Andres Restrepo-Sanchez

Abstract

Food production, distribution, and consumption are central to consolidating national and regional identities. In this article, I focus on a “traditional” Colombian dish called Bandeja Paisa (Paisa Tray) to trace connections between terroir, racialization, and colonialism, highlighting the role of food in creating nation/regionalism and cultural identity. I argue that Bandeja Paisa is an example of gastroregionalism that creates division in the Colombian nation-state and reinforces Paisa (regional) over Colombian (national) identity. I expand on the colonial and racist legacies of Paisas, a distinctive “race” of Colombian citizens that emerged from regional processes of othering and explain how the reemergence of federalism in Antioquia plays a role in consolidating cultural hegemony. Finally, I argue that attempting to pass Bandeja Paisa as the national dish is problematic, particularly in a highly polarized and diverse country like Colombia. This article expands the theoretical connections between food and regionalism, emphasizing the role of national dishes in supporting longstanding legacies of conflict and cultural hegemony between regions, particularly in Latin America.

Introduction

Food production, distribution, and consumption are central to economic theory, as well as to anthropological analysis of culture and human evolution.[1] Food preferences and taste, for example, go beyond biology, connecting complex systems of ideas supporting social interaction that can bond or separate populations. As a commodity, food can transform global relations, coordinating people’s time, technology, and work to respond to capitalist regimens of supply and demand.[2] Food also shapes and reflects social structures and cultural values, including communication patterns, social status, and gender roles that emerge during food preparation, cooking, and eating.[3] Furthermore, “the centrality of a particular food (…) in the diet of a people is paralleled by its importance in the ritual, the symbolic, and even the political life of the people who cultivate it.”[4] In this article, I focus on a “traditional”[5] Colombian dish called Bandeja Paisa (Paisa Tray) and its connections with terroir, racial hierarchies, and colonization. Following the work of scholars like Michaela DeSoucey, Priscilla P. Ferguson, Atsuko Ichijo, Venetia Johannes, and Ronald Ranta, I expose the political relevance of food in the formation of nation/regionalism and cultural identity and the problems behind the category of “national dish.” [6] I argue that attempts to establish the Bandeja Paisa as the Colombian national dish represent a case of gastroregionalism oriented to reinforce the cultural hegemony of Paisas in the country.

Paisas are Colombian inhabitants of what was previously known as “La Gran Antioquia,” now called the Colombia coffee region, which includes the administrative departmental divisions of Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda, Quindío, and Northern Valle del Cauca.[7] Paisas are known for their conservative political views, Catholicism, and economic leadership. The Bandeja Paisa is their most representative dish, an amalgamation of several local preparations that seek to encompass the whole of Paisa gastronomy. The ingredients of the dish may vary depending on where it is prepared, but it usually includes red beans, white rice, ground beef, fried pork belly (chicharrón), blood sausage (morcilla), chorizo, fried plantain, fried egg, arepa, and avocado, usually presented in an oval-shaped metal or clay tray (see figure 1). The Bandeja Paisa emerged from culinary miscegenation that occurred in the exchange between Spanish colonizers’ ingredients and cooking traditions and the cuisine of indigenous communities of the region (principally Caribes and Chibchas).[8] It is well-known in Colombia for its size and high caloric value, with most ingredients being carbohydrates and fried pork derivates.

In 2005, under the presidency of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the Bandeja Paisa (under the name of Plato Montañero) was proposed to become the Colombian national dish. The plan failed after receiving much criticism from other regions in the country, arguing that this dish did not adequately represent Colombian geography and culinary diversity. Some classified the dispute between politicians, chefs, and food critics as unproductive and risible, considering the many other social problems faced in Colombia today. [9] I argue that this sociopolitical juncture is an interesting case of gastroregionalism and cultural hegemony and is profoundly significant for understanding the broader legacies of colonialism, racism, and conservatism that shape contemporary Colombian politics.

To develop my argument, I present connections between food, place, and identity using the concept of the taste of place, or terroir.[10] Then, I engage with the concept of gastronationalism[11] and its criticisms to highlight the relevance of food in consolidating nations and regions as imagined communities.[12] I argue that Bandeja Paisa is a compelling example of gastroregionalism showing divisions in the Colombian nation-state and reinforcing Paisa (regional) over Colombian (national) cultural identity. I expand on the colonial and racist legacies of Paisas ­–a distinctive group that emerged from regional processes of racial othering­– and connect the historical federalism in Antioquia to recent strategies enforcing the Paisa cultural identity. Finally, I explain why attempting to pass Bandeja Paisa as the national dish is problematic, particularly in a highly polarized and diverse country like Colombia. My analysis expands theoretical connections between food and regionalism, emphasizing the role of national dishes in supporting longstanding legacies of conflict and cultural hegemony between regions.

