Notes from the FieldTravels with "a pack of coatis"If you don't know what coatis are, the best description might come from WRFI student Justin Robertson: "They're like turbo-powered raccoonish monkey-dogs." According to our textbook, Plants and Animals of the Ancient Maya, "When not foraging, coatis wrestle among the tree litter, lick each other's coats clean, and nap piled on top of one another. Juveniles play-fight and in general cause havoc…." Justin was one of ten excited WRFI students who traveled to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula over Spring Break on WRFI's Yucatan Cultural Ecology course. For seven days we explored the cultural ecology of the Yucatec Maya, peering into the past at ancient archaeological sites and witnessing the present in a rural Mayan village. On one of those days, Justin and his fellow students received a brief training in how to harvest maize from Mayan master farmer Don Aurelio Cob Tun, and then took to a Yucatan cornfield with enthusiasm and vigor. The farmers make such things look easy—a flick with a sharp polished length of antler or wood, then a quick flip of the wrist, and the beautifully colored golden, red, blue, or white corn ear is freed from its dried husk and tossed lightly over the shoulder, landing perfectly in the woven basket suspended on one's back. But it's more difficult than it appears. Just try to balance an awkward, heavy basket using a tumpline across your forehead while slashing open the surprisingly tough, dry corn husk using the tool provided (or your teeth or fingers), and not miss a single cob on the clump of stalks you are working over…well, you quickly gain new respect for the feat you just witnessed. Farming is NOT "unskilled labor." But enthusiasm and good humor won out. Students shouldered the loads, helped each other with harvesting and with balancing baskets, and laughed their way through the field in a flurry of flying corn husks. Surveying the scene, our local hosts grinned from ear to ear. Speaking in Yucatec Maya, Don Aurelio turned to his 83-year-old father-in-law, Don Emilio, and joked, "Bey le chi'ikobo'—They're like a pack of big coatis." John Tuxill translated for us. More laughter ensued.
Corn gave us rich insights into the links between culture, agriculture, and nature, and was our constant companion as we explored ancient ruins, tropical dry forests, beautiful caves, carefully tended fields, whispering hives of native stingless bees, clear blue water holes, and medicinal plant gardens. On our harvest day, corn ignited the enthusiasm of WRFI students to reconnect with this ancient crop and its cultivation, just as enthusiastically as a pack of coatis foraging in a Yucatecan farmer's maize field. And so it was that we and corn gave our hardworking Mayan hosts a gift in return—a good belly laugh. |
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When our harvest was finished, another local host, Don Medardo Diaz Albornoz, shared with us a Mayan saying about maize: "Corn never stops giving." For the participants in the Yucatan Cultural Ecology course, corn — and its keepers, our Mayan hosts — gave us a wealth of gifts. We harvested corn ears, shucked and milled corn kernels, and made tortillas with the resulting corn dough. We were nourished by corn every day, mixed with fresh foods from fields and backyard gardens such as chiles, chicken, and vegetables, and shaped into amazing foods like tamales, empanadas, and
panuchos.