Indigenous literary cartographies

I situate this article broadly within the field of literary cartography, which, as Rick Van Noy (Reference Van Noy2003, 3) explains, studies how maps “can tell a story” and “how literature can be used for cartographic means.” This deconstruction of the literature/map distinction is amply supported by Indigenous epistemologies. Elizabeth Hill Boone (Reference Hill Boone and Malcolm Lewis1998, 113) describes how for “the Aztecs and their neighbors prior to the Spanish conquest there was no such distinction between map presentations and ‘written’ presentations”; both were encompassed by the Nahuatl verb ihcuiloa, “paint, draw, write” (Launey Reference Launey2011, 32). Moreover, in the form of the “cartographic history” (Mundy Reference Mundy1996, 106), Central Mexican maps narrated “origins, migrations, and the founding of their cities and communities” (Cintli Rodríguez Reference Cintli Rodríguez2014, 101). In this way, “Indigenous maps told stories, not simply providing a geographical snapshot of the landscape” (Cintli Rodríguez Reference Cintli Rodríguez2014, 101).

In the Mayan languages, cognates of the Yucatec verb ts’íib entail a “multimodal Indigenous understanding of text” (Worley and Palacios Reference Worley and Palacios2019, 3) that includes writing and the creation of “figures, designs, and diagrams in general, whether they be drawn, painted, engraved, embroidered, or woven” (Tedlock and Tedlock Reference Tedlock and Tedlock1985, 124). Agriculture, too, can be described as a form of ts’íib, or patterning, onto the landscape (Worley and Palacios Reference Worley and Palacios2019, 5–6). According to Matthew Restall (Reference Restall1997, 200), “the way in which the Maya described land in writing in the colonial period is effectively cartographic in its heavy use of visual landmarks and the techniques of narrative journey,” and “may indicate that the Maya before the conquest did their mapping in words.”

In the Quechua languages, the verb qillqay has denoted concepts as diverse as “pintar, dibujar, labrar, esculpir, registrar estadísticamente, escribir, dictar, bordar, escarabajear, rasguear” (Quispe-Agnoli Reference Quispe-Agnoli2005, 271). Consequently, the combination of text and illustrations that characterizes the work of the Indigenous, colonial-era chronicler Guaman Poma may not have been conceptualized as two distinct elements in Andean worldviews (Cummins Reference Cummins1998, 182, cited in Quispe-Agnoli Reference Quispe-Agnoli2005, 273). Margot Beyersdorff (Reference Beyersdorff2007, 147, 130) suggests that, in Guaman Poma’s written petition to claim ancestral territories, his visual ordering of toponyms mimics “the circularity of the muyuriy,” namely, the Andean “walkabout,” which reaffirms people’s relationship with landscape and territory.

My purpose is not to suggest false equivalences between ihcuiloa, ts’íib, and qillqay, which come from unrelated languages and distinct traditions, but to show how, in their different ways, each deconstructs the (Western) distinction between mapping and writing, and thereby reveals literary cartography (Van Noy Reference Van Noy2003) as intrinsic to Indigenous creative practices. The Cherokee scholar Christopher Teuton (Reference Teuton2010, xvi–xviii) adds further support to this interpretation. According to his theory of the “textual continuum,” Indigenous literature of the Western Hemisphere emerges from the interaction between two creative impulses—oral and graphic—which are mediated and balanced by a “critical impulse.” The “graphic” impulse includes forms such as writing and drawing, which derive their semiotic vitality from dialogue with oral modes of communication; likewise, oral traditions remain “grounded” thanks to their exchange with graphic expressions.

In the case of the poems by Xochitiotzin Pérez, Dzul Barboza, Vargas Arce, and Corrales, it is through drawing on oral traditions that they are able to convey, in writing, culturally specific interpretations of geography that have the potential to become “critical impulses” and challenge overarching representations. The creative interplay between oral and graphic expressions is also highlighted in Bjørn Sletto and colleagues’ (Reference Sletto, Sletto, Bryan, Wagner and Hale2020) edited volume Radical Cartographies, which combines perspectives from south of the Río Bravo/Grande. For example, Kiado Cruz (Reference Cruz, Sletto, Bryan, Wagner and Hale2020, 22) describes how, in the Indigenous Zapotec region of Mexico, the subversive capacity of oral literatures can “contribute to new cartographic narratives.” In another chapter on the Gran Cumbal region of Colombia, Álvaro César Velasco Álvarez (Reference Velasco Álvarez, Sletto, Bryan, Wagner and Hale2020, 39) discusses communal mapmaking, or “social polygraphy,” as a way to “reclaim the meaning of Indigenous languages.”