Terroir: Food, Place, and Identity

In The Taste of Place, Amy B. Trubek (2008) explains that terroir is a category of knowing and discerning food, an act of tasting that connects culture and nature, helping people to create a sense of place through food.[13] Terroir initially appeared in the French winemaking industry as the idea that the natural environment, including soil properties, climate, surrounding plants, and water quality, shape the taste of grapes used in wine. However, there has yet to be a scientific consensus on whether and how the natural environment influences the taste of foods and beverages.[14] According to Trubek (2008), the cultural domain ultimately defines terroir: “goût du terroir has come to describe an aspect of French identity that is locally defined (…), a national project to preserve and promote France’s much-vaunted agrarian past” amid the global flow of ideas, ingredients, and food-related values. Importantly, terroir refers to assumptions around authenticity, the superiority of traditional cooking practices, and notions of higher-quality food and drink, all essential for transnational economies.[15]

David Beriss (2019) explains that “food provides an especially useful perspective with which to understand the making of place,” and terroir “explicitly associates geology and climate with culture and craft in the making of food.”[16] Legislators have used this concept to protect the geographic and historical identity of products (like cheese or wine) linked to specific regions. In this sense, terroir not only connects food with the landscape but also expresses the history of the nation, the craft and culture of rural communities, and the gender and kinship systems embedded in food production; it “offers a theory of how people and place, cultural tradition and landscape ecology, are mutually constituted over time.”[17] Terroir has been mostly used in the European Union (EU) and countries with strong regional identities, like India, but its use experiences problems when translated to the United States as “the making of American national identity has not historically been linked to a regional catalog of identities and products.”[18]

Colombia has a centralized government divided into thirty-two departments and a Capital District (Bogotá D.C.), but because of its natural (geographic) structure, the country has been separated into six regions (Andean, Caribbean, Pacific, Orinoquía, Amazon, and Insular region) with diverse economic, political, and cultural interests.[19] In each natural region, “cultural sub-regions” emerged with distinctive cultural identities.[20] For example, in the Andean region, we find the Paisa, Santandereana, Cundiboyasence, Opita, Vallecaucana, and Pastusa sub-regions. Despite sharing a similar natural landscape and geographical proximity, each sub-region has different values, speech forms, clothing, music, and food, among other cultural markers. Problems between these territories occur when residents from a particular region insist that a particular dish –or any other cultural form– should be the “signature” of the whole region or even the entire country, ignoring the rich diversity that distinguishes each community and homogenizes their culture. [21] In this sense, terroir is an important analytic category for understanding Colombian regionalism and its processes of cultural identity differentiation.

Terroir is a powerful tool used to protect local markets, foster cultural heritage, encourage artisanal production, and drive political action and activism to improve poor communities’ lives.[22] According to Heather Paxson (2010), “terroir may become a model for the instrumental value of artisan foods (at least among producers) by calling attention to—and even motivating the creation of—material and affective conditions of place.”[23] Nevertheless, the concept can also obscure alienating working practices, hegemonic power dynamics, and gastronomic racism that operate by consolidating national cuisines.[24] I use terroir as the analytical framework to understand the connections between the materiality of food and the affective –often tense– relation that communities establish with the region/nation they inhabit and experience as a place of cultural production and identity. Along with borders, languages, anthems, and flags, localizing food has been crucial in consolidating post-colonial nation-states, regional identities, and cuisines.[25] Colombia offers one of the multiple examples of these processes.

Gastronationalism vs. Gastroregionalism

When food is discussed in relation to nationalism, it is most frequently under the term “cuisine” applied to a country or region, for example, “French cuisine” or “Caribbean cuisine.”[26] The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), an entity with the power to determine which cuisine classifies as “intangible cultural heritage of humanity,” also uses other terms like foodways or food culture when discussing national foods. A particular national or regional cuisine is assumed to have a long history and to be eaten by most citizens, making it a capacious object of analysis that reflects the national/regional character of the population and the politics of everyday life.[27] According to Ferguson (2010), this “culinary country” is not to be found on the fancy tables of modern restaurants but in the often female-dominated ordinary place of rural kitchens, inspired by familiar traditions and recollecting idealized nostalgic versions of the past.[28] Nostalgia stimulates nationalist sentiments, providing affective attachments to the nation’s geographic, cultural, and political aspects. Food has the power to mobilize nostalgia through the senses. Consequently, national food is often nostalgic, an important quality intending to preserve national identity in an era of rapid geopolitical change.

Nations are not material nor stable entities; they are products of modern history, “imagined communities” limited in scope and sovereign in nature, representing collective belonging.[29] For nation-states to emerge, a community’s symbolic and cultural systems must be cohesive.[30] This cohesion can be achieved through the education system, language differentiation, and, not surprisingly, food and cooking practices. However, nation-states in Latin America maintain solid regional identities as a product of colonial legacies, mestizaje, and incomplete modernization processes that do not necessarily match the country’s borders.[31] Topography plays an important role in this regionalization. Latin America has geographically diverse regions, such as the Amazonian lowlands, the Caribbean islands, or the Andean highlands, which share cultural practices that are difficult to transfer to other places and do not respect the invisible political borders of modern nation-states.[32]

Historical political disputes have also changed national borders multiple times. For example, La Gran Colombia of the nineteenth century included the territories of the current republics of Colombia, Ecuador, Panamá, and Venezuela, parts of Guyana, Brazil, and Perú. By the turn of the twentieth century, the Republic of Colombia had already lost most of those territories, with the last of these border changes happening in 2012 when Colombia gave up an area of the Caribbean Sea to Nicaragua. Consequently, strong regional identities have emerged alongside –and despite– nation-state formation. Proof of this process can be found, for example, in the cultural similarities between Southwest Colombians from the Andean mountains and northern Ecuadorians or between Colombians and Venezuelans inhabiting the Orinoco River’s Eastern plains.

