Political Histories of Maize, 2024
Research Residency, Mexico. With Timon Nils Essoungou Bony Malong. Supported by Pro Helvetia.
Maize is one of the three most cultivated cereal crops on the planet and bears global political importance. This research residency served as an opportunity to learn about the plant’s history, its political and cultural significance, and how its cultivation, processing, and preservation are deeply and inherently connected to Indigenous identity, food sovereignty, and ancestral knowledge.
The research residency Political Histories of Maize was also an opportunity to reflect on my relationship with maize, growing up next to cornfields in central rural-industrial Switzerland. It allowed me to situate my childhood memories of corn as a crop and a food within a historical, colonial, and global context. Against the romantization and tokenization of Indigenous knowledge, I am also opposed to the simplified narrative that a society can create a better world and save the planet, simply by eating “local food,” where local is defined as ingredients found geographically close to home. Such a narrative ignores the realities of global movements; of foods, tastes, and eating as practices of carrying and making home; of belonging and solidarity. It encourages an exlusionary narrative and narrow perception of what counts as local versus non-local food. “Home” is itself a vague concept that cannot be defined through geographic distance or national borders. As the authors of Food Across Borders write, it is important to disrupt the notion that “recipes and foodways—how we prepare, procure, provision, and produce food—have travelled with us, unchanged, over many miles and generations.” The pasts are important, but they are not absolute or pure. This residency was a reminder that “cuisine and food provisions have sometimes been a product of struggles over borders” and that the “transgressions of borders and the creation of new ones through conflict and conquest have made us eat differently and, therefore, think differently about ourselves”. It is with deep gratitude to everyone who shared knowledge, recipes and stories, the acknowledgment for past and present struggles and the unquestioned solidarity for the fight against global neo-colonial interest and agrobusinesses that I share my thoughts on maize, my relationship with it and this residency.
Growing up in a small village in central rural-industrial Switzerland, I related to maize through the eyes of a child. Next to my parental house was a large agricultural field where wheat and corn were planted in annual rotation. Although the wheat disappeared in the late nineties—its production outsourced mainly to Eastern Europe—corn remained. Throughout the summer it grew taller and denser, slowly occupying more space in front of the kitchen window, eventually blocking the view toward the post office and my friend’s house on the other side of the field. The corn was inedible, I was told. It’s not for us, but for the cows. I always thought this was strange, if cows could eat it, why couldn’t we? The monocrop field was an appealing playground, and we used to play hide-and-seek in it. Planted in a mechanised fashion with a planter attached to a tractor the maize stems grew in a sort of grid: multiple lines of plants perfectly parallel along the direction the tractor was driving, every passing of the field slightly shifted. This created an experience that felt like walking through a faulty rendered architectural modal: making it possible to see quite far when looking along but the direction the tractor was driving with a very limited visibility in the other, ninety degrees shifted due to the slight displacement of the pattern when adding another row of seeds, passing back over the field. It was a perfect playground: intriguing, private, playful. Once we found a condom; another time my friend told me that a thief had escaped from the police by running through the cornfield. He claimed he had found the gun the thief used. Although I doubted it, I suspended my disbelief and told it to my brother. Local farmers would sometimes cut a physical labyrinth into the field, offering visitors the experience of walking through a maze, the towering plants forming a visually impenetrable wall. We were told not to touch the corns with grey, mouldy deformed kernels, that they were toxic and could make us sick. We used to tear off corncobs and use the kernels to shoot at birds with our self-made slingshots. Once, while ripping off a corncob, the husks cut into my hand and fingers; I had to go to the doctor and get stitches. I can still see the scar on the inside of my hand with the tiny entry points of the sutures. In autumn, after the combine harvester ground through the field, leaving behind cut husks, stalks, and deep tractor tracks, we used to collect some of the cobs—not for any particular reason, but simply because they were there and we wanted to participate.
I learned only later in life that the grey mold is a not a pest but a specialty mushroom, a deeply flavoured earthy delicacy called huitlacoche. And that the corn which was grown next to the house that I grew up would have been edible had it been prepared through nixtamalization, an Aztec method of transforming the kernels from an anti-nutrient into a healthy and nutritional food.
Foods are political actors within a globalized society. Crops and plants have been cultivated, processed, and their seeds preserved over centuries. They are an integral part of ecological, environmental, and cultural evolutions. Globalized food systems are built on national narratives and on global infrastructures and logistics, reflecting the capitalist systems of customs, nation-states, and their interests.
Maize is an entry point for understanding how trade agreements such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and its revised successor, the USMCA (United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement), are designed to foster the interests of nation-states and the continuation of colonial structures. The effects of free-trade agreements constitute direct attacks on Indigenous rights and Indigenous food sovereignty. By fostering free trade and the privatization of land and crops, they promote neocolonial corporate interests—on a geographical and global scale as well as on a molecular and genetic one.
The residency was an opportunity to learn about the practices and techniques—communal seed banks, DNA sampling, and more—used by Indigenous collectives to resist and fight global corporate interests, and to preserve the vast genetic diversity of local maize varieties. I had the chance to connect with and learn from local and chefs, activists, artists, farmers, and educators about the political histories of maize, its essential and significant position within contemporary society, and how its cultivation and processing into a nourishing food carrying ancestral knowledge and identity.
While the residency mainly served as an opportunity to learn, it was also a chance to share. Toward the end of the residency, one evening we were invited to take over a local restaurant. Cooking the recipes that had been shared with us during this time, together with everyone we had met, was nourishing and empowering. We invited friends and passersby to join, eat, and spend time together.
The dinner event was an extension of Faggoterias, a community dinner series organized by FUBU, a collective from Switzerland.
Contributions and collaborations with Zoë Heyn-Jones, Calpulli Tecalco, Mujeres de la Tierra, Santiago del Conde Morales, Aìda Tariq Rebull.
Research Residency, Mexico. With Timon Nils Essoungou Bony Malong. Supported by Pro Helvetia.
Maize is one of the three most cultivated cereal crops on the planet and bears global political importance. This research residency served as an opportunity to learn about the plant’s history, its political and cultural significance, and how its cultivation, processing, and preservation are deeply and inherently connected to Indigenous identity, food sovereignty, and ancestral knowledge.
The research residency Political Histories of Maize was also an opportunity to reflect on my relationship with maize, growing up next to cornfields in central rural-industrial Switzerland. It allowed me to situate my childhood memories of corn as a crop and a food within a historical, colonial, and global context. Against the romantization and tokenization of Indigenous knowledge, I am also opposed to the simplified narrative that a society can create a better world and save the planet, simply by eating “local food,” where local is defined as ingredients found geographically close to home. Such a narrative ignores the realities of global movements; of foods, tastes, and eating as practices of carrying and making home; of belonging and solidarity. It encourages an exlusionary narrative and narrow perception of what counts as local versus non-local food. “Home” is itself a vague concept that cannot be defined through geographic distance or national borders. As the authors of Food Across Borders write, it is important to disrupt the notion that “recipes and foodways—how we prepare, procure, provision, and produce food—have travelled with us, unchanged, over many miles and generations.” The pasts are important, but they are not absolute or pure. This residency was a reminder that “cuisine and food provisions have sometimes been a product of struggles over borders” and that the “transgressions of borders and the creation of new ones through conflict and conquest have made us eat differently and, therefore, think differently about ourselves”. It is with deep gratitude to everyone who shared knowledge, recipes and stories, the acknowledgment for past and present struggles and the unquestioned solidarity for the fight against global neo-colonial interest and agrobusinesses that I share my thoughts on maize, my relationship with it and this residency.
Growing up in a small village in central rural-industrial Switzerland, I related to maize through the eyes of a child. Next to my parental house was a large agricultural field where wheat and corn were planted in annual rotation. Although the wheat disappeared in the late nineties—its production outsourced mainly to Eastern Europe—corn remained. Throughout the summer it grew taller and denser, slowly occupying more space in front of the kitchen window, eventually blocking the view toward the post office and my friend’s house on the other side of the field. The corn was inedible, I was told. It’s not for us, but for the cows. I always thought this was strange, if cows could eat it, why couldn’t we? The monocrop field was an appealing playground, and we used to play hide-and-seek in it. Planted in a mechanised fashion with a planter attached to a tractor the maize stems grew in a sort of grid: multiple lines of plants perfectly parallel along the direction the tractor was driving, every passing of the field slightly shifted. This created an experience that felt like walking through a faulty rendered architectural modal: making it possible to see quite far when looking along but the direction the tractor was driving with a very limited visibility in the other, ninety degrees shifted due to the slight displacement of the pattern when adding another row of seeds, passing back over the field. It was a perfect playground: intriguing, private, playful. Once we found a condom; another time my friend told me that a thief had escaped from the police by running through the cornfield. He claimed he had found the gun the thief used. Although I doubted it, I suspended my disbelief and told it to my brother. Local farmers would sometimes cut a physical labyrinth into the field, offering visitors the experience of walking through a maze, the towering plants forming a visually impenetrable wall. We were told not to touch the corns with grey, mouldy deformed kernels, that they were toxic and could make us sick. We used to tear off corncobs and use the kernels to shoot at birds with our self-made slingshots. Once, while ripping off a corncob, the husks cut into my hand and fingers; I had to go to the doctor and get stitches. I can still see the scar on the inside of my hand with the tiny entry points of the sutures. In autumn, after the combine harvester ground through the field, leaving behind cut husks, stalks, and deep tractor tracks, we used to collect some of the cobs—not for any particular reason, but simply because they were there and we wanted to participate.
I learned only later in life that the grey mold is a not a pest but a specialty mushroom, a deeply flavoured earthy delicacy called huitlacoche. And that the corn which was grown next to the house that I grew up would have been edible had it been prepared through nixtamalization, an Aztec method of transforming the kernels from an anti-nutrient into a healthy and nutritional food.
Foods are political actors within a globalized society. Crops and plants have been cultivated, processed, and their seeds preserved over centuries. They are an integral part of ecological, environmental, and cultural evolutions. Globalized food systems are built on national narratives and on global infrastructures and logistics, reflecting the capitalist systems of customs, nation-states, and their interests.
Maize is an entry point for understanding how trade agreements such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and its revised successor, the USMCA (United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement), are designed to foster the interests of nation-states and the continuation of colonial structures. The effects of free-trade agreements constitute direct attacks on Indigenous rights and Indigenous food sovereignty. By fostering free trade and the privatization of land and crops, they promote neocolonial corporate interests—on a geographical and global scale as well as on a molecular and genetic one.
The residency was an opportunity to learn about the practices and techniques—communal seed banks, DNA sampling, and more—used by Indigenous collectives to resist and fight global corporate interests, and to preserve the vast genetic diversity of local maize varieties. I had the chance to connect with and learn from local and chefs, activists, artists, farmers, and educators about the political histories of maize, its essential and significant position within contemporary society, and how its cultivation and processing into a nourishing food carrying ancestral knowledge and identity.
While the residency mainly served as an opportunity to learn, it was also a chance to share. Toward the end of the residency, one evening we were invited to take over a local restaurant. Cooking the recipes that had been shared with us during this time, together with everyone we had met, was nourishing and empowering. We invited friends and passersby to join, eat, and spend time together.
The dinner event was an extension of Faggoterias, a community dinner series organized by FUBU, a collective from Switzerland.
Contributions and collaborations with Zoë Heyn-Jones, Calpulli Tecalco, Mujeres de la Tierra, Santiago del Conde Morales, Aìda Tariq Rebull.