Memory and Altars of the Dead in Baxtla, Veracruz: Narrating our Milpa and Coffee Landscape in the Mexican Mountains

Abstract

Within the Mesoamerican worldview, maize is synonymous with the body and represents the primary food of the human being, accompanied by a complex planting system known as milpa. Said system, we believe, celebrates the interrelation between the diversity of species, serving, in this way, as a metaphor to understand our social construction. In this metaphor, there is an interrelationship between human beings and the landscape in a chain of changes manifested in daily life; that is to say, the changes are visible by exploring inhabiting; how we produce; and how our environment produces us. Through the rescue of this interrelation exploring the narration of daily life in Baxtla, Veracruz, this article aims to blur the fine lines that separate the milpa from one of the ancestral traditions that accompany Mesoamerican men and women to this day: the celebration of death.