Sociologist DeSoucey (2010) proposes gastronationalism as a concept that “signals the use of food production, distribution, and consumption to demarcate and sustain the emotive power of national attachment, as well as the use of nationalist sentiments to produce and market food.”[33] According to DeSoucey, gastronationalism is a project of collective identity based on heritage and culture where food and eating become sources of political valuation connected to broader material, commercial, and institutional processes. The EU is the base of her research, where she found that nation-states worked as protectors of cultural patrimony via product registration and used foods “symbolically as markers of identity and community for otherwise geographically, socially, and politically divided populations.”[34] Gastronationalism remains politically rooted and shaped by markets; it also connects the nationalist nostalgia of past times and shared territory with people’s values and food practices, as proposed by terroir.

Following DeSoucey’s thesis, Johannes (2021) presents the food and cuisine of Catalonia as a compelling example of terroir and gastronationalism.[35] According to Johannes, Catalonians developed an alternative gastronomic calendar separating their festive foods from the rest of Spain. This calendar contributes to Catalonia’s territorial and cultural sovereignty as an autonomous community, increases anti-Spanish sentiment, and is reminiscent of the historical tensions from when Catalonia wanted to become an independent nation.[36] Johannes demonstrates how food is “intricately connected to other markers of national identity, such as the Catalan language, observances of national festivals, ideals of national ‘character’ and, most importantly, a historic (and historicized) past that can be called upon to justify contemporary nationalistic demands.”[37]

Contrary to DeSoucey, Herman Lelieveldt (2017) affirms that the EU’s product-quality scheme of registering products under a particular country “deliberately emphasizes regional and local territorial origins of foods and downplays the significance of national identities.”[38] Lelieveldt explains that very few of the actual designations in the EU refer to national territories; instead, they correspond to regional or local identities like the Worcestershire Cider or Olivia di Gaeta, for which the concept of gastroregionalism would be more accurate than gastronationalism.[39] According to Lelieveldt (2017), gastroregionalism makes more sense in the EU when considering their larger political project of preventing war and encouraging community cooperation. Moreover, there is a historical reason to prioritize regions over nations in this part of the world: “The culinary heritages of European countries obviously predate the age of nation-state formation. Cuisines were formed and shaped within local and regional contexts and even after unification remained often clearly differentiated.”[40] In this sense, the regional level, not the nation-state, becomes more important in explaining modern gastro-politics.[41]

Following Lelieveldt’s argument, I consider Bandeja Paisa a good example of gastroregionalism in Colombia. As I will show later in this article, the history of this particular preparation, its links to colonial and racist values, and attempts to name it the national dish do not promote a Colombian national sentiment. Instead, they enforce the hegemony of the Paisa regional identity and culture over the rest. The Constitution of 1991 states that Colombia is a unitary republic comprising thirty-two departments and a Capital District. Each department has some political autonomy and divides itself into municipalities. However, as previously mentioned for the Latin American case, geographical areas –not departments or even national boundaries– created distinctive natural, cultural, and economic regions and sub-regions, Paisa being one of them. These different “natural regions” in Colombia are another example of what Bruno Latour describes as the modern constitution of naturalism, a European colonial ontology that separates nature and culture, making the first susceptible to the economic exploitation of the second.[42] In Colombia, naturalistic views during the colonization period originated “political ecologies” that are still in place, including notions of cultural superiority for those who dominated the landscape and extracted most natural resources from it.[43] In the next section, I expand on the history and culture of Paisas and how they came to have a prominent role in Colombian society. I argue that the renaissance of Antioquia’s historical federalism demonstrates strong regionalism in the country, as well as power disputes currently contested on multiple levels, including people’s foodways.

Paisa Identity and Cultural Hegemony in Colombia

In Colombia, people from the department of Antioquia and the region known as the “coffee triangle” are known by the demonym “Paisas.”[44] The Paisa region has no delimited territory and, depending on the source, includes inhabitants from five to ten different departments located in the Andean natural region, which sometimes raises questions about their cultural homogeneity. Nevertheless, Paisas share a reputation as colonizers. The origin of the Paisa people starts with the story of European colonization of the mountainous region of the country. Beginning in the early sixteenth century, Spaniards and other European families settled in the Colombian mountains following the promise of a developing mining economy. Colonizers displaced native indigenous communities (mostly Caribes and Chibchas) or used them as workers in mines and coffee plantations along with enslaved Africans. Europeans maintained a relatively low racial mixture, which explains the current light-skin majority in the region. Historical narratives praise colonizers for the tenacity and courage required to face such a wild and hostile environment, often ignoring the presence of native communities already living in the territory.[45] María Teresa Arcila Estrada (2006) describes Paisa colonization as a “narrative of difficulty” that highlights the conquest of men over the geographical landscape, a kind of heroic campaign of civilization against nature.[46] According to this elaboration, Paisas emerged as mountain people tenaciously confronting the challenges of the fierce environment they inhabited and overcoming obstacles to their progress.[47] From the fight they waged against the landscape, they emerged victorious, cementing feelings of pride and appreciation in the community and forging the dynamic and entrepreneurial character attributed to them throughout the nineteenth century.[48]

