The Techno-Tamaladas
Editor’s Note: The following essay is part of a politics dossier featuring presenters from The Latinx Project’s recent conference, “Latinx Politics — Resistance, Disruption & Power.” To download the PDF, click here.
I live alongside half of the world’s tech billionaires, in the unceded territories of the Chochenyo and Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, presently occupied by Silicon Valley extraction corporations. Many of us in the Bay Area personally experience how these technology corporations have deepened wealth inequality, precarity, evictions, homelessness, poverty, and displacement. If you are not a high paid executive or programmer, but an artist, teacher, nurse, landscaper, or low wage worker in the ‘sharing economy,’ you can easily be pushed to the margins – displaced, dislocated, and dispossessed. Rather than benefiting, many of us watch the technology sector’s monopoly corporations disinvest locally through tax havens, normalize extreme surveillance, shatter the commons, and demolish civic society around the world. We are front line witnesses of 21st century techno colonialism.
Against this daily palpable divide, I have been working on the Techno-Tamaladas, an art project of performances, social practice, media making, gatherings, cultivation, harvesting, and events. The project is based on maíz and nixtamalization as Indigenous technologies of life. It asks publics to reimagine technological development by affirming the concepts of relational accountability and reciprocity of the Indigenous and Afro Americas. Through community tamaladas, we share possibilities of resurgence amidst our communities in crisis.
Figure 1. The Techno-Tamaladas. Digital image by Praba Pilar, 2019.
Nixtamalización, Maíz, Tamal, Tamalada
Maize es un mundo, a world far beyond animal feed and genetically engineered monocropping. Indigenous to the Americas, the name comes from Mahíz in the Taíno/Arauco language (Cintli in Nahuatl), translated into Spanish as ‘fuente de vida’ or ‘sustento de la vida’ (‘fountain of life’ and ‘sustainer of life.’) Maize dating back 10,700 years has been found in the Iguala Valley in Mexico. There are thousands of varieties of Maize that grow in vastly different ecosystems and climates, and it is the basis of many of the cosmovisiones in the Americas – no una cosa, sino un tejido de relaciones. From the Popul Vuh of the Mayas Quichés, in what is now Guatemala, where the human being is created out of maize, to Quetzalcoatl gifting humans with maíz, to the Incas who have been cultivating corn for thousands of years, corn spread across all of the Americas, creating a hemispheric ‘maize culture.' The varieties of corn are immense, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center’s (CIMMYT) Maize Germplasm Bank contains over 28,000 unique collections of white, yellow, purple, orange yellow, red, sun red, blue, mottled and brown maize seeds from 88 countries. Peru’s Germplasm Bank alone contains over 4,000 collections and the Native Seeds bank in Tucson, Arizona contains approximately 1,900 different collections of Maize and other traditional crops utilized as food, fiber and dye by the Apache, Chemehuevi, Cocopah, Gila River Pima, Guarijio, Havasupai, Hopi, Maricopa, Mayo, Mojave, Mountain Pima, Navajo, Paiute, Puebloan, Tarahumara, Tohono O'odham, Yaqui, and other cultures.
Thousands of years ago, the Indigenous people of Meso America developed the technology of nixtamalization. Though the exact time frame of the introduction of nixtamalization varies, the term comes from the Nahuatl words nixtamalli or nextamalli, combining nextli "ashes" and tamalli "corn dough, tamal." To nixtamalize maíz, you soak and heat it in an alkaline solution of wood ash, slaked lime, or calcium hydroxide. This increases the bioavailability of the calcium, protein, and vitamins B3(niacin), B1(thiamin), B5(pantothenic acid), and folate, while reducing mycotoxins. After this technological innovation sustaining life was introduced, maíz spread quickly throughout the hemisphere. When European colonizers took maíz seeds to grow in Europe, they did not understand (or believe in) the need for nixtamalization, or the relations with corn developed over thousands of years. As a result, Europeans growing and eating corn developed the disease pellagra - extreme niacin deficiency malnutrition.
Tamales, from Nahuatl tamalli, originated in Mesoamerica as early as 8,000 to 5,000 BCE. Tamales are foundational to the spirit and life of Indigenous and African descended people across the cultures of Abya Yala/Turtle Island. As Meredith Abarca shares in An Afro-Mestizo Tamal: Remembering a Sensory and Sacred Encounter, Indigenous and African descendants are connected via the tamal. She writes about how maize and the tamal are intertwined with the land to such a degree that during the Porfiriato in Mexico at the turn of the 19th century, people who ate tamales (defined by Mexican modernists as the maize-based cultures) were seen as a threat to political domination. Further intertwining is found in the African-American hot tamales of the Mississippi Delta in the United States.
