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Susana Ojeda Orranti

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Mar 24, 2013, 9:52:55 PM3/24/13
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Hello all!


It’s good to find this kind of groups. In these days, I’m doing a research about a sweet potato ‘cajeta’. This is the result of my interest and curiosity of knowing and reconstructing the old and well preserved traditions of my city Guanajuato. For these reasons, I wish to analyze the tradition of the production and consumption of s sweet potato cajeta and anise ‘pan de muertos’ which occurs around November 2nd, the Day of Dead in Mexico.


I am enquiring as to the origins and development of this tradition, and all the broad social processes around these foods, including its meaning for the inhabitants of Guanajuato City. I consider this project a possible starting point for broaching an understanding of the present day society of the Guanajuato.

I find very interesting to find the links between the migrations of people and the plants distributions. As Patricia O’ Brien says in the sinopsis of its book “Sweet Potatoes and Yams” ……:
“The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas, Lam.) and the yams (genus Dioscorea) are root crops that today nurture millions of people within the world’s tropics. Moreover, they are plants whose origin and dispersals may help in an understanding of how humans manipulated and changed specific types of plants to bring them under cultivation. Finally, these cultivars are important as case studies in the diffusion of plant species as they moved around the world through contacts between different human populations. This chapter reviews the questions surrounding the early dispersals of these plants, in the case of the sweet potato from the New World to the Old, and in the case of yams their transfers within the Old World. In so doing, the sweet potato’s spread into Polynesia before European contact is documented, and the issue of its penetration into Melanesia (possibly in pre-Columbian times) and introduction into New Guinea is explored. Finally, the post-Columbian spread of the sweet potato into North America, China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, and Africa is covered. In addition, a discussion of the domestication and antiquity of two groups of yams, West African and Southeast Asian, is presented, and the spread of these plants is examined, especially the transfer of Southeast Asian varieties into Africa. (…) Primary evidence consists of physical plant remains in the form of charred tubers, seeds, pollen, phytoliths, or chemical residuals. Secondary evidence, which is always significantly weaker, involves the use of historical documents (dependent on the reliability of the observer), historical linguistics (often impossible to date), stylistically dated pictorial representations (subject to ambiguities of abstract representation), remanent terracing, ditches or irrigation systems (we cannot know which plants were grown), tools (not plant specific), and the modern distribution of these plants and their wild relatives (whose antiquity is unknown).”

Well, all this is just a motivation for keep an eye in this..
A question in particular is this:
What information can you share with me about the sweet potato’s adoption by the early American colonist? When and how happened?

What exemples can you mention about food that includes sweetpotato and it's alive in feasts of these days? feast meals? 

Hope I explain myself!!! ; )

Thank you, Saludos desde México!

 


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kelly kioi mwangi

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Mar 25, 2013, 5:57:24 AM3/25/13
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Thank you Susan,
That was very wide and constructive.
I have one question though.Do you think that the sweet potatoes performed well in the different regions that people  migrated to.I mean how did we end up having different varieties of sweet potatoes growing in different areas that have different climatic conditions?
Thank you Susan for this very important information.

Kelly kioi.
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