The stereotype of Paisas in Colombia is generally that of a middle-aged man, Catholic, intrepid, and advantageous in business, similar to Juan Valdéz, the character of the Colombian coffee trademark.[49] The masculinization of Paisa culture relates to their perceived abilities as colonizers, miners, businessmen, and entrepreneurs.[50] Paisa women, in contrast, are stereotyped to be extravagant and voluptuous according to the beauty ideals that emerged from the narcoculture affecting Colombia and especially the Paisa region during the 1980s and 1990s.[51] In addition to the above characteristics, Luis Fajardo (1966, cited in Larraín González and Madrid Garcés 2020) provides a list of other markers of Paisa identity, including asceticism, positivism, activism, geographical mobility, practical sense, reserve, frugality, love of money, marital fidelity, high motivation towards success, optimism, sense of independence, traditionalism, sexual puritanism, belief in progress, truculence, talkativeness, and hypersensitivity of time.[52] According to César Augusto Vásquez (2013, cited in Larraín González and Madrid Garcés 2020), Paisas have four main traits: “the patriarchal, the military, the religious fervor, and the desire for wealth,” all fundamental for understanding Paisa colonization of the geographical landscape.[53]

Paisas also stand out for their particular use of language. They are the only region in Colombia that practices the voseo, a form of pronominal treatment employing the Spanish singular vos instead of tú when addressing a single interlocutor (both mean “you” in English).[54] The voseo was inherited from the Castilian and survived in time because of Paisas’ geographical isolation from other regions of the country during the Spanish conquest and colonization (1499 to 1810 A.D.). It is part of their linguistic identity, giving Paisas a sense of belonging to the region and pride in their European ancestry. Moreover, with the increased popularity of Paisa artists like Maluma, Karol G, and Sebastián Yatra, the Paisa dialect has been increasingly recognized as one of the most salient Colombian ways of speaking.

Unfortunately, Paisas have whitewashed their history, deliberately excluding certain communities and facts from their cultural identity. Those ostracized from the mainstream Paisa history are Indigenous and Black communities that were crucial to the expansionist campaign in pre- and post-colonial times and instrumental for the economy of the region. There is also a notable absence in Paisa’s history of structural violence and the forms of illegality that originated and still occur in the region.[55] For example, little is said about development projects that led Paisas to occupy and usurp territories throughout the country, sometimes making alliances with illegal armed organizations like paramilitary groups to displace entire communities.

As often occurs with identity formation, Paisas emerged in opposition to others. Like other Latin American countries, Colombia experiences heterogeneous realities in each region. This situation underpins regional struggles between the Andean centers –synonymous with development, economic and political power– and the peripheries, jungles, and coastlines, which have always suffered from a low or non-existent presence of the State.[56] Moreover, friction between regions mirrors a markedly racist hierarchy, which is common to the history of the continent. Paisa elites developed a kind of super valuation of their social ego excluding and demonizing people from other regions of the country.[57] This “other” is considered far from social norms, immoral, criminal, corrupt, and having signs of insubordination and disrespect for authority.[58] Narratives of Paisas taming the geographical landscape reinforce this othering process. As Arcila Estrada (2006) explains, “Civilization is associated with the institutionalization and control of territory, resources, and people (…) Savagery and barbarism are embodied by others (Indians, Blacks, and Mulattoes) and the other (distant, inhospitable and wild areas, jungles and mountains).”[59] Hence, some Paisas classify themselves among the “civilized people” of the country while ostracizing and mocking inhabitants from other regions. Examples of this are Paisas’ common references to Costeños (people from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the country) as “lazy” or Pastusos (inhabitants of the region located in the southwest of Colombia and north of Ecuador) as “stupid and risible.”

Paisas (as in paisano/countryman) not only refers to the inhabitants of a particular region, as explained above. In Colombia, Paisa has also been used as a mode of ethnic classification. In addition to being the demonym for people from the coffee region and the department of Antioquia, in some places, “paisa” operates as a racial category to refer to people with lighter skin or, in general, to those coming from the interior of the country.[60] Paisas proudly express their white European ancestry and strive to make it explicit through their marked accent and intonation, the voseo, and the use of distinctive objects like clothing (hat, poncho, and carriel) that were brought by the Spanish colonizers.[61] Some assume that Paisa’s identity is transmitted genetically and culturally, promoting the ethnic-regional discourse essential for the construction of their identity as colonizers sharing the blood, race, and bravery of their European ancestors. Paisa regionalism resulted in a power dynamic of one over the rest, legitimated in academic discourses of biased Paisa history.[62] Their advantaged position, supported by economic power and discourses of racial superiority, has a decisive impact on the relationships between regions and social groups in Colombia, modeling its political and cultural scenarios.

In this context, Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony is crucial for understanding regionalist power dynamics.[63] For Gramsci, cultural hegemony is a balanced combination of coercion and consent between the civil society and the State.[64] Raymond Williams, a prominent figure in British Cultural Studies and follower of Gramscian theory, affirmed that hegemony “exists not only in political and economic institutions and relationships but also in active forms of experience and consciousness,” which makes hegemony a key concern for the oppressed subaltern classes.[65] According to Yu Huang (2015), “the English word ‘hegemony’ is taken directly from the Greek word egemonia/egemon, which means leader and ruler in the sense of a state other than his or her own. In a broader sense, it is used to describe political predominance based upon public consent.”[66] One striking example of how Paisas enforce cultural hegemony in Colombia is through their recent attempts to rebirth federalism in Antioquia. In the years after the independence from Spain in 1810, Colombian politics had many fluctuations. In the first decade of republican life (1810-1820), there was never a national Constitution; on the contrary, the regional governments issued several provincial constitutions.[67] Federalism developed in a constant dispute between liberals and conservatives, which increased regionalist sentiments. The Sovereign State of Antioquia existed from 1856 to its dissolution in 1886 when the national Constitution established Colombia as a unitary Republic.[68]