Tamales are best made in batches, and tamaladas are the best way to make them. Tamaladas are gatherings of family, friends, and relations, where over many hours people come together and share music, stories, and community knowledge while handling masa, shaping it in corn or plátano leaves, and cooking them. Not only is there a celebratory communal feast, but everyone takes tamales home.
The Techno-Tamaladas
I grew up making and eating el tamal Santafereño in Bogota. The aroma and sight of this delicious tamal, en sus ojas de plátano, immediately fills me with joy. While at an art residency at Grace Performance Space in upstate New York in 2018, I spontaneously taught and made tamales with co-resident Adam Zaretsky, his family, and friends. Over the hours of tamale making, we had a multi-generational dialogue that touched on mediatized technological disaster. Conversation was playful because tamale making is engaging, and I realized that bringing people together for tamaladas could expand both dialogues and imaginaries on the development of technology.
Over 2019, I worked with Oakland’s Pro Arts Gallery & Commons and ECAP food bank to host three tamaladas on San Pablo Avenue and 36th Street. We made and shared 1,500 free tamales. I did extensive outreach to community and art organizations, schools and universities, local businesses, activist circles, and drew over one thousand participants, primarily African American, Asian, and Latinx, and diverse along class, ability, gender, and sexual orientation. Among participants were people experiencing or at risk of homelessness and poverty, students, elders, hackers, disabled community members, artists, sustainable technology activists, Emeryville’s Mayor and City Council members, residents from the nearby Place for Sustainable Living, tamale makers, ECAP volunteers, and many others.
Figure 2. The Techno-Tamaladas, ECAP. Digital collage by Praba Pilar, of photographs by Minoosh Zomorodinia, Natalia Mount, Colby Riley, John Normoyle, Janet Sarson, and Praba Pilar, from Techno-Tamaladas at ECAP food bank, 2019.
Each of these tamaladas lasted over five hours, in multiple phases. At times we mainly served tamales, at others I explained the process of nixtamalization, the spread of maize through the Americas, or taught people how to make and cook tamales. The event morphed multiple times and the experience depended at what time one was there. Many participants discussed the different ways the technology sector has eviscerated the commons and created the need for more food banks, the despair they feel about their own economic precarity, fears of uncontrollable climate change and ecological collapse on their children, families, community and political worlds, and anger over the racist and divisive politics of the Republican party and Trump administration. Other discussion emphasized innovative and communitarian projects in sustainable technologies, autonomous telephony, water conservation, plastic use reduction, transit alternatives, and other politicized approaches to technology. More than learning from me, people shared, taught, and learned from each other.
We created no waste through this event, as the tamale husks, gloves for preparing and serving, and plates were all compostable. When we cleaned up, all of what would have been garbage went into a compost bin.
2020 Relaunch, COVID-19 Changes
Many of the participants in the Techno-Tamaladas contributed knowledge and expertise to the project. Towards the end of 2019, I asked Mexican activist and scholar Charlotte Sáenz and African-American artist Ben Simmons to join me as collaborators to envision the project going forward. Charlotte works on the pedagogy of the seed, and has a long engagement with Zapatista communities, and Ben is a video artist with a background in AIDS and disability activism and work with communities in crisis.
We planned to begin the new year with tamaladas sited at downtown Oakland’s Providence House, which provides subsidized apartments especially built for people on a fixed income living with HIV/AIDS or other disabilities; at the Huerta de Dolores garden of the Cesar Chavez Branch of the Oakland Public Library in Fruitvale, Oakland; and at Poor Magazine’s Homefulness community in East Oakland. We worked with Pro Arts Gallery & Commons to plan a huge mid-summer outdoor tamalada with performances, video screenings, free food, and music at Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland. Additionally, I planned to share the project in late March at the Grafters Xchange Gathering in Hamilton, New York, at Pratt Institute, and elsewhere, and do a performance with biotech/multi-species artist Adam Zaretsky and others at Tompkins Square Park in New York City.
Alongside Ben and Charlotte, I launched this new series at Pro Arts Gallery & Commons on February 23, 2020. We shared the technology of nixtamalization, the concept of the milpa, and the locations and dates of confirmed programming with the public. We also shared tamales. Two weeks later, as it became clear that COVID-19 was highly contagious and stay in place orders were necessary, we cancelled all the in-person events.
