la expresión “¿Hay boli?” recreó varias varias veces y probó todos los sabores pues me situaciones cómicas cuando de saludar se trataba y, contaba que los extrañaría, pues en su país no se aún está latente en el inconsciente colectivo de todo ve”, contó. costeño. Habrá que hacerles un favor a las nuevas “Todas esas vivencias de hace ya décadas con el generaciones y enseñarles a apostar por este boli, las fui incorporando en mis videos cuando producto artesanal y casero. Tendremos que empecé a ser youtuber con Viernes Zombie. Ahí fue hacernos el favor de escoger al boli, para que no donde volví a sacar a la luz esa frase de ‘Buenas, pierda vigencia y siga refrescando paladares en la ¿hay boli?’, y diseñamos camisetas con esa frase y región Caribe por los siglos de los siglos.14 fueron las más pedidas por el público”, recuerda el ‘Tocne’ — LIA MIRANDA BATISTA “Hay vida” Helda Margarita Villafañe es una samaria radicada en Cartagena desde hace más de veinte años, es una orgullosa vendedora de bolis en el Centro Histórico que no escatima en alardear de ‘vender los mejores’ y sus clientes dan fe de ello. “Me dedico a vender bolis desde hace siete años. Lo heredé de mi mamá. Y desde que salgo de mi casa con mi nevera de icopor repleta de boli (unos 200), todos los vendo”, cuenta. La mujer ofrece una amplia variedad de sabores: guanábana, zapote, níspero, coco, corozo, maracuyá, melón, tamarindo, fresa, guayaba agria, ‘kola’ con leche, ron con pasas, aguacate, arequipe con pasas, galleta, maní y otros más ‘exóticos’ como milo, brownie, y bocadillo. Es cierto, el boli que más se vende es el de corozo cuando el sol está caliente y le siguen el de guanábana y de coco, si lo que se necesita es endulzar el paladar.

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Enyucado Enyucado is a popular, traditional dessert in the Caribbean region of Colombia, it’s a cheesecake yuca cake made with yuca, coconut, Shredded yuca sugar, cheese and sometimes anise and guava. It also appears in costa rican cuisine as a fried yuca coquette filled with ground meat, 3 cups cheese or vegetables. Queso fresco, grated ‡ Preheat oven to 400°F 5½ cups In a large bowl mix all the ingredients together thoroughly. Sugar Butter baking dish and place the mixture in, bake until golden brown. 1 cup Let cool, cut into squares and serve. Melted butter 1 tbsp Grated coconut ¾ cup Coconut milk 1 cup Ground star anise 1 tbsp

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TR A NS-ATL A NTIC FOOD MIGRATION: THE AFRICAN CULINARY INFLUENCE ON THE CUISINE OF THE AMERICAS † Africa has been a major contributor to the cuisine of North and South America although this contribution has long been overlooked, trivialized, or denied. The discourse contained in volumes on American cooking is usually consistent in its themes of celebrating what is considered the European influence. When African American cuisine is recognized, as has increasingly been the case in the past few decades, credit is often given to a culinary heritage and legacy categorized and relegated to the culinary and cultural shackle known as “soul food” which specifically includes chitlins, corn bread, fatback, greens, and fried chicken. East coast cuisine and culture transplanted itself by means of explorers, merchants, travelers, and seamen bound for India, Indonesia, China, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Spices sold and purchased at East African trading ports and in Indonesian and Southeast Asian markets would dominate the delicious flavors of creative cooks. The Dravidians of southern India and the Khmers of Southeast Asia (modern Cambodia and Thailand), are two of numerous ancient Eastern civilizations that still bear many African culinary and cultural imprints. Africa’s East and West Coast cultures made their indelible culinary marks through exploration, migration, and trade expeditions on the Olmecs and Mayans of Mexico, the Chavin of Peru, the Native American Mound Builders, the Caribs of St. Vincent, and other indigenous cultures in the Americas, and these marks were made long before the so- called discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. Migration and trade between the 109