Despite Antioquia’s federalism seeming to be old history, this conversation has recently resurfaced in the departmental elections of 2023. Mauricio Tobón, candidate for governor of Antioquia, supported by the citizen movement El Parche, proposed that Colombia and Antioquia turn again to federalism. Tobón called for “regionalism in Antioquia,” which logically aroused controversy in other parts of the country. A federal system, in short, implies changing Colombia’s current political model by decentralizing the state’s political power.[69] Some ridiculed the candidate’s proposal;[70] however, others pointed out that Antioquia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US $40,198 million (according to 2021 figures) is comparable to some countries in the region like that of Bolivia and Paraguay, while it doubles that of Nicaragua.[71] With these numbers in mind, Tobón argued that federalism would facilitate state policies to develop the regions according to their economic potential and territorial identity.[72] He included in the proposal more freedoms in taxation, judicial power, infrastructure, and policies for education and health but remarked that he was not proposing the creation of an independent nation.

Despite not winning the governorship elections, the support that Tobón received for his proposal of a new federal Antioquia demonstrates that Paisa hegemony is alive in Colombia. Politics and economics are central to this battle, but culture is also crucial to creating and perpetuating unequal power relationships between regions. In the next section, I connect Paisa’s identity and gastroregionalism using the example of Bandeja Paisa. I show how Paisas keep enforcing their cultural hegemony by proposing their “typical” food as the national dish. Furthermore, I explain that Bandeja Paisa’s ingredients and how the dish has expanded connect to the idealization of an agrarian past characterized by longstanding traditions of colonization and othering. As the concept of terroir proposes, Paisas not only reinforce their current cultural identity through the cooking and consumption of food; they also perpetuate historically racist and exclusionary discourses that affect the cohesion of the already fragile Colombian nation-state.

Bandeja Paisa, the National Dish?

The Bandeja Paisa is a popular dish in the coffee region and has expanded to other corners of the Colombian territory. One can easily find a version of this dish (with more or fewer ingredients) in “traditional” Colombian restaurants across the country, in the Oriental Plains, the Amazonian jungle, or the Pacific coast. Furthermore, it is also a popular choice on menus in Colombian restaurants in other parts of the world. It has contributed, along with other popular dishes like ajiaco and sancocho, to increasing the popularity of Colombian cuisine abroad. In the latest edition of the World Travel Awards, which rewards the best in tourism, Colombia took first place as the leading culinary destination in South America, replacing Peruvian gastronomy, which had held the award for seven years.[73]

Nevertheless, this well-known dish is neither traditional nor entirely Paisa, as many believe. A couple of generations ago, the Bandeja Paisa was not as we know it today.[74] Many different versions of this recipe probably emerged as derivatives of the envuelto arriero, a nineteenth-century dish rich in carbohydrates (rice, beans, potatoes, corn, yuca) wrapped in plantain leaves, ideal for providing the necessary energy to muleteers and farmers for their daily work.[75] Kendon MacDonald Smith (2017) affirms that the dish experienced many transformations and probably descended from the Asturian fabada, also a countryside dish that provided agrarian workers with maximum calories for a minimum price without sacrificing taste.[76]

During the Popayán Gastronomic Congress celebrated in 2004, Colombian anthropologist Julián Estrada raised controversy when he declared that Bandeja Paisa was only 60 years old and was born in a restaurant as a response to tourists’ demands and not in the idealistic kitchens of rural Paisa families.[77] According to his research in Paisa regional cuisine, Estrada explained that during the 1970s, the tourism company Turantioquia promoted a group of restaurants in Caucasia, Santa Fe de Antioquia, and La Pintada offering beans with whatever meat the customer desired. Roadside stops copied this model; they began selling beans with multiple sides and served them on a tray to prevent the ingredients from falling off the plate.[78] For Estrada, the Bandeja Paisa led Antioquia gastronomy to a “dead end;” the popularity of the dish overshadowed the region’s cuisine deliciousness and variety, offering a retrograde and unbalanced reverence to gluttony that was far from local ingredients and traditional cooking ways.[79]

Before Spanish colonization, the region’s typical foods included corn, wild meat, beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, cassava, mafafa (a tuber similar to cassava), cherimoya, and avocado.[80] From the list, only corn (transformed into arepas), avocado, and beans are present in contemporary Bandeja Paisa; many of the Bandeja Paisa’s ingredients were alien to the region until recently. Rice, pork,[81] chicken, onion, carrot, plantain, spices, and other condiments that are crucial for the dish arrived from Europe, Africa, and Asia as colonial legacies and only became widely available around the 1900s. Notably, Antioquia gastronomy had an important revolution during the railroad construction, the beginnings of mining exploitation, and the incursion of coffee cultivation during the colonial period.[82] Therefore, Bandeja Paisa is a mix of traditional/local and imported ingredients that has experienced multiple transformations and whose presentation responds to modern tourist demands.

