MAIZE IN THE AMERICAS
Maize is indigenous to the Americas, the word comes from Mahíz in the Taíno/Arauco language, (Cintli in Nahuatl) translated into Spanish as ‘fuente de vida’ or ‘sustento de la vida’ (in English is ‘fountain of life’ and ‘sustainer of life.’) Maize dating back 10,700 years has been found in the Iguala Valley in Mexico. Thousands of years ago, the people of Meso America developed nixtamalization, a process that increases the nutritional value of corn. In the Aztec language Nahuatl, nixtamalli or nextamalli is a compound of nextli "ashes" and tamalli "unformed corn dough, tamal." Soaking corn in ash or slaked lime (calcium oxide) makes vitamin B3 more bioavailable, reduces mycotoxins, and is practiced to this day.
White, black, yellow, and red Maize is the basis of many of the cosmovisions in the Americas - people are maíz. From the Popul Vuh of the Mayas Quichés, in what is now Guatemala, where the human being is created out of maize, to Quetzalcoatl gifting humans with maíz, to the Incas who have been cultivating corn for over 6,000 years, corn spread across all of South America and North America, creating a hemispheric ‘maize culture.' When European colonizers took maize seeds to grow in Europe, they did not know about (or believe in) the need for nixtamalization, or understand the relations with corn developed over thousands of years. As a result, Europeans growing and eating corn developed the disease pellagra - extreme niacin deficiency malnutrition.
El maíz no es una cosa, ni sólo una mercancía o un cultivo: el maíz es un tejido de relaciones. Se originó hace unos 10 mil años de la crianza mutua, de la conversación entre pueblos originarios de Mesoamérica y algunos pastos que, con el cultivo, se fueron haciendo al modo humano.
Maize is not a thing, nor solely a commodity or crop: maize is a weaving of relations. It originated more than 10 thousand years ago through mutual co-creation, from the conversation between the original peoples of Mesoamerica and some grasses which, with cultivation, began being made in the human way (translation by Praba Pilar)
There are thousands of varieties of corn, CIMMYT’s (The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) Maize Germplasm Bank contains over 28,000 unique collections of white, yellow, purple, orange yellow, red, sun red, blue, mottled and brown maize seeds from 88 countries. Peru’s Germplasm Bank contains over 4,000 collections. The NATIVE SEEDS seed bank houses approximately 1,900 different accessions of traditional crops utilized as food, fiber and dye by the Apache, Chemehuevi, Cocopah, Gila River Pima, Guarijio, Havasupai, Hopi, Maricopa, Mayo, Mojave, Mountain Pima, Navajo, Paiute, Puebloan, Tarahumara, Tohono O'odham, Yaqui, and other cultures.Though almost 80% of the maize grown now on nearly 100 million hectares around the world is used for animal feed, maize has long been and remains a staple food in Indigenous and colonized areas of the Americas.
Here, Chef Alejandro Sanchez of the Universidad CESSA de México shows the process of nixtamalization. In other areas, nixtamalization is done with ash, not lime:
Maíz, la semilla del hombre, by Canal 44, explores maíz in Mesoamerica.
Here, Alexander Grobman, profesor Emérito de la UNALM, explains how excavations and fossil analysis show that corn has been grown in Peru for the last 6,700 years; and near varieties to corn date back 7,200 years.
Nixtamalization is an Indigenous technology generated to support life, a ‘ciencia campesina o ciencia de huarache, como fuente de saberes’ - a science and technology of the land and of the huarache, a fountain of knowledge.
If we base our technological desire and design on the Indigenous technology of nixtamalization, can we collectively redirect our technologies away from the destruction of our social fabric, our ecosystem, and our survival? Can we see that we have a choice in how technology is developed?
Maize, food sovereignty
The Techno-Tamaladas ask questions about the direction of our technological development which are tied to present day Indigenous and African American peoples fights for food sovereignty, sustainable communities, regenerative agriculture, self determination, and land justice across this hemisphere.
The network of Indigenous corn keepers and corn cultures across Turtle Island, Braiding the Sacred works to steward sacred ancestral seed varieties by reproducing and sharing seed varieties, and organizes Rematriation Gatherings of Native corn growers and cultural leaders where seed growers, keepers, and cultural leaders share their ancestral seeds and meals, and their knowledge, stories, and songs about Corn Culture.
This video is from Braiding the Sacred's inaugural gathering hosted by the Onondaga Nation.
Ohe∙láku, which means among the cornstalks, is a farming cooperative of the Oneida people of Wisconsin which grows indigenous white corn on the Oneida Nation’s Wisconsin reservation, working to carry out their responsibility to o·nʌ́steˀ.
In this video from the Northern California Tribal Court Coalition, members of the Yurok tribe in California and others talk about the real meaning of food sovereignty, not as what an individual puts in their body, but in a holistic sense, of how a community lives on the land.
In this video, Malik Yakini of the grassroots Detroit Black Community Food Security Network talks about the work of African American communities in Detroit on food sovereignty, community reclaiming, land justice, stewardship, and democracy, addressing white supremacy not only in the food distribution systems, but also in parts of the food sovereignty movement.