‘Sown to be eaten, it is the sacred sustenance of the men who were made of maize. Sown to make money, it means famine for the men who were made of maize.’
—Miguel Angel Asturias, Men of Maize
‘The seed is something pure, something sacred. For our people the seed is very significant.’
—Rigoberta Menchú
There’s another custom for our twelfth birthday. We’re given a little pig, or a lamb, or one or two chickens. These little animals have to reproduce and that depends on each person, on the love we give our parents’ present. I remember when I was twelve, my father gave me a little pig. I was also given two little chickens and a lamb. I love sheep very much. These animals are not to be touched or sold without my permission. The idea is for a child to start looking after his own needs. I intended my animals to reproduce but I also intended to love the animals belonging to my brothers and sisters and my parents. I felt really happy. It’s one of the most wonderful things that can happen. I was very pleased with my little animals. They had a fiesta for me. We eat chicken whenever there is a fiesta. Years and years can go past without us eating beef. With us, eating a chicken is a big event.
It wasn’t long before my little pig grew and had five little piglets. I had to feed them without neglecting my work for my parents. I had to find food for them myself. So what I used to do was, after work in the fields, I’d come back home at six or seven in the evening, do all my jobs in the house for the next morning, and then at about nine o’clock I’d start weaving. Sometimes I’d weave until ten. When we’d stop for our food out in the fields, I’d hang my weaving up on a branch and carry on weaving there. After about fifteen days, I’d have three or four pieces of cloth to sell, and I’d buy maize or other little things for my pigs to eat. That’s how I looked after my little pigs. I also started preparing some ground with a hoe to sow a bit of maize for them. When my pigs were seven months old, I sold them and was able to sow a bit of maize for the mother pig so she could go on having piglets. I could also buy myself a corte and other things to put on, and enough thread to make or weave a blouse, a huipil. That’s how you provide for your needs and, in the end, I had three grown-up pigs, ready for me to sell. At the beginning it’s difficult, I didn’t know what to give them to eat. I’d collect plants in the fields to give my piglets and when I made the dogs’ food, I used to take a bit for them too. By the time the first little animals are born, our parents can tell if our nahual gives us the qualities for getting on well with animals. I was one of those who loved animals, and they always turned out very well for me. Animals loved me too. Cows, for instance, were never awkward with me. My parents were very pleased with me.
For us women, Sunday was the day we went to the river to wash clothes. Mother or father would go to market to buy things, but some Sundays they didn’t have to go because we don’t eat very much that comes from the market. We mostly eat maize and plants. We go there to sell, when we harvest our beans. We grow little beans but we don’t eat them. They all go to market so we can buy the few provisions we use from the market, like soap, salt, and some chile. Sometimes we can’t sell our beans because nobody buys them. Everyone is selling the beans they’ve grown, so the traders come and pay what they choose. If we ask a little more, they don’t buy. But for us it’s almost a day’s walk to the town and it’s difficult to get horses because only two or three people have horses. When we need one we ask a neighbour to lend us one, but many people want to borrow and some are left without horses. So we have to carry our beans on our backs. I used to carry forty or fifty pounds of beans or maize from our house to the town. We’d sell maize too when there was something we needed to buy.
Most villagers hardly ever go down to the town. We only go when we’re needed to carry all our goods to town, and then two or three of my brothers and sisters would go. Otherwise, just my father, or my mother, or a neighbour would go. It’s the custom with us on Saturday nights to go from house to house asking if any neighbour is going to town next day and if they say, ‘Yes,’ we say: ‘Will you bring us this thing or that thing?’ And that neighbour buys what the whole community needs. So when my mother goes to town, she shouts very loud to all the neighbours: ‘I’m going to market,’ and they say: ‘Buy us soap, buy us salt, buy us chile,’ and tell her how much she should buy. Then another neighbour will come and offer a horse, if a horse is needed. So we all help one another. This is how we sell things as well. Most people in our village make straw plaits for hats, or they make mats, or weave cloth, so at the weekend they get it all together for one person to sell. This way we don’t all have to go to market.
The times we spend up in our village are happy times because we’re there to harvest the maize, and before we harvest the maize, we have a fiesta. The fiesta really starts months before when we asked the earth’s permission to cultivate her. In that ceremony we burn incense, the elected leaders say prayers, and then the whole community prays. We burn candles in our own houses and other candles for the whole community. Then we bring out the seeds we will be sowing. With maize, for instance, the seeds for the coming year are picked out as soon as the cobs start to grow. We choose them and put a mark on them. The cob is peeled or left in its leaves but those grains are taken off, and the big ones are wrapped in the leaves and made into a little ball. The small ones are cooked straight away and made into a tortilla the next day and eaten, so we don’t waste even the smallest part of these cobs. The big seeds, wrapped in the leaves in little balls, are left in the branches of a tree to wait, to be dried as carefully as possible. It has to be a place where none of the women pass over them, or jump on them or anything, nor where the hens and chickens or any other animal can walk on them–where dogs, for example, can’t get them. In front of our house there is a big tree where we put everything like that. A child stands watch to see that nothing gets at them.
Before the seeds are sown in the ground, we perform a ceremony. We choose two or three of the biggest seeds and place them in a ring, candles representing earth, water, animals and the universe (that is, man). In our culture, the universe is man. Th seed is honoured because it will be buried in something sacred–the earth–and because it will multiply and bear fruit the next year. We do it mainly because the seed is something pure, something sacred. For us the word ‘seed’ is very significant. The candles are lit in every house. We put in some ayote too, because that will be sown together with the maize. And we do the same with beans. It is like an offering to the one God. This will be our food for the coming year. During the fiesta, prayers are given up to the earth, the moon, the sun, the animals and the water, all of which join with the seed to provide our food. Each member of the family makes a vow and promises not to waste the food.