Many agree with Estrada that Bandeja Paisa is not the most traditional dish of the region, nor one to be proud of when considering its poor nutritional value.[83] Nevertheless, I argue that it is a representative dish of Paisa’s identity, which might be the cause of its popularity. The Bandeja Paisa is meant to satisfy customers; its size and high caloric value resemble the abundance, prosperity, and expansion of Paisas in the territory. It maintains the idea of feeding hungry, brave rural workers fighting to tame the land. Furthermore, the dish’s recent connections with the tourist industry indicate Paisas’ entrepreneurial and business orientation. Reminiscent of naturalistic ontologies inherited from Europe (see Latour’s reference above), the tray is an exaltation of colonizing processes over the geographical territory that translates into supposed cultural superiority. The dish does not offer an accurate historical experience of traditional Indigenous cuisine. Instead, it displays ingredients brought during colonial times as traditional and maintains links to an idealistic agrarian life that has systematically excluded Black and Indigenous populations from its history. Moreover, as Bandeja Paisa is imposed as the signature dish of the Andean region and even the whole country, Paisas’ cultural hegemony grows, reinforcing regionalism in Colombia.

Not surprisingly, when the Colombian government intended to name Bandeja Paisa the national dish in 2005, many disagreed. Some said this move would exclude people from other regions whose cuisine was not adequately represented in the tray. Additionally, there was no consensus on which ingredients are essential to the dish, making it difficult to reproduce and creating dissenting opinions about its flavor.[84] Having a national dish becomes a nation-building tool with immense symbolic power.[85] However, the proposal is problematic in a polarized country like Colombia, which already faces interregional conflict and political instability. Notably, former President Uribe Vélez, whose central government supported this proposal, represented the epitome of Paisa culture and values. Uribe was born in Medellín, the biggest city of the Paisa region and capital of Antioquia, to a family of ranchers and businessmen. Supporting a neoliberal expansionist economy and conservative views, Uribe included many of the core values of Paisa’s identity in his government plan: geographical expansion, practical sense, love of money, traditionalism, puritanism, and colonialism.[86] The fact that Bandeja Paisa was proposed to be the national dish during Uribe’s mandate, and no other food with a more extended history and connections to Colombian territory, is not a coincidence.

Conclusions

The answer is unclear if one was asked to predict what would have happened if Bandeja Paisa had been declared the Colombian national dish in 2005. In this hypothetical scenario, pig farmers and other agrarian associations of Antioquia could likely have praised the decision, and the resources of the Ministry of Culture could have been directed toward advertising campaigns to increase the production and consumption of the dish. Restaurants might have produced more innovative versions of the tray, and Paisas could have established a commemorative day to celebrate the achievement. More importantly, the decision could have reflected the sentiment that “Bandeja Paisa represents the whole of Colombian cuisine,” an argument that can quickly mutate to “Paisa identity represents Colombian identity” or, in other words, regional identity maintains dominance over national identity. Categorizing this food as the national dish also comes with the glorification of Paisa values, the homogenization of other communities in the country, and the reproduction of exclusionary ­–racist, colonial, patriarchal, classist­– discourses that have characterized the Paisa presence in the territory.  

As argued by many food studies scholars, “what and how we eat is essential not only to the way we live but also how we think about life, about ourselves, and about the worlds that we inhabit.”[87] Human groups establish connections with the spaces they populate; they transform the environment and simultaneously see themselves transformed by it. Through this process of identification with territory, space turns into place, and groups differentiate from each other.[88] In this article, I used food, specifically Bandeja Paisa, as an analytical object to show the complexities of regionalism, cultural hegemony, and identity building in Colombia. Food, place, and identity form a rich triangle of theoretical engagement that requires further exploration. Reconceptualizing what “traditional” dishes or ingredients are, is crucial in a globalized modern world –which is the product of colonization. Categories like “national dishes” and “national cuisine” endorse a potential symbolic power of representation and exclusion that should not be ignored.

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[1] M. Douglas. “Fundamental Issues in Food Problems.” Current Anthropology 25, no. 4 (1984): 498–99.

[2] T.C. Bestor, “Supply-Side Sushi: Commodity, Market, and the Global City,” American Anthropologist 103, no. 1 (2001): 76–95.

[3] J. Goody, Cooking, Cuisine, and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982)

[4] S. Mintz, and S. Nayak, “The Anthropology of Food: Core and Fringe in Diet,” India International Centre Quarterly 12, no. 2 (1985): 195.

[5] I use quotes on “traditional” to signal that Bandeja Paisa, as people prepare and consume it today, is far from having a long history in the region, an argument I present later in the article. 

[6] M. DeSoucey, “Gastronationalism: Food Traditions and Authenticity Politics in the European Union,” American Sociological Review 75, no. 3 (2010): 432–55; P.P. Ferguson, “Culinary Nationalism,” Gastronomica 10, no. 1 (2010): 102–9; Atsuko Ichijo, Venetia Johannes, and Ronald Ranta, “Introduction,” in The Emergence of National Food: The Dynamics of Food and Nationalism. 1st ed. (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2019); Venetia Johannes, “Narratives on an Independent Cuisine: Catalan Food as Identity in the Contemporary Independence Movement,” in Food, Social Change and Identity. C. Chou and S. Kerner (eds.) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

[7] A. Larraín González, and P.J. Madrid Garcés, “Aproximaciones Al Discurso de Lo Paisa en Colombia,” Revista de Antropología y Sociología Virajes 22, no. 2 (2020): 185–209.

