From c1f61c523e1a4ed68bdd1ff5760b7f9b32086c3e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ron Snyder Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2023 10:30:08 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] escape quotes --- maize/README.md | 10 +++++----- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/maize/README.md b/maize/README.md index 6fede660e..c625cbc61 100644 --- a/maize/README.md +++ b/maize/README.md @@ -84,7 +84,7 @@ To obtain the utmost nutrients from maize, Mesoamericans practiced a process cal The nutritional importance of maize cannot be separated from its cultural significance. In the _Popol Vuh_, which recounts the Maya creation story, humans were quite literally molded out of maize by the deities. Scholars have long recognized motifs of maize in Olmec and Maya iconography. However, in the past four decades, scholars have begun to identify a specific "Maize God" that has an "elongated, tonsured head [that] mimics the long tasseled cob," and often has "maize grain ... infixed into his head," among other qualities.[^ref11] While there is much about the Maize God that remains to be explained in the scholarly literature, it is clear "that the corn cycle was the central metaphor of life and death for the Maya and the nucleus around which much of their religiosity was formed."[^ref12] {#paragraph9} @@ -93,7 +93,7 @@ For the Maya, maize was and is more than simply a metaphor and powerful image in - {#paragraph10} +{#paragraph10} ### Colonial and Postcolonial Eras During the colonial era, Maya beliefs in maize as a sacred plant clashed with European understandings of the crop. Spanish colonizers often publicly denigrated foods like maize as "dangerous to the European constitution."[^ref15] But even as the Spanish publicly disdained maize, there is ample evidence that they recognized the utility—and scrumptiousness—of the crop. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616) recounted how one group of conquistadors inhaled maize "as if it were sugared almonds."[^ref16] Indeed, there are records of conquistadors enjoying atole, a maize beverage, and eating puddings made of maize.[^ref17] @@ -102,7 +102,7 @@ During the colonial era, Maya beliefs in maize as a sacred plant clashed with Eu From the nineteenth century onward, the crop began to attract the attention of scientists from Europe and the United States due to its productivity and economic potential as a domestic and export crop. In the early twentieth century, scientists from the United States and Europe traveled to regions in Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala, among others, to identify unique "landraces," or locally adapted domesticates, of maize. Historian of science Helen Curry has detailed how scientists attempted to transpose putative science of the human race onto maize taxonomies: "At the most fundamental level, the raw material and motivation for classification arose directly from the imperative of ‘improvement’ in both crops and people."[^ref18] These scientists presented a vision of "early, stable indigenous races, transformed by racial mixing with newly arriving populations from other geographical regions, giving rise to valuable new ‘incipient’ but still-unstable racial types."[^ref19] - {#paragraph12} +{#paragraph12} Bolstered in part by this racialized understanding of maize, scientists around the world began to breed maize for preferred traits, namely, quick growth and high productivity. In the 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation began to partner with the Mexican government to increase production rates of staple crops, including maize. These attempts to turn maize into a scientific commodity attracted both local and global concern: one American geographer noted that this endeavor proffered the potential "disastrous destruction of local genes.... Mexican agriculture cannot be pointed toward standardization on a few commercial types without upsetting native economy and culture hopelessly."[^ref20] As one Mexican scientist detailed, some communities refused to sell types of maize used in rituals, no matter what price was offered.[^ref21] @@ -112,8 +112,8 @@ Bolstered in part by this racialized understanding of maize, scientists around t These examples illuminate the resistance of communities in Central and South America to the commodification of maize. Maize became a symbol of Central American cultural and political independence in the 1980s, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan prohibited trade with Nicaragua in an attempt to erode the power of the Sandinistas, a left-wing political group. What this meant in practical terms was that Nicaragua was unable to obtain a sufficient supply of wheat, usually imported from the United States. In response, Nicaraguan artist Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy released a song titled "Somos Hijos Del Maiz" ("We Are the Children of Corn") to rally support for the Sandinistas and resist American political influence. The song begins with the lyrics (in English), "If they take away our bread/We will see ourselves in the obligation/to survive as our grandparents did/with fermented corn/in the blood of the heroes." The sanctity of maize became a way to express independence from colonial and neo-colonial powers. - fit="fill" + title="Somos Hijos Del Maiz" + fit="fill"> {#paragraph14} Maize’s cultural, political, and economic significance persists in Central American communities today. Maya farmers continued to practice Milpa agriculture and it has been hailed as "[central](https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2017/10/a-mexican-legacy-la-milpa-the-birthplace-of-maize/#:~:text=The%20importance%20of%20the%20milpa,an%20amazing%20variety%20of%20peppers)" to the preservation of Mexico’s biodiversity. However, this is not to say that the symbiotic relationship between Indigenous communities and the plant has remained unchanged—scholars have noted the immense out-migration of farmers in maize-growing communities, which can lead to a "narrowing of the agroecological conditions under which maize is farmed."[^ref22] Further, multinational corporations have industrialized and commodified traditional beverages like atole.