Maize, Tortillas, and Tamales Symbol Analysis

For Rigoberta’s Maya-Quiché community, the maize cereal plant (and its associated food products, such as tortillas and tamales) represent their culture’s reverence for all living things. Maize lies at the center of the community’s ethical and spiritual beliefs. By harvesting and preparing maize for consumption, the plant serves a symbolic role: it encourages all members of the community to respect the earth, sun, and water that went into growing the maize, and to honor the resources that nature provides for them. The manual harvest and preparation of maize-based foods—processes that eschew technology or machinery, as all traditional activities in Rigoberta’s village do—are what bind Rigoberta’s community together. These activities represent their union as a community bound by ancestral traditions, but also their peaceful coexistence with everything else in the natural world. In this sense, these maize-based foods represent the care and respect that defines Rigoberta’s Indigenous community, in contrast with modern society’s tendency to exploit natural resources.

For Rigoberta’s community, tortillas and tamales are sacred foods and thus play a crucial role in sacred events such as marriage ceremonies. This is a stark contrast to the way Guatemalans outside of their insular community treat food. For instance, at Christmas, the mistress who employs Rigoberta as a maid hands her a tamal in an offhanded manner. Rigoberta interprets this action as a demonstration of contempt rather than respect, since the gesture lacks the generosity and care that her Indigenous community associates with sharing food. In this way, the hardened tortillas that poor workers are given when working at fincas or in rich households symbolize the exploitation and discrimination that Indians face in Guatemalan society, a stark contrast to the their culture’s emphasis on gratitude and respect.