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The Hispanic Atlantic's Tasajo Trail

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Andrew Sluyter
Andrew Sluyter*
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Abstract

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Produced along the Río de la Plata during the nineteenth century, shipped to Havana, and consumed by African slaves, the salt-cured beef known as tasajo affected both of those places and, to some degree, the Atlantic world in general. Initial exploration of the tasajo trail that connected Buenos Aires and Cuba employs primary sources such as nineteenth-century descriptions and shipping records to characterize the landscapes, places, routes, and agents of the largely unexplored research territory of that anomalous commodity: one that, unlike others such as sugar, slaves not only produced but also consumed; one that underpinned more prominent, latitudinal transatlantic flows such as the slave trade, yet itself flowed meridionally; one that, like all those flows, had an oceanic component that comprised an actively lived space of flows rather than a dead space of separation; and one that might be mundane, yet helped fuel major transformations of two of the principal nodes of Hispanic Atlantic.

Resumen

Resumen

Producida en las riberas del Río de la Plata durante el siglo diecinueve, despachada a La Habana, y consumida por esclavos Africanos, la carne de res curada de sal y llamada tasajo tuvo un impacto sobre ambos lugares y, de cierto modo, sobre el mundo Atlántico en general. Esta exploración inicial del sendero tasajo que conectó Buenos Aires y Cuba utiliza fuentes primarias tal como descripciones y documentos de embarcación del siglo diecinueve para caracterizar el paisaje, los lugares, las rutas y los intermediarios del territorio de investigación en gran parte inexplorado de esta mercadería anómala. Una mercadería que, a diferencia de otras como el azúcar, los esclavos no solamente produjeron pero también consumieron; que sostuvo flujos latitudinales transatlánticos más destacados como el comercio de esclavos, pero que circuló meridionalmente; que, como todos esos flujos, tuvo un componente oceánico que compuso un espacio de flujos vivido activamente más que un espacio muerto de separación; y que podría ser banal pero que ayudó a alimentar trasformaciones mayores de dos de los principales centros del Atlántico hispánico.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , 2010 , pp. 98 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

I thank Christian Fernández-Palacios for inviting me to participate in the multidisciplinary symposium “Re-Defining Transatlantic Hispanic Studies,” held April 21–22, 2008, at Louisiana State University, which in large part stimulated this study. Many of its diverse participants made that occasion lively and productive, but I especially appreciate Julio Ortega for pointing out that Alejo Carpentier made colonial Havana stink of tasajo. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback and Mariano Barriendos Vallvé for sharing the draft version of the database of Catalan logbooks.

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