Americas and Africa had made the exchange and transplanting of foodstuffs between the three continents quite common. In other words, the African culinary influence on the Americas began long before the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The last stage of this culinary diaspora was the forced migration of Africans to the Americas through the slave trade, beginning in the 15th century, which brought numerous culinary artists and expert agriculturalists to the Atlantic coast stretching from Argentina to Nova Scotia. The continual influx and steady increase of Africans into the Caribbean and South America at the height of the human bondage trade ironically constantly rejuvenated the African cultural input, and fostered a culinary revolution under the influence of Africans that would permeate every aspect of cooking and cuisine in rural and urban areas of every country in the Americas. Africans who were shipped directly to areas such as Louisiana and South Carolina, as well as those who endured the “seasoning” process in the Caribbean islands and were then transferred to the American South, all positioned their culinary standards throughout the Southern states. West African cooks made certain that all fish, meat, vegetable, and beans and rice dishes were heavily seasoned with hot peppers and spices, such as Guinea grains, or melegueta, spicy cedar (called atiokwo in the Ivory Coast—its seeds are roasted, ground and used in soups or with leafy vegetables), tea bush (known as an-gbonto in Sierra Leone, its fragrant leaves are used to flavor meat dishes, vegetable, egusi and palm nut soups), African locust bean (harvested, boiled and fermented to produce dawadawa, an indispensable condiment in Nigerian and Cameroonian cuisine), and West African black pepper (fukungen to the people of The Gambia and Senegal), to name just a few. Several oils were used in preparing West African dishes, such as groundnut, or peanut (which is sometimes preferred in stews), melon seed, sesame seed (gingelly), coconut, corn, shea butter, and palm, which remains the favorite in West Africa due to the reddish-orange color it imparts to foods. Both these specific foods and the preparation and cooking methods came with the enslaved people to North and South America. The cooking methods included frying, boiling/simmering, roasting and steaming (foods are first wrapped in banana, plantain, miraculous berry, cocoyam leaves, or corn sheaths) and baking, or combinations of two or three methods. Broiling has been added in the modern era. Suriname, wedged between Guyana and Guiana on the northern coast of South America, was mostly populated by enslaved people whose descendants remain the majority of the population to this day. Food and cultural historians believe Suriname, at least until the early 1980s, had the best preserved African cultural patterns in the Western Hemisphere. Suriname is home to the descendants of the Saramaka, or Saramacca, who live along the banks of the Suriname River, and the Djuka Maroons communities, formed in the early eighteenth century. The ancestors of the Saramaka were agricultural specialists from Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and Nigeria, who cultivated an enormous

array of crops introduced directly from Africa, including moringa, which yields four edibles: pods, leaves, seeds, and roots; sorghum, known as guinea corn in West Africa which botanists confused with maize for a long time. Other crops included tamarind, legumes such as marama, Bambara groundnut (African peanut), cowpeas (black eyed peas), locust and sword beans; as well as African eggplant. Their descendants continued to produce those crops well into the 20th Century. Rice was the principal crop cultivated by the early Saramakans, and is still produced today. Known locally as alesi, the seventy cultivated varieties of rice comprise much of their current diet. Rice production continues to incorporate African utensils and methods and the process is nearly identical to that of the Senegambia region, between the Senegal and Gambia Rivers in West Africa, as well as South Carolina plantations cultivated mainly by enslaved people in the 18th and 19th Centuries. A variety of game meat, fish, and birds, preserved primarily by smoking and salting, includes akusuwe, a kind of rabbit; mbata, a small deer; malole, which is armadillo; and awali, or opossum, which are eaten only when nothing else is available to accompany rice. Rounding out their larder is the tree porcupine, known as adjindja, in addition to logoso (turtle), akomu (eel), peenya (piranha), and nyumaa, or pataka, spoken of as “the best fish in the country.” Anamu (bush hen), maai (bush turkey), gbanini (eagle), patupatu (wild duck), soosoo (large parakeet), and pumba(blue and red parrot) are also consumed in abundance. While not all of these foods were found in West Africa, the Saramakans learned quickly to prepare them just as their ancestors had done in what is now Guinea, Senegal, Gambia. Large quantities of meat and fish are shared through family networks, lessening the need for preservation. Preparation of foods includes roasting, frying, boiling, or browning meats first in one or more of five varieties of palm oil, then simmering with vegetables and/ or root crops and one or more of ten cultivated varieties of hot peppers. Fifteen different varieties of okra are cultivated, along with mboa and bokolele (mboa is amaranth, but both are called wild spinach). Tonka (beans), seven varieties of yams, tania, cashews and peanuts, and wild limes, watermelon, lemons, oranges, and pineapples, and other fruits specifically of African origin are also grown. If the Saramakans managed to keep in place more African foods and cooking traditions than almost any other people in North and South America, the culinary culture of the African continent nonetheless influenced in various ways the cooking of the entire Atlantic seacoast from Canada to Argentina. From the rural country kitchens in Brazil or South Carolina to the steamboat floating palaces along the Mississippi River, to marketplace street vendors and restaurants in urban hubs of business and finance from Boston to Buenos Aires, Africans of North and South America have been a dominating presence in America’s kitchens, and have stood at the helm as creative head chefs of farms and plantations, restaurants, hotels, steamboats, lodges and private clubs, trains, and private homes of the elites. From the 15th through the 19th centuries, Africans, as 111