Combining Teuton’s hemispheric theory of the textual continuum with the culturally particular concepts of ihcuiloa, ts’íib, and qillqay forms a powerful yet nuanced framework that responds to the Chickasaw scholar Chadwick Allen’s (Reference Allen2012) calls for a “trans-Indigenous” literary criticism. Namely, by setting Indigenous texts from widely differing languages and traditions in dialogue, I aim to respect “the specificity of the Indigenous local” (Allen Reference Allen2012, xix) while creating “juxtapositions [that] can provoke more complex analyses of specific texts” (Allen Reference Allen2012, 181). In the present article, such analyses involve elucidating the poems’ capacity to propose alternative cartographic representations rooted in local cosmologies, which, when combined, stretch to breaking point arch-signifiers such as “(Latin) America.”

Although none of the poems foregrounds mapping as a central theme, this is rather the point: their cartographic significance rests in implicit potential when read a particular way, not in any explicit proposal to replace one form of representation with another, which could risk constructing new forms of hegemony. Through detailed textual analysis, I work to bring to the surface what the travel writer William Least Heat-Moon (Reference Heat-Moon1991), who traces his ancestry to the Indigenous Osage people, calls a “deep map.” In Susan Maher’s (Reference Maher2014) interpretation, deep map writing seeks to capture “a plethora of interconnected stories from a particular location” (10–11) and to frame “the landscape within this indeterminate complexity” (11), recognizing that “the place itself remains elusive” (11).

Maher’s account of deep map writing closely resembles Sletto’s (Reference Sletto, Sletto, Bryan, Wagner and Hale2020, 8) description of mapmaking as “rhizomatic formations that emerge through embodied and contingent forms of storytelling.” In Deleuze and Guattari’s (Reference Deleuze and Guattari1980) original formulation, “rhizomatic” processes spread laterally in multiple, largely unconstrained forms of evolution, none of which occupies any privileged point in relation to any other. This contrasts with “arboreal” structures, which grow vertically from a centralized location and are associated with hegemony and hierarchy (Deleuze and Guattari Reference Deleuze and Guattari1980, 9–37). While antagonistic, the two modes often coexist, with rhizomatic networks producing arboreal structures, and vice versa (Deleuze and Guattari Reference Deleuze and Guattari1980, 23–24).

In addition to the inherent appropriateness of using a vegetal metaphor to examine literary representations of maize, Deleuze and Guattari’s distinction dialogues well with the “rhizomatic” diversification of maize throughout the hemisphere and its more “arboreal” role in the development of specific cultural institutions in particular locations. In the sections that follow, I seek to show how each poem reflects “arboreal,” or culturally particular, conceptions of landscape that have the potential to enact a “rhizomatic” plurality of geographical perspectives when combined. Such a combination brings out a multifaceted, evolving “deep map” of the hemisphere that is both trans-Indigenous (Allen Reference Allen2012) and “translocal” (Burdette Reference Burdette2019, xii). I set my analysis within an Indigenous formulation of literary cartography (Van Noy Reference Van Noy2003), as expressed by the Nahuatl, Maya, and Quechua concepts of ihcuiloa, ts’íib, and qillqay, together with Teuton’s (Reference Teuton2010) theory of the textual continuum.

Nahuatl: “Tlaoltzintli”

We begin with “Tlaoltzintli/Maíz,” written by the Nahuatl educator, translator, and author Ethel Xochitiotzin Pérez, who hails from Santa María Tlacatecpac in Tlaxcala state, central Mexico. The poem, published in Revista Raíces (Reference Xochitiotzin Pérez2021), visually recalls a maize stalk, consisting of a single long stanza that I present in full. For the purpose of analysis, I have divided it into sections, the first of which is as follows:

