Corn: Tlaolli - Our Sustenance

Can you imagine Indian or Thai food without chiles? Italian food without tomatoes, Belgian meals without pomme frites, or chocolate?

Yet, these ingredients are not indigenous to any of these countries. They all came from Central America, and most of them came from Mexico. In fact, Mexico is the source of so many ingredients that you wonder how the rest of the world ate before the Spanish accidentally bumped into it.

One of the world’s great staples is corn or maize, and the first evidence of its use in cooking was found at Guilá Naquitz Cave, near San Pablo Villa de Mitla, Oaxaca, just a few miles north of the Eléctrico Mezcal palenque.

The incredibly ingenious Zapotec and Mixtec people of Oaxaca worked out how to soften and remove the indigestible husks of their corn and grind it into masa, the mash that gives us tamales, flour for tortillas, Mexico’s most popular food, chips, and a thousand other edible, drinkable, and practical products.

The knowledge the people of Oaxaca developed before the Egyptians built the pyramids now feeds the world. It formed the basis of Native American agriculture and saved thousands of European settlers from starvation. Corn is grown in over 160 countries.

But common and basic as it is, corn remains sacred to the people of Mexico. It is fundamental to the culture of Oaxaca. And so is mezcal.