A pleasant little distraction on one of our tours was meeting these delightful gentlemen who were sitting in a church yard cobbing (?) corn. Corn is hugely important in Mexico and throughout this whole region, not only as main food staple (consequently a source of power and wealth, particularly in ancient times), but also as a spiritual symbol - with four colours (I had no idea corn came in colours!) representing north (white), south (black/blue), west (yellow) and east (red). All types of corn are eaten except red corn, which is considered sacred, as the east is where the sun (and of course the sun god) rises. These men are cobbing white and yellow corn, but they had a little bit of blue corn in the small green bucket as well.
Side note - this corn is dry, and is used to then make tortillas... You soak the corn overnight, then boil it, then mush it all up into a dough, roll into balls, flatten, cook on a flat plate and voila - tortillas!
Blue/black, red, white and yellow corn
No comments:
Post a Comment