Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca

Chapter 4. "Maize Has a Soul": Rincón Zapotec Notions of Living Matter

        ‘‘   ’’ Rincón Zapotec Notions of Living Matter In the mid-twentieth century North American development agents, in partnership with their ‘‘Third World’’ counterparts, exported a particular version of factory farming—based on the use of mechanized equipment, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and hybrid seeds—to parts of the world deemed to be in need of ‘‘development.’’ There was a dual irony to this technological civilizing mission. For one thing, the technologies were deployed to the so-called Third World before the dark clouds of the Dust Bowl—a human and ecological tragedy that has been attributed in large part to factory farming practices—had even settled. But perhaps more ironically, in the Mexican case what were later called Green Revolution technologies were ostensibly exported to increase the ‘‘productivity’’ of farmers who were, in a sense, the heirs of native Mesoamericans who thousands of years ago perfected modern maize—a grain that produces much more food per unit of land than wheat, rice, or barley. The developers, described as ‘‘innocents abroad’’ in a thoughtful piece by Angus Wright (), were in some cases technicians largely unaware of their role in larger political projects, much less the social and ecological realities of rural Mexico. Some assumed that the Mexican countryside was ‘‘inefficient’’ or ‘‘underdeveloped,’’ often being ignorant of the highly specialized maize farming techniques that local farmers had been evolving over , years.1 Many were also ignorant of maize’s centrality in the social , cultural, economic, religious, and psychological lives of the region’s peoples. Not surprisingly, the new technologies frequently had disastrous  ‘‘Maize Has a Soul’’  consequences. By the late s it was clear that the Green Revolution had contributed to greater disparities between rich and poor farmers, a greater dependency on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, environmental degradation , and a loss of genetic diversity. Remarkably, maize farming in Talea has persisted in spite of periodic policy shifts (most notably subsidies to producers and consumers) that have resulted in lower prices for consumers. Even though Talean farmers could have abandoned maize farming completely in favor of lucrative coffee cultivation, they have instead struck a balance between subsistence and cash cropping. To help understand why, here I focus on the Rincón Zapotec view of maize as living matter in the strictest sense—a view that holds maize to be so alive that it displays characteristics that people in industrialized society ascribe exclusively to humans. Maize and Its Meanings Maize is especially important for campesino households. It is made into tortillas, which serve as the family’s subsistence base; indeed, approximately  percent of the calories consumed by Talean campesino families come from maize. Both women and men play a vital role in the life cycle of the crop, and from one perspective maize can be seen as an economic link that helps bind household units together. Maize cultivation is a key strategy for household maintenance. Maize, like coffee, can be grown according to either an authoritarian logic or a democratic one (Mumford ). In other words, maize and coffee may be grown on large-scale plantations spanning thousands of hectares or on tiny plots of a fraction of a hectarewithout suffering significantly from economies of scale (Nolasco ; Strange ). But there are differences in the Rincón. In spite of its adaptability to household maintenance strategies, coffee is exported to extraregional markets almost without exception. By contrast, maize is often planted for immediate consumption by the farmer’s family or for sale in regional markets . Furthermore, in Rincón villages maize often serves as a medium for connecting campesino families to their kin, their neighbors, their village, their region, and their deities. Three Accounts about the Soul of Maize One frigid January evening a campesino told me a fascinating story as we husked maize in a tiny thatch-roofed ranch house. We had just finished Zapotec Science  dinner and settled down to chat while working. The story went something like this: Pablo was a Talean campesino who lived in that time when little coffee was planted in the village. He was a successful farmer, a red-blooded campesino, and nearly every year he harvested enough to feed his family. But oneyear his mother, a widow, fell ill and was unable to earn enough money to purchase maize at the market. Pablo secretly took a couple of almudes of maize from his family’s costal [straw basket...