In Mesoamerica, tamales are much more than a culinary preparation: they are deeply symbolic elements that articulate ritual, agricultural, social and religious practices. Tamales are an essential part of the Mesoamerican diet and appear in pictures from the Mayas since the Late Pre-Classical period (400-100 B.C.) Made mostly of corn, tamales are considered in these cultures to be a material manifestation of the sacred bodies of the gods, and have acquired great relevance. When the Spaniards arrived and throughout the 16th century, tamales as well as tortillas were called the “bread of the Indies”. Women were mostly in charge of making them, which is true today, and therefore the recently arrived Europeans would receive slaves to prepare their food.
How to prepare tamales has not changed throughout the years: maize is cooked with ash in a process called nixtamalization; once ground, the masa (dough) is filled with different ingredients (meat, fruit, fish, beans, herbs, chiles, flowers, and more). However, tamales have also been adapted to new ingredients and cooking techniques, such as incorporating lard during Colonial times, still done today in Indigenous kitchens. Making tamales also has a social function, since it requires collective collaboration: the men bring in the maize, and the women and girls create the food. This cooperation goes beyond the family table and spreads out to wider networks of relatives and community members, including compadres, godparents, saints, sacred entities and authorities. In this context, the exchange of tamales and other food brings to life dynamics of reciprocity which reinforce social cohesion.
Tamales occupy a fundamental position in ritual ceremonies. They are present in the feasts of Catholic saints, in the passage of life’s cycles ceremonies and, in particular, as offerings in agricultural and meteorological rituals. During pre-Hispanic times, at the feast of Atlacualo, tamales were offered to Tlaloc and to the rain gods to bring on the rains to ensure good harvests. This practice was reworked after the Colonial period: today tamales are offered on February 2nd, the day of the Candelaria, when seeds are blessed; on May 3rd, the day of the Holy Cross, when the hills and the owners of the water were asked for rains; and during the Day of the Dead, as an offering to the ancestors, among other festivities.
Although tamales are similar in appearance, how they are prepared, the ingredients used, their shape and arrangement vary based on the ritual they serve, which reinforces their meaning for the ceremonial structure. Therefore, the tutunakuj tradition has three distinct types of tamales, considered to be the “body” of the corn – analogous to a human body --, offered under numeric and sexual codes specific to channeling life energy, the cohesion of social relations between human beings and sacred entities, and consequently, reaffirm cosmic order. The different ritual contexts also determine which ingredients will be used: in ceremonies such as “el costumbre” chicken and pork are preferred for the benevolent entities, while beef and lamb are kept for the carnival and malevolent entities.
In the symbolic system of tamales for the Wixaritari (Huicholes), deer, women and the sun play central roles in asking for rain. Through a deer-meat “tamal-fetus”, the participants embody the union between the solar body (Father Sun) and the forces of fertility. This alignment between the feminine (water, earth) and the masculine (fire, oven) brings to life a new being: maize. Overall, this symbolism condenses the Wixaritari’s ritual, cosmological and gender structures. The Hikuli Neixa rain ceremony works like a process of sacred metamorphosis, where the deer-fetus, peyote (solar fertility) and maize are woven together as one to ensure the renewal and continuity of life.