Introduction: why the barrio?

This book is not about “authentic” regional dishes from one or another village in Mexico or Cuba or Brazil. This book is about Latin-American food, the cuisine of the barrio. The barrio is not a monolithic slum, not a segregated ghetto. The barrio is a vibrant neighborhood, often composed of people from vastly diverse cultures: Cubans, Dominicans, Panamanians, and other African-descendant Caribbeans; Puerto Ricans and similarly mixed-European islanders; Mexicans from the Sonoran desert, the highlands of Chiapas, or the jungles of the Yucatán; Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, and other Central Americans of primarily indigenous descent; and South Americans as diverse as Peruvian Incas and Portuguese-speaking Brazilians.