What Happens Inside

*Five women run a small-scale tostada cooperative whose product is prepared inside two rooms of a small concrete building. In this same building is where I first introduced my research, asked the community if they would allow me conduct it with them, and if a community member would house me. A month after this moment, a government conservation agency organized for another community from Yucatán to visit them. The visitors also congregated at this building, for a demonstration on how local crops can be monetized in a collective manner.

*This small concrete building acts as an emblem for its locality. It resides with a community located inside the mountainous landscape of La Sepultura forest in Chiapas, Mexico. It is the ejido ¹ El Triunfo II, one entity of the larger communal land management system of Mexico. Ejidos are designated only for campesino/as ² and indigenous groups, a symbolically significant gesture of land redistribution away from private elite landowners towards populations whose culture and livelihoods depend on it. This land restitution allows for environmental relationships of planting, farming, and cultivating to rehabilitate after the land grabbing initiated by the Spanish colonial paradigm.

*It’s 2pm and the key holder unlocks the door, a rectangular cutout of aluminum fence, secured with a lock looped into a metal hook on the wall’s edge. The Doñas ³ walk over the smooth concrete floor to place the ingredients onto an orange table. Floor-to-ceiling openings surround the room on three sides, each filled with more aluminum fencing—to keep strangers and animals out. Small children accompany the Doñas, they sit or crawl on the floor, staring at their mothers. Two Doñas begin to assemble the community’s corn mill while their nixtamal ⁴ waits in buckets atop the orange table.

*This small concrete building stitches together the mutual activities of the Triunfo II people. Living on communal land estranges notions of private ownership and instead enables the testing of collective strategies. Collectivity is an action and a place: it can occur through agreeing that this building will keep the corn mill safe, it will host visitors, it will be a place to watch over children. Collectivity is also a tactic for living in rural geographies devoid of basic infrastructure such as plumbing, street lights, health clinics, and schools. When a schoolteacher is present, the children gather at this space. When a household wants to mill ingredients for a traditional drink, the corn mill is assembled and used. On days with strong sun, the roof acts as a refuge from the heat.

*The oven takes up most of the space in the small side room. Some plastic chairs and tables are stored here, for when the time comes for people to gather. Otherwise the big, airy room surrounded by the openings is empty. Each time the corn mill is used it needs to be assembled, meaning that its previous user had to clean and store it away properly. In the big, airy room the corn mill stands and several households take turns to grind their ingredients. Doña Nora and Don Gil have dry whole corn, achiote, cacao seeds to mill into a powder mix called tascalate. Doña Rosenda has dry whole corn, cacao and cinnamon sticks to make pinole. Doña Mary Carmen and Doña Magdalena will come the next day to make masa once the nixtamal has had enough time to break down the corn kernels into accessible nutrients.

*This small concrete building is the collective. While concrete in materiality, we can think of it as a shapeshifting form maintained by ongoing moments of its use. Without the community it would remain another mundane concrete shell. Moments enacted, performed, and lived here by the users establish its personality. In return, the space protects their necessities like the corn mill which in turn allows individuals to make use of the crops grown on their land. Every household has a field in which corn is grown—it is the heritage ingredient that comes in red, white, blue, or yellow colors. Women usually hold the knowledge to transform it into tascalate, pinole, tostadas and pozol.

*Several women of El Triunfo II gather at the mill so that they can make pozol. They will have to grind the nixtamal white corn until it’s smooth and fine enough. Once it becomes a dough form it’s wrapped in banana leaves and left to ferment for several days. Here in this small concrete building they dilute the fermented corn with water and pour it into plastic jugs. One Doña carries a jug and cups for the workers. The other carries plates with coarse salt and slices of jalapeños prepared at the orange table. They exit the space and walk across the dirt paths to the crop field slightly south of the building. There are many men gathered on the field sowing corn seeds. The Doñas arrive and the workers take a break to drink a cup of pozol, taking bites of jalapeño’s in between sips. A refuel of calories provided by a network of individuals, ingredients, and communal concrete space.