The Nahuatl title, “Tlaoltzintli,” contains the honorific suffix -tzin, which, added to the root tlaol- (maize kernel), positions maize as a sacred interlocutor rather than an objective resource. This idea is further developed through the word xayac (rostro; face), an allusion to the sun, which is mentioned shortly thereafter, and through the four colors that indicate the cyclical emergence of space-time: white (west), yellow (east), blue (south), and red (north) (Aveni Reference Aveni2016, 110). As well as evoking the rhizomatic diversity of maize (Deleuze and Guattari), the spatiotemporal symbolism of the colors enacts a vision of the land as dynamic and regenerative, in contrast to monolithic labels such as “(Latin) America” or the nation-state. Miguel León-Portilla ([Reference León-Portilla1956] 1993, 111) explains how, in pre-Hispanic Nahua cosmology, “se descubre a través de los varios ciclos o edades un principio latente de evolución, que culmina, en el caso particular de las plantas alimenticias, con la aparición del maíz.” Similarly, in “Tlaoltzintli,” the phrase “Achtli tonaltzin” can be read as both “seed of the sun” and “seed of destiny” (Portugal Carbó Reference Portugal Carbó2015, s.v. tonalli), potentially suggesting a new phase in the land’s evolution.

The Nahuatl root nacayo, mentioned twice, refers to both animal and plant “flesh” and, in this context, foregrounds the shared substance between maize and humanity (López Austin [Reference López Austin1980] 1989, 172–173), while the two Spanish counterparts, templo and cuerpo, together indicate the sacrality of life: nemiliztli (vida; life). Adam Coon (Reference Coon2014, 218) explains how maize “serves as the underlying metaphor” of Nahua epistemologies, which recognize “the earth as the living source of one’s sustenance” (217–218). The crop is associated with “sacred landscapes, reciprocity, respect for ancestors, a dynamic cyclical perception of time, and affective intelligence” (217). This sense of the land’s constant regeneration is conveyed by the Nahuatl verb quiza (to emerge) and the Spanish manar, which in combination suggest vertical and lateral growth. A renewed engagement with the landscape leads in turn to new forms of humanity, as expressed in the Nahuatl version by yez, the future tense of the verb “to be,” in relation to tlacatl (human being).

The following lines further develop the connection between poetry and agriculture:

Similar to the farmer’s cultivation of maize, the poet likewise cultivates new ways of interpreting the landscape. The conceptual association between these two occupations is evident in one of the terms for poetry, xochitlahtolli, which comprises the roots xochi- (flower) and tlahtol- (language). In this light, the allusion to sowing “flowers” (xochitzintli) and “festivals” (ilhuitzintli) may indicate the role of literature in foregrounding those forms of existence (human and nonhuman) that have been marginalized by dominant narratives. The word monahuactzin (with your venerable self) conveys the agency of maize as part of a collaborative, interspecies dialogue.

The lines also emphasize the crop’s participation in both the oral and graphic “impulses,” according to Teuton’s (Reference Teuton2010) semiotic typology: by invoking the mythological associations of maize, as passed down through the oral tradition, the poet gains the ability to “write time” (“nitlahcuiloa in cahuitl”). This can be interpreted as the “critical impulse” that fosters what Hannah Burdette (Reference Burdette2019, 154), commenting on Wayuu cultural practices, calls an “epistemology of transmotion,” namely, “an alternative conception of space and place predicated on constant movement” rather than static categories. The polysemy of the Nahuatl term ihcuiloa (drawing as well as writing) strengthens the cartographic significance of the phrase.

Just as the maize plant germinates in the soil, grows upward and outward, and finally blossoms, so Xochitiotzin Pérez enables a new deep map (Heat-Moon Reference Heat-Moon1991, Maher Reference Maher2014) to emerge from buried semiotic networks that resurface through her poetry, which transforms the drought (tlahuaquiztl) of cultural, linguistic, and environmental degradation into new, fertile terrain (xopaniztl). While the Spanish verbs are in the present tense, the Nahuatl version deploys the future in tlamiz (will end) and ticquixtiliz (you will emit), perhaps suggesting that genuine renewal can emerge only from the inclusion of Indigenous languages as part of a pluralistic cultural geography. Such a vision is strikingly laid out in the poem’s final lines:

Here, “roots” (nelhuayo-) have both arboreal and rhizomatic properties (Deleuze and Guattari Reference Deleuze and Guattari1980). Reaching deep into the ground, they can be interpreted in terms of cultural continuity and the “rootedness” of people and place through time. Spreading out in multiple directions, however, the roots link each cultural and linguistic element within a wider network, paralleling the poem’s opening lines where the diverse colors of maize indicate the four sides of the cosmos. The poem’s middle part invokes poetry as a form of cultivation that can reconfigure people’s understanding and appreciation of the surrounding landscape.

