Maize and its rhythms of birth, growth, reproduction, and death organize both the cosmos and human life. Its seed is regarded as anthropomorphic and divine, as it contains the spirit of the maize god, whom different Indigenous peoples identify as a child (boy or girl). Vulnerable and dependent on care, the grain relies on women when it is within the domestic sphere. Through nixtamalization, women introduce maize into culture by preparing its body for the production of tortillas and tamales. Likewise, associated with fertility, women select the finest ears from each harvest, which will serve as seed to give life to new plants in the next cycle.
Maize is a civilizing hero, having given its body-- its flesh-- to humankind when it was new, whose obligations are to worship the gods, reproduce, and care for the grain. Wasting seed or neglecting cultivated fields violates this mandate and is punished by bringing illness or famine, due to the departure of the maize god. The plant’s life cycle is closely linked to that of human beings, with each stage of life understood through the growth of maize. Thus, Tepehua farmers of Huasteca refer to children as “little plants,” while elders are likened to dried ears of corn. In Pre-Hispanic religion, the stages of maize growth were represented by different female deities invoked throughout the agricultural cycle to ensure the seed’s successful development:
[T]he goddess Chicomecoatl “Seven Serpent,” who was rather the embodiment of all sustenance, including, of course, maize; then the goddess Xilonen, precisely representing the tender young ear – already edible--, and Cinteotl, the mature ear whose kernels –tlaolli-- were simultaneously food and seed that would produce the new plant. Some scholars, including Heyden and Broda, think that the goddess Ilama-tecuhtli represented the dried ear of maize (González, 2008).
The precious status of maize led the Olmecs to associate the plant (because of its green color) with quetzal feathers and jadeite, materials of great economic and symbolic value throughout Mesoamerica. The maize plant is also conceived as the axis mundi, linking the heavens, the earth, and the underworld, an image present as early as the Middle Preclassic period (1200–400 BCE). Within this worldview, the earth is envisioned as a vast rectangular field, while the colors of maize kernels, black or purple, yellow, white, and red, corresponded to the four cardinal points of the cosmos. This structure of the universe remains within the cultures’ memory and continues to be reproduced in the milpa (maize field), the home, and maize-storage spaces.
Soil and rainfall are essential for maize cultivation, therefore their veneration is fundamental. The cycle of storm-fed maize follows seasonal rainfall patterns, dividing the year into dry and rainy seasons, which has cosmological significance. This sequence of agricultural activities -- field preparation, planting, and harvesting-- generate a calendar of communal and domestic religious festivals intended to attract favorable rains and winds from the sea and mountains, to ensure the plant’s growth. Contemporary ritual cycles preserve important continuities with Pre-Hispanic ceremonies and incorporate the Catholic saints’ calendar imposed during the Colonial period. Practices such as pilgrimages to sacred hills and celebrations dedicated to rain gods persist, while others have been symbolically reconfigured around saints, and some others were gradually incorporated over time.
The agricultural ceremonial cycle is organized around key stages in the growth of the maize: rituals for the opening of the cycle; petitions for rain and wind, plant maturation, and harvest. These celebrations bring together humans, deities, along with forces of fertility, the dead and the ancestors, to ensure the continuity of agricultural productivity, community cohesion, and, above all, the reproduction of life and identity among the peoples of Mexico.