enslaved people, contributed their labor skills, religion, music, and culinary expertise to create societies and cultures in every country in the Americas, but especially in the United States. The preservation and reinvention of culinary traditions and social patterns based on African heritage demonstrated strong cultural persistence and resistance within plantation, as well as Maroon, communities, which were established wherever slavery existed. Similarities in African culinary heritage, shared especially throughout the Southern United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, have left enduring legacies. Those legacies are filled with cooking and cuisine strongly reminiscent of, or identical to, those of their African forebears and therefore continue to transmit the values and enrich the culinary experiences of not only Africans in the Americas but most other cultures in the Americas as well. Although these nations have adopted African culinary traditions as their own, in most cases there is little or no recognition of their roots. Certain aspects of African American cuisine, such as “soul food,” are too often seen as backward and lacking in value. In general, the African contribution is regularly subjected to racism and societal repression. For Africans and their descendants in the Americas, however, food and its preparation are deeply infused with social and cultural meaning, rooted in African traditions, and have always held an intrinsic role in creating, preserving, and transmitting expressions of ethnic cohesion and continuity. It is hoped that there will be an eventual appreciation of African culinary heritage not just in the United States, but throughout the world. — Diane M. Spivey

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Endnotes 1 Loaiza , Angélica. “El Ajiaco: Un Plato Con Historia.” Canal Trece, 2018. https:// canaltrece.com.co/noticias/el-ajiaco-un-plato-con-historia/. 2 Bowman, Barbara. “Molinillo - Mexican Chocolate Whisk (Stirrer).” Gourmet Sleuth. Published by: Gourmet Sleuth, 2018. https://www.gourmetsleuth.com/articles/ detail/molinillo. 3 Attman, Karen. “One Really Important Thing You Should Know About Hot Chocolate in Colombia.” Flavors of Bogota, December 17, 2020. https://flavorsofbogota. com/hot-chocolate-in-colombia/. 4 The Ohio State University. “The Origins of Chicha.” Chicha An Andean Idenity. Accessed February 6, 2021. https://u.osu.edu/chicha/sample-page/. 5 Lievano, Catalina. “Chicha: Bitter Brew of History.” The City Paper Bogotá, August 27, 2014. https://thecitypaperbogota.com/features/chicha-bitter-brew-of-history/7628. 6 “HISTORIA DEL CAFÉ DE COLOMBIA.” Café de Colombia, March 3, 2020. ht t ps://www.cafedecolombia.com/par t iculares/his tor ia-del-cafe-de-colombia/. 7 Morales, María del Mar. “¿Por Qué En Bogotá Se Le Dice ‘Tinto’ Al Café Negro?” Conexión Capital, December 16, 2019. https://conexioncapital.co/tinto-o-cafe-negro/. 8 Cuartas, Esnayder. “For the Love of Plantain.” Latino Life. Accessed February 6, 2021. https://www.latinolife.co.uk/articles/love-plantain. 9 Cabana, J., 2020. Sobre el Termino \"Cayeye\". Dracamandaca. https://deraca- mandaca.com/?p=103620 10 Gonzalez, Clara. “Mangú - Recipe & Video (Dominican Mashed Plantain Breakfast).” Dominican Cooking, September 15, 2020. https://www.dominicancooking. com/532-mangu-mashed-plantains.html. 11 Rodriguez, Hector. “How to Make Traditional Puerto Rican Mofongo With Pork Cracklings.” The Spruce Eats, 2020. https://www.thespruceeats.com/traditional-mofon- go-recipe-2138186. 12 “Receta De Fufú De Plátano.” CiberCuba, October 28, 2008. https://www.ciber- cuba.com/cocina/recetas/fufu-de-platano. 13 Morales, María del Mar. “¿Por Qué En Bogotá Se Le Dice ‘Tinto’ Al Café Negro?” Conexión Capital, December 16, 2019. https://conexioncapital.co/tinto-o-cafe-negro/. 14 Batista, Lia Miranda. “El Boli, ¿Un Manjar Costeño Que Pierde Vigencia?” www. eluniversal.com.co, September 30, 2018. https://www.eluniversal.com.co/suplementos/ facetas/el-boli-un-manjar-costeno-que-pierde-vigencia-288714-PUEU406090.

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vol. i ANDES & CARIBBEAN