Both Spanish and Nahuatl, moreover, deconstruct their linguistic authority in the final lines. The Nahuatl word tlaolli (maize) initiates the reader on multiple pathways between a bewildering array of linguistic nodes while ultimately disappearing in an increasingly complex cartographic tapestry. By naming each language, the Spanish version reveals the impossibility of fully understanding a geographical region through only one of its languages. In this way, Spanish transforms from an arboreal agent of domination to a rhizomatic “lengua-puente,” as the Nahuatl author Martín Tonalmeyotl (Reference Tonalmeyotl2017, 7) has argued.

Through reference to distinctive Nahuatl concepts (e.g., ihcuiloa), grammatical constructions (e.g., future tense), and cultural references (e.g., color symbolism), Xochitiotzin Pérez inscribes a deep map (Heat-Moon Reference Heat-Moon1991; Maher Reference Maher2014) that is rooted in local epistemologies while weaving trans-Indigenous (Allen Reference Allen2012) connections. Even though (perhaps because) cartography is not the explicit focus of the poem, the references to space and time enact an alternative geographical perspective that contrasts markedly with dominant categories such as “(Latin) America” or the nation-state and thereby deconstruct their hegemony. Accompanying maize on its rhizomatic journey, we now travel to another of the semiotic nodes invoked in Xochitiotzin Pérez’s poem, as maize transforms from tlaoltzintli to ixi’im.

Yucatec Maya: “Ixi’im”

In María Dolores Dzul Barboza’s Yucatec Maya poem, “Ixi’im/Maíz” (Chavarrea Chim Reference Chavarrea Chim2017, 66–67), it is maize who addresses humanity, the inverse of “Tlaoltzintli.” The Maya poem, moreover, foregrounds the preoccupation of biocultural loss that hastens the message of renewal in Xochitiotzin Pérez’s work. Dzul Barboza hails from Peto, in the Mexican state of Yucatán, and was in the first cohort of creative writing students at the Centro Estatal de Bellas Artes (State Center of Fine Arts) between 2009 and 2011. Her poem has two stanzas in the Spanish version, but the Maya version separates the first half into two separate stanzas, the second constituting just two lines:

As in “Tlaoltzintli,” maize is presented as a meaningful interlocutor. Its description as the bak’el (carne; flesh) of the yáax yuumo’ob (primeros padres) recalls the Popol Wuj, in which the gods create the first humans from white and yellow maize (Christenson Reference Christenson2007, 195), and similar descriptions of a shared substance in the Nahuatl poem. The phrase “a wíinklile’” (tu cuerpo; your body), interacts with “u bak’el” (their flesh) to form the traditional parallel structure that is widespread in Mesoamerican literature (see Montemayor Reference Montemayor1999, 44–53). In “Ixi’im,” this structure effectively foregrounds the co-constitutive relationship between maize and humanity. The result is a crosshatch pattern whereby the beginning of the first line and the end of the second refer to maize (teen [I]; ixi’im [maize]), while the end of the first line and the beginning of the second refer to humanity (yáax yuumo’ob [first fathers]; a wíinklile’ [your body]).

This pattern recalls the close association between textiles and writing in Maya thought, with both practices falling in the semantic orbit of ts’íib, the Maya expression of the “graphic impulse” (Teuton Reference Teuton2010), as discussed earlier. The Yucatec Maya writer Pedro Uc Be (Reference Uc Be2016, 11) describes how agriculture is likewise “un ejemplo de escritura; se limpia el espacio, luego se pone la semilla para que nazca la vida, la palabra, la historia, el alimento del alma.” In these ways, the structure of the opening lines recalls the multimodality of ts’íib, anticipating the poem’s potential to enact a counterhegemonic literary cartography as it progresses.

The interweaving of maize and humanity continues through the third and fifth lines of the Maya version (which refer to maize) and the fourth and sixth (which refer to humanity). Out of this lateral, dialogic relationship emerges the projection of time and space: from the “first fathers” in the opening line, the stanza progresses to “los hijos de la tierra” (u paalal yóok’ol kaab; the children of the earth), whereas the geographical expansion across the “cuatro puntos del universo” (kanti’itsil lu’um; the four corners of the universe) includes “toda persona” (tuláakal máak; every person). The Maya version separates the latter two phrases in a two-line stanza, which emphasizes this sense of extension over vast distances. The allusion to the cardinal directions evokes the four main colors of maize and their cartographic significance, recalling a similar depiction in “Tlaoltzintli.” Maya color symbolism is nonetheless different from that of the Nahua world: red (east), white (north), black (west), and yellow (south), as well as green (the young maize shoot that represents the growing, central axis of the world).

