Reviewed by: Rice in the Time of Sugar: The Political Economy of Food in Cuba by Louis A. Pérez Jr. Steven C. Topik Louis A. Pérez Jr. Rice in the Time of Sugar: The Political Economy of Food in Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 264 pp. Louis A. Pérez Jr., the University of North Carolina's distinguished and prolific historian of Cuba, presents us with a rather brief, innovative, and well-written study of Cuban identity and dependence from an unusual perspective. The title of this volume explains many of the issues he addresses here: a first chapter on rice's place in Cuban identity, then three chapters on consequences for rice production of the political economy of sugar, their effects on Cuban-US trade relations, and an epilogue on rice in Cuba after the revolution. The central issue is the fundamental paradox of how a land so blessed with natural resources could have such poverty and inequality. As a Cuban analyst feared in 1861, without attention to cultivation for domestic consumption, Cuba would "soon present the singular spectacle of a very rich country in which there is nevertheless hunger" (53). It turns out that the solution was importing foods, especially rice. By investigating partially through the lens of rice production, consumption, and trade, he introduces us to a crucial issue insufficiently studied in Latin American and Cuban history: the role of domestic consumption of food goods and their economic, political, gastronomic, and cultural effects. While a wonderful perspective, in fact Pérez emphasizes "the time of sugar" more than he explains the expansion and failure of rice cultivation in Cuba. Rice is used as another way to understand Cuba's dependency on sugar which became for most of the twentieth century, dependence on trade with the United States. Pérez begins with a discussion of the "national cuisine" or "la cocina criolla"—"shared tastes invoked as a source and means of nationality" (1)—which he writes arose in the nineteenth century as Cuba's previously sparse population began to swell with the arrival of Spaniards, Africans, and Asians. Using novels and cookbooks, he shows that some of the most popular truly Cuban dishes—as opposed to Spanish ones—used rice like arroz con pollo but with [End Page 334] uniquely Cuban spices. Indeed, rice became closely entwined with the creole cuisine and hence with lo cubano. Pérez notes that "rice occupies a very special place in the cosmology of [the] Cuban. Rice is more than a food: it is a way of life, an obligatory presence on the Cuban table" (13). Rice appears in this book more as a symbol of domestic identity and international disputes than as a crop or a recipe. We read little about agriculture, processing, and labor but some intriguing insights into the power struggle over international trade between Cuba and the United States. The choice of rice for this study is telling. Were he just interested in "food in Cuba" as his title suggests, he might have written considerably more about foods native to Cuba and the food of the masses (termed frutos menores in Cuba) like beans, yucca, corn, plantains, and sweet potatoes. We know that the first Spaniards to report on the Caribbean were amazed by the fertility and abundance of the native foodstuffs. Yet while all these dishes were, and are, widely eaten they were not monetized and traded trans-nationally the way rice would become in the nineteenth century when Chinese and Indian imported workers brought the Asian starch with them to the island. Lo cubano apparently inherently means an international mix, not something purely Cuban. Pérez chooses rice because once Cuba was deeply enmeshed in global trade, "nothing perhaps so fully defines the character of la cocina cubana as much as rice" (13). Yet he trains his attention more on rice which was involved in international trade clashes, especially with the United States. It was a crop that could not be grown cheaply enough to sustain the Cuban population without protection from rice producers in the United States and Asia. Rice could certainly flourish when it was provided tariff protection...