The origins of pasteles, however, can be traced back several centuries to Spanish colonial times, before they became an essential Puerto Rican Christmas dish. In "Eating Puerto Rico: A History of Food, Culture, and Identity", Ortíz Cuadra explains that the technique of wrapping the pastel in banana leaves is owed largely to Puerto Ricans’ African ancestors who were enslaved by the Spanish and forced to work the sugar plantations. In the early 19th century, Spanish colonizers provided enslaved African workers a limited diet of viandas, which largely included plantains, a fruit that colonizers and white Puerto Rican elites alike looked down on as “rural y bárbaro.”