In these ways, Dzul Barboza, like Xochitiotzin Pérez, enacts a “social polygraphy” (Velasco Álvarez Reference Velasco Álvarez, Sletto, Bryan, Wagner and Hale2020) that combines the culturally specific with the universal. Through the central trope of maize, both writers reaffirm a distinctively Maya and Nahua interpretation of the landscape which extends beyond national or ethnic territories to encompass the world at large. When set in dialogue, the two “arboreal” cultural nodes gain more rhizomatic properties as they complement each other’s cartographic perspective and bring forth a deep map that resists any definitive representation.

The word lu’um (in “kanti’itsil lu’um”) refers to “earth” as substance, which imparts “itz, ‘sap’ or ‘the holy substance of life’ to growing plants and other things” (Dunning and Beach Reference Dunning and Beach2004, 10); this forms “part of a cyclical system in which yiitz ka’an, ‘the holy substance of the sky,’ is believed to bring fertility to the earth in the form of rainfall” (10). Reenacted as lu’um, the land regains its regenerative capacity; this is also suggested by the “scattering” (k’i’itpajal) of maize seeds that extends rhizomatically in all directions and whose new shoots will nurture (tséent) “tuláakal máak” (toda persona; every person), as well as by the suffix -pajal, which indicates habitual action (Martínez Huchim Reference Martínez Huchim2014, 211). The rendering of lu’um as “universo” in the Spanish version again suggests how the revival of linguistic, cultural, and agricultural diversity at the local level opens up new ways of understanding geography at a larger scale. Like the allusion to healing in the Nahuatl poem, the phrase “ki’iki’ o’och” (sabroso alimento; delicious sustenance) can be interpreted in terms of existential, not only physical, nourishment.

The second half of the poem, however, reveals that the nourishing properties of maize are in danger of vanishing forever:

The phrase ok’om óolalen translates roughly as “I am of heavy heart,” with ok’om denoting acute suffering, and óolalen comprising the noun óol, the adjectival suffix -al, and the first-person suffix -en. As the anthropologist Gabriel Bourdin (Reference Bourdin2007, 5, 12) explains, the óol is a key concept in Maya philosophy that is related to the European notions of soul, spirit, mind, and feelings; it constitutes a “núcleo a partir del cual se irradia un cierto crecimiento o movimiento vital de orientación centrífuga y ascendente.”

As the “punto central a partir del cual se irradia la vida y se organizan el espacio y el tiempo” (Bourdin Reference Bourdin2007, 12), the óol recalls the vertical and lateral growth of plants, while linking “el ‘núcleo’ de la persona con el centro del mundo” (5). This concept therefore combines the arboreal and rhizomatic qualities that allow a person to locate themselves in relation to the landscape around them. The óol is arboreal in growing upward from a specific position, yet it is also rhizomatic in its outward dialogical projection and combination of temporal and spatial aspects, which eschews any notion of an absolute standpoint. Moreover, because everyone has an óol, the geographical “center” is a matter of perspective and shifts from one person (or plant) to another. In these ways, the Maya concept of óol opens the path to a pluralistic cartographic vision as “social polygraphy” (Velasco Álvarez Reference Velasco Álvarez, Sletto, Bryan, Wagner and Hale2020) that is “radical” in both senses of the adjective (vegetal and transformative), embracing the “indeterminate complexity” (Maher Reference Maher2014, 11) that characterizes any place.

In the Popol Wuj, it is only when humans are re-created from maize that they acquire the dialogic capacity that gives them full understanding of their place in the world (Christenson Reference Christenson2007, 197). While constituting a general term for anguish, the phrase ok’om óolal, in the context of the poem, also evokes the role of maize as the key element in human consciousness. The mutual dependence of maize and humanity is emphasized by the parallel use of the first-person suffix -en in the first and second lines of the Maya version. In the first line, maize is the subject of ok’om óolal (anguish); in the second, it is the grammatical object that has been forgotten (tu’ubs-) by humanity.