We had envisioned planting a milpa in Big Daddy’s Rejuvenating Community Garden in Emeryville with students in Charlotte’s Creating Community class at the California Institute for Integral Studies. This garden was established by master Gardener and sculptor Vickie Jo Sowell in 2001, after Big Daddy’s gas station burned down. We also planned a milpa that Charlotte would grow in Fruitvale, Oakland.
Figure 3. Cultivating the Milpa, digital image and photographs by Praba Pilar. Project collaborator Charlotte Sáenz, gardener Vickie Jo Sowell, helpers Targol Mesbah, & Anuj Vaidya. Big Daddy’s Complete Rejuvenating Community Garden, Emeryville, 2020.
Due to COVID-19, we did not work with Charlotte’s class on site, instead we cultivated, watered, and tended corn from May to September. This included socially distanced planting in the garden with Charlotte, Vickie, Targol Mesbah, and Anuj Vaidya.
In September, as we were preparing to harvest the corn, the enormous wildfires burning across California, Oregon and Washington created the worst air quality in the world. Though the corn was ready, we could not go outside to harvest. As soon as the air cleared, I harvested the corn and together with Ben, we shared it with residents of Providence House. Over the same period, I shared informal online talks and dialogues at various institutions, and with Charlotte and Ben, we planned an online webinar/charla on the Tamaladas – La Milpa en Tiempos de Pandemia that will be held live from Oaxaca and Oakland on October 30, 2020.
Figure 4. Harvesting the Milpa, digital image and photographs by Praba Pilar. Project lead Praba Pilar and project collaborator Ben Simmons, maize, native bees, compost. Providence House, Oakland & Big Daddy’s Complete Rejuvenating Community Garden, Emeryville, 2020.
Conclusion
The Techno-Tamaladas are in conversation with communities who work on autonomous technology projects, community reclaiming, land justice, and stewardship. We challenge white supremacist renderings of our hemisphere that leave out the mass migrations of Asian, Arabic and other communities by sharing the history of tamale makers from Afghanistan. We make and share Meso-American, Afro-American, and Colombian tamales. We acknowledge our other collaborators, including native bees, flies, other pollinators, worms, and other composters as well as ants and soil aerators.
In the 2020 film The Social Dilemma, founders and executives of social media corporations share their distress over the damages wrought by the features they created at Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and others. They discuss, in detail, how these platforms are eroding civil society and civil discourse, and irreparably rupturing any remaining social contract based on cooperation and collaboration. Regrettably, they do not discuss how incredibly wealthy this work made them, omitting a sobering reflection on how much they gained by damaging the commons.
The Techno-Tamaladas is not working within the reactionary ecosystem of isolation, acceleration, addiction, and disconnection of social media and data mining corporations. We work alongside, on other registers, asking: Can we re-imagine working with technologies beyond neoliberal capitalist imperatives? Can we support resurgence in our own communities of color, driven by our knowledges? How will we fight anti-blackness and blanqueamiento in the Latinx community? How can a hemispheric view de-center empire? Can a project itself be pluriversal, by being a world in which many worlds exist? Can we redirect funding available to scholars and artists directly to communities in need?
Alongside movements that fight racism, white supremacy, climate change, and industrial collapse, The Techno-Tamaladas brings together communities of color in a renewed framing of technologies of life to strengthen our own resurgence in the face of escalating crises.
Upcoming event:
Friday, Oct 30, 4-5pm PST, Techno-Tamaladas Webinar/Dialogo - La Milpa en Tiempos de Pandemia / La Milpa in Pandemic Times, live from Oakland & Oaxaca. Info and registration at https://www.prabapilar.com/events/milpa-webinar
Praba Pilar is a queer diasporic Colombian mestiza artist creating performance art, digital/electronic installations, experimental public talks, and workshops in museums, universities, festivals, galleries, and streets around the world. Pilar has a decades long practice critical of extraction-based approaches to technology, has been honored with fellowships and awards, featured in local and international media, and published her work in peer reviewed and popular journals and books. In search of better collective electric dreams, she is presently sharing approaches rooted in hemispheric resistance and resurgence by engaging the public through reflection, generosity, and criticality. Pilar has a PhD in Performance Studies from UC Davis, is Co-Director of the Hindsight Institute, and can be visited online at prabapilar.com.