Bodega

Writing

I CAN'T REMEMBER when I first heard the word “bodega” used. I'm sure it was on a television show – probably a mystery thriller set in New York – maybe Law & Order. It was a long time before I learned that it referred to a store – usually a neighborhood mom and pop shop. Here too I can't remember how I discovered this.

It wasn't until I began writing Rebels on the Mountain that I took time to research it and discovered that the word is derived frombodega de carga – cargo compartment or ship's hold. I laughed at myself – I should have known this. 

Brig Pilgrim, Dana Point, California

I was a member of the volunteer crew on the Brig Pilgrim in the mid-1980s. It's a replica of the two masted sailing ship that Richard Henry Dana sailed on in the early 1830s, in the hide trade between Boston and California. The ship carried manufactured goods packed in barrels: china, boots, fabrics, saddles, etc. that they traded for cow hides.

Thousands of cattle roamed freely in the virgin territory and there were few people needing the beef. So they slaughtered them by the thousands and traded the hides to the New Englanders. A ship like the Pilgrim could load thirty or forty thousand of them. The carcasses were left on the land to be consumed by carrion-eaters (which explains why so many crows and vultures soar above my house even thought the pickings here are slim these days).

The crew anchored about a mile or two off shore and brought barrels of their trade goods ashore. They set up shop on the beach where the locals came to select their purchases. In the Spanish variation of this story, in places like Cuba, people referred to these trading places on shore as bodegas inasmuch as the cargo being sold was coming from the ship's hold – bodega de carga. Later, when the cargo was traded to merchants who sold it in the towns and villages, their shops also became known as bodegas.

During the three years that I sailed on thePilgrim I also acted as as docent when visitors came aboard to tour the ship. I told them about the bartering that occurred on shore as the ship cruised the coastline and, really, I knew about bodegas, I just didn't know that's what it was called in Spanish.