Foods From The Americas: Amaranth, The Outlaw Grain

Once banned by Cortez and the Catholic church, amaranth is still a fairly unknown high-protein grain that could easily figure into the solution to world hunger. Instead, amaranth became an outlaw, an illegal alien grain in its own homeland. This was likely triggered by the high esteem in which the plant was held by indigenous people, and rightly so.

For hundreds of years amaranth all but disappeared from the face of the earth except in the highlands of Oaxaca and to the south among the Maya people where its cultivation most likely began some 10,000 years ago. Together with corn, chile and beans, amaranth was a key part of the near-perfect core diet of the the Mayan and Aztec civilizations. Diverse varieties were cultivated all the way to the South American Andes where the Inca people live to this day. High in protein and the essential amino acid lysine, today amaranth has found its way to Europe and is even consumed in India where it is known as rajeera, or the king's grain.

Despite its near extinction, the hardy-survivor amaranth can be found in contemporary cooking from granola to pancakes and is once again important despite its illicit past. Yet during the conquest, punishment for the criminalized cultivation of amaranth included cutting off the hands of those who dared to plant it. So why did this beautiful nutritious and mystical plant elicit such savage response from the invaders?

Called huautli in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, it was a primary crop not only important as food, but central to the spiritual and ritual life of the community. Its precious seeds and leaves were nutritious and therapeutic. It was an offering to the gods as well as the ingredient used to bathe newborn babies. It was mixed into a paste and transformed into miniature reproductions of the child's future attributes: a bow, an arrow, the hunter's instruments, or perhaps a flower or an animal spirit-guide. The use of amaranth for healing may also account for its valuation as a sacred plant par excellence.

When the Spanish arrived, their Catholic priests were horrified to find that amaranth was considered a deity and used in religious ceremonial rituals. It was consumed and mixed, according to some sources, with the blood of people who were sacrificed, and was perhaps a tad too close to the religious ceremonial ritual of the holy eucharist, the Catholic ritual that consecrates the body and blood of christ and is also eaten. But that was not savage. That was ok. On the other hand some scholars have said that the eradication of amaranth was really a military strategy intended to weaken the Aztec people to allow for an easier conquest, since amaranth was also an important part of the diet of warriors.

Today from Mesoamerica to East of The L.A. River, from street vendors to neighborhood bakeries you can find amaranth sold as the popular treat called alegría, the Spanish word for happiness or joy. Interesting that this delicious high-protein sweet made from the forbidden toasted amaranth seeds, with peanut and other nuts, mixed and held together by the sweetness of honey, made in a circular form, the shape of the sun and the circle of life, should be called alegría, happiness or joy. No blood this time. Plenty of that ingredient was spilled by the invaders.

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© María Elena Gaitán, 2008 All Rights Reserved

Wisdom

For years now a favorite obsession has been my contemplation of the giant stone Olmec heads found in the southern Gulf Coast region of Mexico. To gaze upon these brother and sister heads (and who's to say they are not also women?) has given me the great pleasure of reflecting on the ancient and magnificent cultural bridge between the people of the Americas and the people of Africa, a coming and going between the two from the beginning of time.

Recently an artist friend told me that the larger than life sculpted African heads signify wisdom. Undeniably then, these heads honor knowledge and the Indian-African holders of knowledge who first inhabited the ancient Mexican Olmec cradle.

In his book, They Came Before Columbus, author/scholar/poet Ivan Van Sertima offers us a lifetime of research pointing to the early presence of Africans in the Americas, specifically in Mexico. There is no written history of the voyages that took place between these people, between these continents, voyages alighted on the swift ocean currents. Why? Because both Africa and the Americas suffered from the systematic destruction of our books, the burning of our sacred archives by colonial powers. The word was lost. The history of that truth burned at the stake.

But while there is no archival proof that Africans were in the Americas, or for that matter that indigenous Americans traveled to Africa before Columbus, through the tenacity of thinkers like Van Sertima the truth still lives. We have found our ancient links and are again connected like a double helix.

It is typical of conquerors to arrive in a so called 'New World', possess the land, and destroy the previous histories of the conquered people. This is what happened in Africa and in the Americas. This is what happens today. To hear the current news media spin about the downfall of Black and Latino relations, you would think we had nothing at all in common beyond the dehumanizing constrictions of prison life, drug wars and inevitable turf animosities. Anything to make a buck by selling negative news. Who profits from throwing gasoline on the fire, rather than make the fire dance in memory of who we have been to each other, of who we still are: kin, lovers, neighbors, friends, family, choir, song, bones, water and earth.

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© María Elena Gaitán, 2008 All Rights Reserved

Welcome to East of The L.A. River

Dear All,

Welcome to East of The L.A River, a blog that has been long in coming.

I'll explore things that catch my eye and ear as well as the ocassional note about the world of language, culture, the arts, healing and food.

More than anything I am a musician. And even though I don't always play for an audience on a stage with fancy lighting and the finnicky stage manager, music is at the heart of how I see and interpret the world.

Years ago I spoke to Roger Bobo, principal tuba player with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. At the time I was looking for a tuba teacher for a young student whose family could not afford private lessons. In our conversation we both lamented that the public school system in Los Angeles had given itself a lobotomy by getting rid of the arts. And although a few aspects of the arts have trickled back into the lives of L.A.'s children, for the most part the doors of access to arts education in Los Angeles remain slammed shut. With every budget crisis emanates the old howling, the cry for getting rid of the frills, for getting rid of the things of the soul, for getting rid of the arts.

Still, among the tenacious beauty of thorny cactus flowers and potted geraniums overflowing in recycled bathtubs and coffee cans, through the miracle of oral tradition, in the obsidian of ancient memories and the vibrant energy of a volcanic youth, the people and their arts continue to thrive East of the L.A River. We are inevitable.

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© María Elena Gaitán, 2008 All Rights Reserved