The Urgent Need for Cod: Puerto Rico and Newfoundland in the World-Ecology

Abstract

Puerto Rico and Newfoundland are located at two extremes of the Atlantic Ocean, the former in the Caribbean Sea and the latter in the North Sea of the American continent. Both formations—former colonies from Spain and Great Britain—have been linked through the production and consumption of salted fish (that is, cod and other members of the Gadidae family) from the 16th to the 20th century. Spain transferred to the Caribbean colonies its “addiction” to cod, a cheap source of protein for peasants and laborers in the Peninsula, and a foodstuff that became the source of protein for slaves, peasants, and rural workers in the Caribbean.
The British also used that alimentary strategy in their Caribbean colonies, which became importers of salted fish from New England, Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, a territory that dominated the production and processing (culling and salting) of cod. The plantation system required a cheap protein source for the slave labor force that the American codfish market provided. By the end of the 19th century, the supply of New England cod waned (due to a number of reasons), and that opened up an opportunity for Newfoundland to become the most important supplier of fish, a commodity mediated at first through the British authorities, and later by the merchants of the Dominion. The expansion of the productive frontier—from the 19th to the 20th century—required the investment of capital in larger boats and an increase in effort through the use of nets and long liners in waters distant from the inshore areas.
This paper presents an anthropological and historical analysis of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the producers of salted fish in the North Sea, namely, New England and Newfoundland, through the use of a number of historical and ethnographical studies and, most importantly, through the analysis of primary sources from the General Archive of Puerto Rico, the National Records and Archives Administration in the United States, and the Provincial Archive of Labrador and Newfoundland. This research started, originally, with an interest in understanding the relationship between both markets in their complex export-import relationship, and with a special focus on the 20th century due to the availability of the primary sources. However, this effort led me to the search for other historical and ethnographic sources that documented the social, economic, and political processes that shaped the production of salted fish and the circulation of that commodity in the Atlantic Ocean, with emphasis on the Caribbean.
In that context, the work of Jason Moore proved to be pertinent as a theoretical model to analyze the role of producers and consumers of cheap foodstuffs on a global scale. The World-Ecology model, and the concepts of production frontiers, commodity frontiers, and ecological surplus are extremely useful in understanding how Newfoundland expanded the productive frontier, both horizontally and vertically, by moving the effort from the inshore areas to the offshore banks, which required fishing in deeper waters. In order to provide a cheap commodity to the laborers of the plantation system of the Caribbean, the Newfoundland merchants exploited the unpaid labor of the women and children of the outports (coastal communities) in the processing phase (culling and salting), while forcing the men to look for cash in other subsidiary activities. Low wages and poor working conditions in the curing of fish discouraged laborers to do high-quality work, and therefore, the curing was not always of the required standard for the markets. However, the low-quality fish, the Labrador cure, found its way to the Puerto Rican market. The United States, in the defense of its vested interests in sugarcane cultivation and sugar production, imposed low prices for the importation of salted fish from Newfoundland, and therefore regulated the price per pound at the local markets.
The work of Jason Moore matches the theoretical model developed by Daniel Pauly, a scientist devoted to the study of the global fisheries, and particularly those of the North Sea. For Pauly, the fate of the world fisheries has been in the hands of a threefold expansion (dubbed as the “toxic triad”) led by the development in fisheries technologies over the past four hundred years, and accelerated in the 19th and 20th centuries. Those are the geographical expansion, the bathymetric expansion and the taxonomic expansion. That is, global fisheries expanded their productive activities to new geographical frontiers hitherto explored or utilized, including depths. It also expanded the number of species caught, a process that impacted the food chain. Industrialization, and the use of trawler nets in the 20th century, depleted the North Sea fish stocks and destroyed benthic habitats, which contributed to the collapse of 1992. An “undercurrent” flowing in this paper consists of the argument that there is a strong correspondence between the theoretical thinking of Jason Moore and that of the most progressive fishery scientists, exemplified by Pauly.
Over the last thirty years, I have been involved in research and applied work related to fisheries management and the conservation of habitats and fish populations and stocks. In understanding the relationship between Puerto Rico and Newfoundland, I became interested in the history of fisheries management and conservation, and the economic and political forces that contributed to the collapse of the stocks and populations of cod (Gadus morhua) and other Gadidae that forced the 1992 closure and the demise of one of the most important fisheries in our hemisphere. Data and interpretations from a number of studies suggest that, for a long period of time, the 1992 closure reflected the cumulative effect of centuries of the intensification of production, due to the demand for cod from different parts of the world. This paper suggests that Puerto Rico played a critical role in that process, due to the importance of imports from Newfoundland. Throughout the 20th century, Puerto Rico was one of the most important buyers of salted fish, importing as much as all the Caribbean islands at different points in time. That is a line of research that I will continue to pursue, and this paper is a first step in that direction.
Newfoundland tried to maintain the salt fish market of the Caribbean until the 1960s, when Puerto Rico was in the midst of an industrialization and modernization process that reshaped the taste and consumption patterns of the population. By then, cod ceased to be a gastronomic addiction, despite the efforts of two merchant classes, one in St. John’s and the other in San Juan.
The article is divided into eight sections that broadly cover the following topics: the history of salted fish consumption and production in the North Sea, Spain, and New England; the British and Newfoundland market in Puerto Rico; cod consumption in Puerto Rico during the 19th century; the relations of production (ecological surplus) that made possible cheap cod; 20th century transformations in Puerto Rico, and a final reflection on the role of Puerto Rico and Newfoundland in the World-Ecology.