The Spanish version, in contrast, conveys the vegetal nature of maize through the verb envolver, which suggests leaves and recalls another animating entity, the pixa’an. The term designates a “cobertura o envoltura de la persona” (Bourdin Reference Bourdin2007, 15), which, following the European invasion, became equated with the Christian soul and, unlike the óol, is believed to survive physical death (16). The body, pixa’an, and óol comprise the three main dimensions of the human being, which emerges as a totality by reading across the poem’s two languages. That it is, moreover, the voice of maize that causes humanity to appear reaffirms the plant’s key role in human evolution according to Maya tradition. The sadness of the óol of maize reflects the loss of bearing in the óol of humanity, which has gone astray by forgetting traditional ways of relating to the land.

Such traditions constitute the cycle of agricultural rituals that Dzul Barboza alludes to in the stanza. As the literary scholar Carlos Montemayor (Reference Montemayor1999, 54) explains, through ritual prayers “se conserva la forma correcta de salutación a la divinidad, a los santos y a las presencias sagradas de los campos, montañas, cuevas, ríos y bosques”; maize is the chief offering in such ceremonies because humans were created from it (103). The ontological entanglement of maize and humanity is further illustrated by the possessive suffixes: “a kool” (your field) and “in kuxtal” (my life). The line, “ma’ ta k’áatik in kuxtal” can be interpreted either as “you do not enquire after my life” or as “you do not ask permission for my life,” suggesting a loss of care or curiosity.

Similarly, the phrase “yéetel sujuy tiich’il” contains the conjunction yéetel (with), the adjective sujuy (chaste, virginal), and the noun tiich’il (stretching out, in the sense of an offering); the latter is derived from the verb, tich’, which refers to the act of extending one’s arm in a gesture of engagement or assistance. In the context of agricultural rituals, Dzul Barboza’s use of this verb can be interpreted as indicating the dialogic projection of the individual toward the surrounding landscape. In this way, the poet signals the lateral expansion of the óol and opens the possibility of new “cartographic narratives” (Cruz Reference Cruz, Sletto, Bryan, Wagner and Hale2020, 22) that emerge through and with the landscape rather than being imposed from above. The line “wa ma’ ta kanáantik le k-lu’umila’” (Si ya no cuidas nuestra tierra; If you no longer care for our land) emphasizes this sense that the land (lu’um) is shared, particularly through the first-person plural possessive marker k- (nuestro) in combination with the suffix -il on lu’umila’ which, in this context, denotes inalienable belonging to a particular place. The deictic suffix -a’ indicates immediacy, so that the whole word translates roughly as “this land of ours right here,” serving to remind the reader of what is directly before them yet rendered invisible through loss of compass.

As with Xochitiotzin Pérez’s evocation of “roots,” Dzul Barboza’s allusion to “ch’i’ibal” (linaje; lineage) has both arboreal and rhizomatic qualities. On the one hand, it suggests the relative immobility of ethnic affiliation and family “trees,” yet in the Popol Wuj, the first nations diversify rhizomatically as they migrate through the land (Christenson Reference Christenson2007, 213). Indeed, the “lineage” is left unspecified, suggesting an ever-widening sense of allegiance that can encompass the whole of humanity.

While “Ixi’im” focuses on the loss of biocultural diversity, Dzul Barboza, like Xochitiotzin Pérez, proposes an alternative representation of the land founded on traditional principles of dialogue. Some examples discussed were the allusion to the cardinal directions, the Maya concept of lu’um (earth), and the rituals that sustain the relationship between people and landscape. Read through the lens of ts’íib, which encompasses writing, farming, and mapping, the poem can be interpreted as cultivating a renewed vision of the land as reciprocal and agential, rebelling against efforts to objectify and define it. This “critical impulse,” borne of the interplay between oral and graphic traditions (Teuton Reference Teuton2010), enables specific cultural concepts to reconfigure cartographic imaginaries at a hemispheric, trans-Indigenous (Allen Reference Allen2012) scale.

Central Peruvian Quechua: “Willka Hara”

Tracing the rhizomatic expansion of maize southward, we leave Mesoamerica for the Andes to engage with César Vargas Arce’s poem, “Willka Hara/Maíz sagrado” (Vargas Arce and Sigüeñas Vivar Reference Vargas Arce and Vivar2008, 44–45), written in Central Peruvian Quechua. Vargas Arce hails from Pichiw San Pedro in Huari province, part of the Conchucos valley. He is a specialist in intercultural bilingual education as well as a poet and singer-songwriter. The term willka means both “sacred” and “grandchild” (Carranza Romero Reference Carranza Romero2003, 280), indicating here how the religious role of maize in the Andes is inseparable from its function in sustaining life.