[8] B. Ramírez-Pulido, S.T. Olivares-Tang, N.M. Tarache-González, J.D. Guevara-Álvarez and A. Filomena-Ambrosio, “The Ideal Bandeja Paisa: Analysis of Perception,” Agronomía Colombiana Suplemento Vol. 1 (2016): S1039-S1042.

[9] K. MacDonald Smith, “¿Es la Bandeja Paisa el Plato Nacional?” Diners Magazine (Colombia). Nov. 14, 2017. https://revistadiners.com.co/estilo-de-vida/gastronomia/51273_es-la-bandeja-paisa-el-plato-nacional/

[10] A.B. Trubek, The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

[11] DeSoucey, “Gastronationalism” (2010).

[12] B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Revised ed. London: Verso, 2016)

[13] Trubek, The Taste of Place (2008).

[14] E. Ascione, J. Belsky, M. Nelsen, and M. Barbato, “Cultivating Activism through Terroir: An Anthropology of Sustainable Winemakers in Umbria, Italy,” Food, Culture, & Society 23, no. 3 (2020): 277–95.

[15] Trubek, The Taste of Place, 20; H. Paxson, “Locating Value in Artisan Cheese: Reverse Engineering Terroir for New-World Landscapes,” American Anthropologist 112, no. 3 (2010): 444–57

[16] D. Beriss, “Food: Location, Location, Location,” Annual Review of Anthropology 48, no. 1 (2019): 62.

[17] Ibid.; Paxson, “Locating Value in Artisan Cheese,” 444.

[18] Beriss, “Food: Location, Location, Location,” 64

[19] Colombia’s six natural regions are: the Andean Region, covering the three branches of the Andes mountains; the Caribbean Region, adjacent to the Caribbean Sea; the Pacific Region, adjacent to the Pacific Ocean; the Orinoquía Region, including the plains in the Orinoco river basin along the border with Venezuela; the Amazon Region, where the Amazon rainforest is located; and the Insular Region, comprising the islands in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

[20]  Colombia Travel, “A country of regions” Travel Magazine (Colombia). N.d. https://colombia.travel/en/blog/travel-magazine/country-regions

[21]  Ibid.

[22] Beriss, “Food: Location, Location, Location,” (2019).

[23] Paxson, “Locating Value in Artisan Cheese,” 445.

[24] Ascione, et al., “Cultivating Activism through Terroir” (2020).

[25] Beriss, “Food: Location, Location, Location,” (2019)

[26] Ichijo, et al., “Introduction,” (2019).

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ferguson, “Culinary Nationalism,” (2010).

[29] Anderson, Imagined Communities, (2016).

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ichijo, et al., “Introduction,” (2019).

[32] Ibid.

[33] DeSoucey, “Gastronationalism,” 433.

[34] Ibid. 434.

[35] Johannes, “Narratives on an Independent Cuisine,” (2021).

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid. 92.

[38] H. Lelieveldt, “Comment on DeSoucey,” SSRN Electronic Journal. (2017).

[39] Here, “region” does not refer to the supranational structures connecting nation-states used for economic and political purposes like the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR for its Spanish initials). I use “region” as a space that does not respect nation-states’ geographical or political boundaries and connects their communities through cultural practice. For the use of region under the first definition see: J. Subasich, “Regionalismo y Gobernanza Global: Elementos de Desarrollo de Identidad Estratégica y Geopolítica Para Colombia,” Ciencia y Poder Aéreo 11, no. 1 (2016): 132–53.

[40] Lelieveldt, “Comment on DeSoucey,” 7.

[41] A. Appadurai, “Gastro-Politics in Hindu South Asia,” American Ethnologist 8, no. 3 (1981): 494-511.

[42] B. Latour. We have never been modern / translated by Catherine Porter. (New York; London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993).

[43] C. Arango-Correa. “Un mundo terráneo. El regionalismo postnaturalista en Colombia,” PhD dissertation, Department of Spanish and Portuguese (New York University, 2019).

[44] The “coffee triangle” is also called as the coffee region/area/trail/axis; Larraín González and Madrid Garcés, “Aproximaciones Al Discurso de Lo Paisa en Colombia,” 185.

[45] A. Larraín, “Políticas de La Música Bailable En Colombia: Una Aproximación Al Regionalismo ‘Paisa’ a Partir de Sus Estéticas Musicales, Dancísticas y Festivas,” Revista de Antropologia (São Paulo) 64, no. 1 (2021): e184477.

[46] M.T. Arcila Estrada, “El Elogio de la Dificultad como Narrativa de la Identidad Regional en Antioquia,” Historia Crítica (Bogotá, Colombia), no. 32 (2006): 38.

[47] Larraín González and Madrid Garcés, “Aproximaciones Al Discurso de Lo Paisa en Colombia,” 185.

[48] Arcila Estrada, “El Elogio de la Dificultad,” (2006).

[49] Larraín, “Políticas de La Música Bailable En Colombia,” (2021).

[50] Larraín González and Madrid Garcés, “Aproximaciones Al Discurso de Lo Paisa en Colombia,” (2020).

[51] Larraín, “Políticas de La Música Bailable En Colombia,” (2021).

[52] Larraín González and Madrid Garcés, “Aproximaciones Al Discurso de Lo Paisa en Colombia,” 188.

[53] Ibid. 199

[54] D. Fernández-Acosta, “El Voseo En Medellin, Colombia: Un Rasgo Dialectal Distintivo de la Identidad Paisa,” Dialectología, no. 24 (2020): 91.

