Latin American Black Belt Food in Central America

Jamaican Immigrant Emma Williams, recipes below 

In 1926, Wallace Thompson traveled by train through the United Fruit Company (UFCO) of Boston’s Costa Rica division in Port Limón on the Caribbean coast of the country. Wallace described the banana-producing region as a “Latin American Black Belt” where banana plantations and black laborers were synonymous. Black immigrants could be seen individually and in “gangs,” on plantations, in “villages,” and “every-where.” After visiting Guatemala’s banana region in the department of Izabal in the early 1930s, the radical American journalist Carlton Beals concluded similarly, “Central America is going black.” While doing research for my book Black Labor Migration in Caribbean Guatemala http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=OPIEX001, I came across Guatemalan immigration documents that black women filled out in 1928. The documents show that large numbers of women also traveled throughout Central America in search of economic opportunity. The greatest number of these women self-identified as Jamaican, with a women from St. Lucia and Panama. These were largely single women who described themselves as domestic workers with one machinist, one seamstress, and one laundress. Emma Williams (in the photo above) was born in Jamaica in 1907, immigrated to and settled in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala where she gave birth to a daughter in 1926 and worked as a domestic. Some women started as domestic and went on to purchase land and farm as well as open boarding houses, restaurants, and cantinas. Over many years these immigrant women made an indelible mark on Guatemalan culture, particularly in the Caribbean region, where English became the lingua franca, jazz and reggae became popular forms of musical expression, and jerk chicken and meat patties became part of the local cuisine. Here are some related recipes below.

Jerked Chicken Recipe: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/jerk_chicken/

Veggie Patty Recipe: http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/jamaican-veggie-patties-recipe.html

Chicken Patty Video Recipe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7Z-7WSIi3A

Vegetarian Banana Leaf Tamales:
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/vegetarian_banana_leaf_tamales/

Black Bean and Plantain Tamale Filling:
http://recipes.chef2chef.net/recipe-archive/27/147412.shtml

Hispanic History Month Series with Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month

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