Population increases throughout the decades have demanded a need for efficient methods of food production. As a result, the way corn—one of the world’s most produced crop—is processed has gone from stone quern to machine mill in order to maximize its production.
MAIZ: Lecture & Tasting is an event being held by Chicano & Latino Studies professor Griselda Suarez. During this presentation, Suarez will discuss the evolution of corn as well as the colonization of countless cultures heavily influenced and molded by the growth and use of maize, or corn.
“It’s fascinating, the expanse of maize through conquest—the conquest brought maize to Africa, Turkey, England,” Suarez said. Before that contact, American Indians were using it for thousands of years.”
Maize has both male and female reproductive organs, Suarez said. For this reason, the indigenous people of Mesoamerica often correlated it with their ancient deities, who were bi-gender or “two-spirited.”
Cited by the ancient texts of Aztecs, Mayans and Incans, the use of maize is deeply rooted in Mesoamerica. The Popol Vuh, which is the Mayan creation myth, describes the origins of humans to be rooted in corn. The creators, Heart of Sky and six other deities, wanted to create human beings with souls who could “keep the days.” After a few failed attempts, the creators molded human beings from yellow and white corn.
Suarez says that the culture and history of maize has been lost as mass production of food products has expanded. The way corn was initially processed—a method innovated by the indigenous people of the Americas—has been erased and substituted with chemically-engineered corn production. Corn’s biodiversity has also been impacted. Suarez said that throughout the years, the 300 types of corn originally found on this continent have dwindled to 100.
The act of processing corn is called “nixtamalli” by the Aztecs. This is a thousand-year-old process crafted by the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and Suarez said that it took trial and error for these communities to process corn in a way that made it more nutritious than modern-day processed corn.
Under the North American Fair Trade Agreement, subsidized corn in the United States left the Mexican corn industry in shambles. Suarez said that she plans on discussing the way in which NAFTA has affected families within Long Beach, and how the introduction of GMOs to corn resulted in a massive loss of jobs within Mexico.
“After the U.S. took control of NAFTA, a lot of pueblos were left empty,” Suarez said. “The act of stone-ground corn is slowly dying, it’s no longer the heart of the town.”
The event will include both a presentation and a tasting of maize. Suarez said that she hopes that people will attend her event with a deeper understanding of not only the food, but also the culture and history.
“Hopefully, they will leave understanding that maize is not just “food stuff,” as it is called in so many academic journals because it is heavily processed,” Suarez said. “But corn is a part of our culture. We have roots to corn being part of our souls, part of our being. Our true spirits.”
The event will be hosted at the Museum of Latin American Art in Downtown Long Beach on Friday from 7-8:30 p.m.
