Two cultures, one crop: The significance of Maize

If the discussion of how civilization began isn’t at the head of the line when history class begins, it’s definitely somewhere in the front. This proved to be just as true in Mayan class as it has in Mr. Dennis’ Simpsons-riddled U.S. History. This discussion is inextricable from the rise of agriculture, usually the domestication of corn. This leap is the modern “discovery of fire,” because it permitted us to settle into groups and perpetuate a more extreme division of labor that characterizes our society today. It should be no surprise, then, that corn, or maize, would continue to be one of the integral aspects of our society more than 7,000 years later. In the U.S., our dependency on corn is staggering, and the situation, compounded by the effects of globalization, is no different here in Mexico, or in any other place in the Americas.

The rise of corn in Mexico began with the nixmal process which combined lime and corn to create a complete set of amino acids and prevented protein deficiency. It’s not small wonder that these are the two most prevalent food items in Mexico, and the tortillas (originally tamales) they are made into and lime are served with every meal, whether you feel that they are necessary or not. In fact, I have never seen a flour tortilla in Mexico. Instead of the dry, super-processed pieces of wheat-derived cardboard I have grown accustomed to in Tex-Mex restaurants, I have been treated to smooth, soft corn tortillas. They may  have been had pressed in my view by a tortilla maker or pressed through a machine owned q small tiendas. Either way, they are delicious, and probably have fewer food miles and less processing than anything we can get at home because they are so pervasive. It pays to make them locally, especially in San Cristobol.

In addition to tortillas, corn is on almost every street corner in one of three forms: elotes y esquinas (most common), elote ice cream, or popcorn (least common). In fact, roaming around near the Mercado de Artesanias and Dulces last night, I encountered the corn trifecta. The elote is basically corn on the cob, and prepared the way my host family likes it, slathered in mayonnaise instead of butter, rolled in cheese and given a generous squirt of chile. While I am not a particularly big fan of this preparation (mayonnaise!!), I am a big fan of elote ice cream, which puts vanilla to shame, just as long as it isn’t textured with corn kernels.

Unfortunately, corn production in Mexico is rife with strikes for political oppression and environmental damage. The primary mode of agriculture here is slash and burn and while yields twice the land use here in Chiapas than in the Yucatan, it comes at the cost of releasing considerable amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and the destruction of forests. Moreover, the milpa farmers are traditionally poor indigenous Indians, who are oppressed through a variety of ways, not in the least the eminent-domain seizure of their land.  These farmers are also to struggle to keep up with cheap imports from the United States, fueled by NAFTA, and they are forced to sell their crop, non-genetically modified, at costs that approach exploitation. They are, fortunately, not defenseless- they have Zapatistas at their back, for better or worse.

NAFTA does not supply our only impact on Mexican corn culture. The entirety of own corn culture is so monolithic as to be entitled a cornarchy by food activists, such as myself. I challenge anyone who doesn’t believe me to find me a processed food item in the interior of the grocery store, freezer shelves included, that contains no remnants of corn. Even if you find something, the time it takes is convincing of how pervasive it is. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is particularly ubiquitous in processed foods, and its these foods that are shipped globally- things like soda, candy, bread (I’m not talking about pastries), and “just-add water” meals, among many, many other items.

Corn isn’t just food for people, though. In the U.S., there are four routes for corn to go: food for people, food for cows, ethanol and exports. Consider the environmental and economic impact of thousands of industrial corn farms that are producing feed for cows, who in turn produce their own devastating impact in terms of worker treatment, waste and its chemical components that infiltrate our water supply, and the carbon byproducts of cows (such as gas) that contribute to global warming.  Farming for ethanol is just as damaging. Just because ethanol is sustainable in the sense that we can grow it in the form of corn, does not mean it is environmentally friendly- it is a carbon-based fuel just like petroleum. These non-food producing fields are taking up valuable space that could be used for grass-fed, free-range livestock, that don’t need to be pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics, or pushed through a factory farm, and also for the fruits and vegetables that could reduce our national health problems and increase our diet diversity.  Finally, we arrive back at the problem of exports- individual milpa farmers, just like domestic farmers, cannot compete with industrial monocultures. And you can’t discount the cost of transport for all of these corn-derived products any more than any other resource.

If you’ll permit me to continue to make a political statement about both of our cultures dependency on corn, it’s this: everything in moderation. While some aspects of our corn-dominated societies are not inherently damaging, and can even be tasty, our dependency is just as toxic as our dependency on oil. When I came to Mexico, I naively expected to participate in a different kind of food economy than we have at home. While I have been privileged, especially here in San Cristobol, to more locally-produced food, the effects of globalization are already taking a toll here as they have in Merida. The Zapatistas can only keep Wal-Mart away for so long.