The next day everyone calls to each other to go and start sowing. The whole community rejoices when we begin to sow our maize. When we reach the fields, the men sow the maize and the beans. The seeds go in the same hole. The women follow, planting the ayotes in between the furrows to make the most of every bit of land. Others, children usually, follow sowing gourds, chilacayote, or potatoes. Children like sowing potatoes. We plant everything at the same time. Then we have to look after the maize because there are many kinds of animals in the mountains and, at sowing time, they come and dig up the seeds. So we take it in turns to keep watch in the fields, taking a turn around the fields now and again during the night. Racoons, squirrels, taltuzas and other rodents are the ones that come at night. During the day, it’s the birds. We’re happy to take turns keeping watch because we fall asleep by the tree trunks. We like setting traps everywhere we think an animal is likely to come. We set traps but when the poor animals cry out, we go and see. Since they are animals and our parents have forbidden us to kill them, we let them go after we’ve given them a telling off so that they won’t come back. If the dogs kill them, we eat them, but, generally, we don’t kill animals. We only kill them accidentally. When the leaves start sprouting, they stop digging up the seeds.
When the maize starts growing, we all go back down to the fincas on the coast to work. When we come back, the maize has grown and needs attention. It needs weeding out. When that’s done, we go back to the finca. When the maize is high, it needs attending to again. These are the two most difficult parts of growing maize; after that it can be left to itself. We have to put little pieces of earth round the roots so that the stalks don’t get knocked over by the wind. While it is growing, the women often don’t go to the fincas but stay and look after the beans, putting in little sticks for them to wind round so they don’t interfere with the maize. They look after the ayotes too, and all the varieties of gourds.
Maize is the centre of everything for us. It is our culture. The milpa is the maize field. Maíz is the grain. The mazorca is the body of the maize, the cob. The tuza is the leaf which envelopes the cob, especially when it’s dry. The xilote is the core. That’s why we called it xilotear when the fruit begins to grow. Maize is used for food and for drink, and we also use the xilote for bottle stoppers and food for the dogs and pigs.
The animals start coming into the maize fields again when the cobs appear. The birds eat them and the animals come from the mountains for them. So we have to keep guard again. It’s usually the children who look after the fields; shouting and throwing earth all day to keep the birds away. All the neighbours are in their fields shouting. When the cob starts to grow, we have other customs. One custom is when we start using the leaves of the maize plant to make tamales. We don’t cut them or use them straight away, but have a special ceremony before we cut the first leaf. All our village sows their maize in the same way but it doesn’t always grow the same. Some turn out small, some big, and some even bigger. So the neighbours with the most maize must share their big leaves with the others. For us, using a maize leaf for our tamales makes them very tasty and we want to give some meaning to it, so that’s why we celebrate the first leaves. Then comes the fiesta. After we’ve used the first leaves, when we’ve eaten the tamales inside, we don’t throw the leaves away but make a pile of them. We roll them up and hang them in a corner of the house in remembrance of the first harvest the earth gave up. Then comes the ripe maize cob. Sometimes we eat it when it’s still very young but only if we really need to because it’s bigger when the cob has matured. But it’s mountainous there and the cobs fall off with the winds. We have to pick up the maize which falls and eat that too.
At harvest time, we also celebrate the first day we pick the maize cobs, and the rest of what our small plots of land yield. The women pick the beans and the men pick the maize; we all harvest the fruits of our labour together. But before we pick them, we have a ceremony in which the whole community thanks the earth and the God who feeds us. Everyone is very happy because they don’t have to go down to the finca and work now that they have food. The ceremony to celebrate the harvest is nearly the same as the one where we ask the earth’s permission to cultivate her. We thank her for the harvest she’s given us. Our people show their happiness, their gratitude for this food, this maize, which took so long to grow. It’s a victory for the whole community when they harvest their crops and they all get together for a feast. So we have a celebration at the beginning of the tapizca, and at the end of the tapizca we have another.
Every village has a community house which is used for meetings, for prayers, for fiestas, or anything else. It’s a big house which can hold a lot of people. It has a kitchen and a tapanco to store the communal maize. The whole community assembles there to celebrate our faith, to pray. If we don’t do it every Friday, then it’s every Monday. So the whole village gets together, even when there are no special ceremonies or fiestas to celebrate. We get together to pray or just to talk to each other. We tell each other our experiences. We don’t need an agenda, it’s a dialogue between us. We also play with the children for a while. This happens once a week. Either on a Friday or a Monday.
At the beginning everybody works communally, clearing the bush in the mountains. How many years would that take one family? We work together: the women pulling out the small plants below and the men cutting down trees on the mountainside. When sowing time comes, the community meets to discuss how to share out the land–whether each one will have his own plot or if they will work collectively. Everyone joins in the discussion. In my village, for example, we said it was up to all of us if we wanted our own plot or not. But we also decided to keep a common piece of land, shared by the whole community, so that if anyone was ill or injured, they would have food to eat. We worked in that way: each family with their own plot and a large piece of common land for emergencies in the community or in the family. It was mostly to help widows. Each day of the week, someone would go and work that common land.