[55] Larraín González and Madrid Garcés, “Aproximaciones Al Discurso de Lo Paisa en Colombia,” (2020).

[56] Larraín, “Políticas de La Música Bailable En Colombia,” (2021).

[57] Larraín González and Madrid Garcés, “Aproximaciones Al Discurso de Lo Paisa en Colombia,” (2020).

[58] Ibid.

[59] Arcila Estrada, “El Elogio de la Dificultad,” 53.

[60] Larraín, “Políticas de La Música Bailable En Colombia,” (2021).

[61] Ibid.

[62] Larraín González and Madrid Garcés, “Aproximaciones Al Discurso de Lo Paisa en Colombia,” (2020).

[63] C. Brandist, “The Cultural and Linguistic Dimensions of Hegemony: Aspects of Gramsci’s Debt to Early Soviet Cultural Policy,” Journal of Romance Studies 12, no. 3 (2012): 24–43.

[64] H.Y. Huang, “Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony in Post-Mao China,” Literature Compass 12, no. 8 (2015): 404–13.

[65] Ibid. 404.

[66] Ibid.

[67] R. Zuluaga Gil, “Aspectos del Regimen Federal en Antioquia,” Estudios de Derecho (Medellín) 66, no. 148 (2009): 229.

[68] The nuances of federalism in Antioquia and the multiple changes in post-independence Colombian politics escape from the scope of this paper. It is important to highlight that this period was crucial for the formation of Paisa’s identity and the leadership of the coffee region over the rest of the country. For a profound revision of this topic, see L.J. Ortiz Mesa, “Antioquia Durante la Federación, 1850-1885,” Anuario de Historia Regional y de las Fronteras 13, no. 1 (2008): 1–22.

[69] G. Espejo, “Proponen Una Antioquia Federal, ¿De Qué se Trata?” RCN (Radio news, Colombia) Apr. 13, 2023. https://www.rcnradio.com/colombia/antioquia/proponen-una-antioquia-federal-de-que-se-trata

[70] D. González Escobar, “Antioquia Federal” El Colombiano (Colombia). Dec. 3, 2023.https://www.elcolombiano.com/opinion/columnistas/antioquia-federal-BM17934005

[71] J. Valentina Arenales, “Una Antioquia Federal como Estado, Prácticamente Equipararía su PIB al de Paraguay,” La República (Colombia). Apr. 15, 2023. https://www.larepublica.co/economia/una-antioquia-federal-como-estado-practicamente-equipararia-su-pib-al-de-paraguay-3592883

[72] Ibid.

[73] Recetas Nestlé, “5 Datos Curiosos de la Bandeja Paisa,” in Blog Culinario. Nov. 16, 2021. https://www.recetasnestle.com.co/blog-sabor/recetas-caseras/bandeja-paisa-datos

[74] A.M. García Patiño, “La Bandeja Paisa No Es Tan Paisa,” Laterales (Colombia). Sept. 28, 2017. https://laterales.com/cocina/la-bandeja-paisa-no-tan-paisa/

[75] Recetas Nestlé, “5 Datos Curiosos de la Bandeja Paisa”

[76] MacDonald Smith, “¿Es la Bandeja Paisa el Plato Nacional?,” (2017).

[77] Ibid.

[78] García Patiño, “La Bandeja Paisa No Es Tan Paisa,” (2017).

[79] Ibid.

[80] Ibid.

[81] Arango Navarro provides an extended revision of the use of pork in Antioquia gastronomy, the Colombian region with the highest consumption of pork meat (three times the national media rate). See F. A. Arango Navarro, “El Cerdo en la Gastronomía Antioqueña,” Revista Lasallista de Investigacion 4, no. 1 (2007): 58–66.

[82] García Patiño, “La Bandeja Paisa No Es Tan Paisa,” (2017).

[83] Ibid.

[84] Ramírez-Pulido, et al. “The Ideal Bandeja Paisa,” (2016).

[85] F. Wojnarowski, and J. Williams, “Making Mansaf: The Interplay of Identity and Political Economy in Jordan’s ‘National Dish’,” Contemporary Levant (2020): 1–17.

[86] J.J. Brittain, “Uribe’s Colombia,” Global Dialogue (Nicosia, Cyprus) 10 (2008): 108–19.

[87] Ferguson, “Culinary Nationalism,” 108.

[88] Arcila Estrada, “El Elogio de la Dificultad,” (2006).

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dr. Cynthia Chou, whose orientation during the graduate seminar on Sociocultural Anthropology: Space, Place, and Identity inspired the first version of this paper. I am also grateful to the editorial committee of the Graduate Journal of Food Studies, which provided insightful advice to strengthen the arguments presented in this article, and to Fulbright Colombia, which has financed part of my PhD program.

Biography

Andrés Restrepo-Sanchez is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of Iowa, advised by Dr. Elana Buch. He has a B.S. in Nursing (2017), an M.A. in Cultural Studies (2020), and an M.A. in Anthropology (2023). His research interests include feminist approaches to care, violence, reproductive justice, and Colombian history. He is currently working on a project examining the experiences of obstetric violence and birth reform in Medellín, Antioquia, and their relation to other forms of structural violence in the country and region.

Email: andres-restreposanchez@uiowa.edu.
Institutional Affiliation: PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa.