Food Related Papers: Reflections of Gender in Maya Food, Deities and Ideology

“Through analysis of food and eating systems one can gain information about how a culture understands some of the basic categories of its world” (Mary Douglas in Counihan 1997). It is through this lens of foodways that I would like to explore the continuation of gender complementarity from the Maya spanning from pre-Colombian times to my field work in 2007. The issue of gender parity is somewhat contentious in the academic world of Anthropology, and is therefore something that should continued to be explored in-depth with the living Maya. My field work was not exhaustive, but is an ongoing investigation. I will begin with the stories and actions I experienced in the field that spurred me to explore gender roles through food. I will then explain the historical significance of these phenomena, which will include exploration of foodways as represented in pre-Colombian Maya art, encompassing gendered numerology, agricultural and creator deities and end with current discourse on these gendered separations within the Maya culture. I will argue that as a subsistence agriculture based society, the modern Maya of the Yucatan continue in their expression of gender equality as expressed in division of labor in which the woman, and her association with the number three, has historical representation as “cooked” or culture and the man, with his association of the number four, represents “raw” or nature.

First, I would like to disclose, that the purpose of my fieldwork was not to explore this issue of gender parity. I went with the intent of exposing how globalization has affected the ceremonial recipes and knowledge of traditional Maya communities. It was during this process that I found women were excluded from many of the agriculture based rituals. My initial thought was that this was a form of oppression or prejudice against the female population and I was disheartened. However, the women did not seem affected by this separation. It is what I uncovered through research upon returning home upon which this paper will focus, but first, I would like to provide the stories that encouraged my further analysis.

During the summer of 2007, I arrived in Quintana Roo with one contact, a shaman for the Maya communities extending from Playa del Carmen south to Coba’. I spent two weeks sitting with him at his second job, tending his convenience store in a small indigenous neighborhood on the outskirts of the booming tourist city of Playa del Carmen. Here he wove stories of Maya past and present traditions before he allowed me to accompany him to a small village where he was heading to perform a thanksgiving ritual for some of his constituents. I was to purchase ingredients for Sa’ Ko’ol, a stew-like dish often used for festal purposes, which I could help prepare with the women of the community for this familial ritual.

While I was working with the local women preparing the stew, Don Luis finally answered some of my questions about food. He said the only time purely indigenous and hand prepared foods are eaten is during public ceremonies. Women are not permitted to prepare these foods due to the possibility that menstruation could contaminate food for the gods. Otherwise, women use what food may be available from the milpa and mix that with goods from the grocery store. Most typically, chicken, onions, garlic have been co-opted into daily fare to the point that there is no distinction that they are not indigenous. Don Luis says this is the reason that a shaman must provide the ingredient list and recipes for ceremonial food, because the people do not understand what is native and therefore acceptable as offerings. As this meal was not being offered to the gods, but was for familial consumption, it was acceptable for women to cook it. Also while we were cooking, I observed the use of the three stone hearth. Don Luis identified the three stone hearth as a symbol of the union of the family and states that it must be used to make ritual food. When I pressed him on any further symbolism of the number three for women or the hearth he denied knowing any tales of constellations or creation myths that pertain to the number three and women. He did provide information about the woman as a symbol of civilization and holiness via her ability to transform man’s “rawness” via food and birth. She takes the man’s raw corn and makes sustenance and she transforms his seed into humans. She is cooked, while he is raw. Don Luis says the attraction between man and woman comes from a Maya legend where man and woman were once one being, but ended up being split apart. He says, “We form a union to try and repair the separation.” He illustrated this by describing the marriage ritual he performs which reinforces the notion of man as raw and woman as cooked via the man bringing an offering of raw maize kernels and cacao beans to the altar while the woman brings masa and tortillas, symbolizing that the man will be the provider of ingredients, while the woman will process those into nurturing sustenance.

The other village I was able to visit was Señor. It is located between Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Valladolid. Here there is an organization that is trying to start an interest in “sustainable” tourism and I was able to meet with the president, Marcos Cante. He took me to a household to prepare what he called a simple, humble meal. I once again noticed the presence of the three stone hearth and asked about its significance. Marcos told a different tale than Don Luis. Marcos says the three stones are representative of the woman’s work of cooking and are reflected in the timing of the Het’z mek ceremony. For a girl, this ceremony (which I will discuss later) is performed at the age of three months where the boy receives his at four months old. Marcos said this represents the four corners of the man’s milpa and his work of farming. He also denied any knowledge of astronomical or creation myth significance of the three stones. He said that this generation has lost the importance and symbolism of corn and the other foods, but still 99% of the food eaten in Señor comes from subsistence milpas, principally corn.

After these encounters I went home and started researching the relevance of a few repeating themes. I was particularly interested in the stories surrounding the division of labor associated with food. This was apparently reflected in the three stones and four corners along with the associated theories of “woman’s work” of the hearth and “man’s work” of the milpa. This also seemed to play into the gender roles symbolized by the modern Maya rituals of the Het’z mek and the marriage ceremonies. I wanted to see if there is material or ethno-historical evidence of these associations purported by the modern Maya I encountered. I decided to start with the primary sources of the Popol Vuh and The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel which address Maya creation mythology. While the version of the Popol Vuh we have today is from the Quiche Maya of Guatemala, Christenson states that it is based on a Pre-Colombian text from the Yucatan lowlands and I therefore include it in my research (2003). Many of the stories in the Popol Vuh are thought to reflect ideal gender role behaviors (Preuss 1985). It is here that we find stories telling of the pairing of male and female creator gods; Xmucane, the “maker” is female and Xpiyacoc, “modeler” is male (Gustafson 2002). Xmucane, also identified as Ix Chel in the Yucatan, is the first grandmother who ground the corn from which she made the first humans thus identifying the first grandmother, who is in turn the first mother, as the nurturer and creator of humans on earth (Christenson 2003). Xmucane is the epitome of cultural leadership. She demonstrates the “norms” of feminine duties esteemed by the Maya including that of grinding corn, cooking and offering food, caring for offspring, healing, and giving birth which through the telling of these myths, inspires social control (Preuss 1985).

Another creation story found in The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, the “bible” of the Yucatec Maya, the center of the world is identified as a “three stone place”, or hearth (Roys 1933). This story involves the setting of the three stones at the center of the universe. It is these stones that establish the center of the Maya universe and continue to be represented in Maya homes as the cooking hearth. This setting of the stones was the first act in creating this world and where the first fire was started (Freidel 1993). Therefore the hearth is known as the “mother of the fire” It is from these three stones that there are Classic era depictions of the maize god emerging (Fischer 1999). This combination of mythologies links maize, fertility and cooking to women from the dawn of creation. Even today meals of maize continue to be eaten around the hearth (Anderson 2005a).

At the time of creation, in the Popol Vuh, the female creator made four male lineage heads who in wandered long distances to find appropriate places in which to settle their family (Christenson 2003). This delineates men as providers, and long distance wanderers. It was four male deities who set the four corners of the universe, which was the second act of creation. This space is associated with the four cardinal directions and represents a focused area of supernatural forces upon the face of the earth (Freidel 1993). This story is also given in The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. where the boundaries of the world are set by four lineage heads, and are representative of the four cardinal directions associated with different forms of sustenance and colors (Roys 1933). Notice that the male creator deity was not described as involved with the grinding or the producing of humans. This is because the male role was as definer of the limits of the human realm. The male creator deity Xpiyacoc, or Itzamna in the Yucatan, defined the ritual space of the human world (Gustafson 2002). Once again, this demonstrates women as central with men skirting the four cardinal boundaries of the world.

For the early Maya, there is a paucity of ethnographic evidence except what we are able to decipher from representations of male and female found in art (Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934). We must remember that art typically represents the ideal, which is often emulated but not without exception (Klein 2001). Early representations of deities tended to be androgynous, incorporating male and female traits and were oriented toward agricultural needs, such as rain, corn, storms and water. It is during this time we find more evidence of women involved in ideology and rulership (Nash 1997). Around this time frame, there is also a presence of small clay images of females grinding corn and making offerings of food, possibly this is to reinforce as “ideal” the role of woman to provide sustenance to her family and to the gods as the female creator deity gave rise to human beings (Klein 2001).

Throughout time, several Anthropologists have explored the theory that women are integral to the domestic sphere while men reign in the natural, or wild areas outside of the “cultural” domicile or village. In the village of Chan Kom, Redfield and Villa Rojas found that men were in charge of public rituals where women were in charge of domestic ritual (1934). Sophie Coe sites patterns of cooking, where women are in charge of private, or home cooking while man performs public ritual cooking (1994). Both Gustafson (2005) and Joyce (Klein 2001) have identified gendered spheres of activity for the Maya and Gustafson even argues that in the world of the Maya, gender is defined by the type of labor one performs, not just their anatomy (2002). Anderson explores linguistic evidence that the forest is the “opposite of tame or household reared” and states that there is never a difference between man and nature (2005b). Redfield’s findings in the 1930s and 1940s where he described man’s role in regard to nature as “…nothing stands between the woods and the milpero; he deals, so to speak, directly with nature” (1941). He goes on to describe that men still perceive their world as quadrilateral and associated with the cardinal directions (1941). According to Little, today’s traditional Maya continue in this division of labor with the woman responsible for the household and the man working at anything requiring leaving the village (2004). I believe this theory ties into the man’s association with the four cornered world with the woman’s association with the three stoned hearth. Woman is central, daily, culture with man as external, ceremonial and wild. During my encounters, I found that both men and women cooked, but in different arenas and for different occasions. The woman was responsible for all food cooked on the three stone hearth, while men made ceremonial food (typically roasted meats) in public spaces or at the milpa using the pib. The hearth-cooked food was boiled and stew-like while the pib food was roasted without liquid. I found support for what appears to be today’s habitus rooted in ancient symbolism regarding woman’s association with the number three and man’s association with the number four. The shape and alignment of the world with its cardinal directions are reflected in the earth oven used by the Maya men to prepare roasted meat dishes for ceremonial use. The milpa is seen as the four cornered world of men and is located in “wild” land, that is, land outside of the domestic sphere. This is the area in which Maya spirits are most prevalent. It is this area where men dominate and perform supernatural ritual (Redfield 1941). Ritual is seen as dangerous, similar to a hunt, where conduits are open between earthly and cosmological realms (Faust 1998). Thus, this is the “wild” space of man. In this area of the world, all rituals involve food (Sullivan 1989). The woman performs her rituals using mundane foods of maize, garden herbs and vegetables collected near the home and she performs the rituals within the home near the hearth (Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934). The male creator deity set limits of cosmos, as men continue to do today by outlining and honoring their milpas (Redfield 1934, Gustafson 2002).

The division of labor by cooking methods is summed up by Lévi-Strauss when he states that:

...roasted is on the side of nature, the boiled on the side of culture: literally, because boiling requires the use of a receptacle, a cultural object; symbolically, as in much as culture is a medication of the relations between man and the world, and boiling demands a mediation (by water) of the relation between food and fire which is absent in roasting (Counihan 1997).

Building on Lévi-Strauss’ theory, I believe the Maya woman is the metaphorical receptacle of culture as she not only provides fully developed or “cooked” humans, but also the sustenance for those humans as did the female creator deity. In Gustafson, the glyph for woman is even described as “the sun sign inside an inverted ceramic water jar; the male seed inside a female vessel (2002).” Joyce describes this phenomenon via her observation that the ceramic dishes and cloth bundles held by women in monumental art represented “end point of sequences of production which transformed raw materials into culturally defined forms.” She goes on to state that men’s work provides “raw” materials where women’s work transforms these materials into culturally viable objects (1993).

These separate roles were not seen as hierarchical, they were seen as a continuation of the ideal of balance as both parts were needed to keep society functioning. While this labor is identified as separate, it is also considered as two parts necessary to make a whole, the four cornered world cannot exist without its central axis, just as the left side of the body cannot exist without the right (Klein 2001). “Male and female action, when joined together through marriage, creates an economically interdependent and complementary whole” (Gustafson 2002). This was readily evident as described in the marriage ritual described to me by Shaman Don Luis in 2007; however it brings up some of the issues anthropologists have with theories of balanced gender parity. Mascia-Lees defines functionalism as “viewing a society as an integrated whole with all of its practices and institutions working together harmoniously to fulfill individual needs or sustain the society in a state of equilibrium (2002)”. She goes on to critique this view as allowing for gender bias. I would argue that this basic idea that modern anthropologists have disregarded as too simplistic is the very view that was essential to the living Maya at the time of Spanish contact. It is evident in the Popol Vuh Chilam and The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel that the division of labor by gender allowed for “ideal” societal structure. This allowed for the man to be public, provider for the gods, and gatherer of distant food items, while the woman could stay closer to the home, be private, provider for the family and gatherer of nearby food items. This division of labor led to increased population as women could feed and rear children while the men increased their social prestige with gods and noblemen by providing food for ritual as well as food for women to convert to sustenance.

Rituals of gender role reinforcement are still in practice. Two that were discussed during my field work were the Het’z mek and, as mentioned above, the wedding ceremony is still in practice. Anderson (2005b) states, “(the) Yucatec Maya body of ritual is centered on food” and according to Counihan, many cultures define marriage as reciprocal food gifting (Counihan 1999). It can therefore be assumed that it is still important to engender the proper roles for male and females via these rituals. The Het’z mek is a ceremony in which at three months for girls and four months for boys the children are given items they are expected to use in life (Gustafson 2002). In Señor, as in published ethnographic works (see Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934, Redfield 1941, Landa 1978, Gustafson 2005, and Joyce 2000) the boy is often given miniature farming tools used in milpa cultivation and the girl is often given cooking utensils or a small ball of masa. The timing of the ceremony indicates the continued ties of female with the three stoned hearth and male with the milpa and hold on to the delineation of female vs. male work. Redfield observes that for the Yucatec Maya “food maintains relations with people and gods” (1941). This combined with the marriage symbolism of male and female work, illustrates the continued dependence on complementary dualism in gendered foodways where from infancy the role of male as milpero and public provider and female as creator and domestic provider is reinforced (Gustafson 2002).

I see this division of labor, not as a structure used to oppress women, but a cultural construct necessary in populations that are based in subsistence agriculture. Children are necessary for manual labor; therefore women must spend significant time in acculturating and caring for their offspring. By finding a pattern that allows women to stay near the domicile, this allows woman to be the central cultural influence of the family. In turn men can provide the labor that requires travel, whether for trade of agricultural products with nearby villages, or because of increased distance to their milpas due to deforestation and population growth. As many “traditional” Maya continue in some practice of honoring agricultural gods, men still hold the habitus of providing food for these public ceremonies while the women provide the food for family gatherings. In conclusion, I hold to Redfield’s belief that this division of labor is resistant to change. However, as their labor changes, so will their gender roles. The more “modernized” communities definitely show a trend away from the balanced social organization and a toward women’s loss of social capital when a household is dependent solely on wage labor. Foodways have been a particularly fruitful way to explore gender roles of the Maya, and I find, like Counihan, that gender models food activities as it structures society, history and ideology (1998).

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