Maize, while a crucial food source in its solid state, is generally consumed in central Andean ritual contexts in the form of the fermented beverage known as chicha in Spanish, aswa in Central Quechua, and aqha in Southern Quechua. The drink “was highly important in the economic, ritual, political, military, and social functioning of both the elite, and common people of the Inka Empire” (Duke Reference Duke, Amundsen-Meyer, Engel and Pickering2011, 265) and “remains the central alcoholic beverage in indigenous ritual life” (2011, 267). Bill Sillar (Reference Sillar2009, 373) notes how “chicha-drinking is a communal activity” and “a form of communication with the ancestors and animate world.” The capitalization of hara (maize) in the title and identical first line of the poem can therefore be interpreted as an indication of the crop’s cultural significance and, similarly to the Mesoamerican poems, of its relatability, even personhood.

The poem is arranged in three stanzas, the first of which is as follows:

The stanza describes maize as shumaq, which the linguist Francisco Carranza Romero (Reference Carranza Romero2003, 223) defines as “bonito, precioso, agradable” and “tranquilo,” while shumaqlla means “con cuidado, sigilosamente, con astucia.” Margarita Manosalvas (Reference Manosalvas2014, 114) notes how sumak (the Ecuadorian cognate used in the politicized phrase, sumak kawsay or “buen vivir”) is frequently described as indicating “un sentido de plenitud, completitud, excelencia.” While the Spanish counterpart bonito emphasizes the aesthetic dimension, the Quechua term arguably locates aesthetics within wider ethical and relational parameters.

From this standpoint, it is the relational dimension of shumaq that enables the plant to grow (wina-) and blossom (florecer). As in Xochitiotzin Pérez’s poem, maize is addressed directly (indicated by the second-person verbal suffix -nki). In the stanza, this dialogic capacity extends to an engagement with the entire landscape: “pampa-kuna-chaw” (en las pampas, or “in the pampas”) and, in the Spanish version, “valles” (valleys) express the crop’s capacity to embed itself in the specific topographical features of the Andes, while the plural markers (-kuna in Quechua) and the verb shikshiy (to scatter straw; Carranza Romero Reference Carranza Romero2003, 218) suggest the crop’s rhizomatic expansion over a wide expanse of land. The description of maize as “cheering” (kushitsi-) the hills (hirkakuna) indicates its full participation as a form of qillqay (inscription) in the semiotic tapestry of the landscape.

My interpretation of the poem is informed by the Quechua concepts of pacha (or patsa in Conchucos Quechua) and ayni. Josef Estermann (Reference Estermann2013) defines pacha as “el todo de lo que existe en forma interrelacionada, el universo ordenado mediante una compleja red de relaciones, tanto en perspectiva espacial como temporal.” Understood as one manifestation of pacha, “agriculture represents the dialogue which occurs between diverse beings within the natural collectivity” (Gonzales Reference Gonzales2000, 203). Ayni “is the basic give-and-take that governs the universal circulation of vitality” and constitutes “a kind of dialectical pumping mechanism” (Allen Reference Allen and Howard-Malverde1997, 76) that enables vital energy to circulate within the totality of pacha. By integrating itself into the land’s natural processes, maize enables the landscape to flourish and plays its part in the continual revitalization of nutrients. In the same way, by interpreting the landscape through a distinctly Andean worldview, Vargas Arce enacts a deep map that presents an alternative literary cartography of the land as pacha, namely, evolving and relational, rather than as a fixed territory.

The second stanza develops these themes further:

The repetition of the crop’s name at the start of every stanza suggests a constant process of mutual adaptation, even a ritual formula uttered at key moments during the agricultural year, recalling Dzul Barboza’s Maya poem. This theme of continual regeneration is indicated at several points in the above lines. For example, the description of the maize canes (tulluykikuna) as mishkiq (dulces; sweet) indicates their provision of energy, while both the Quechua and Spanish terms suggest an agreeable character, a connotation that is heightened by the literal meaning of tullu, “bone,” which hints at the ontological entanglement between maize and humanity and the role of the former in human rebirth. Catherine Allen (Reference Allen1982, 187) describes how people in Sonqo, southern Peru, considered dry bones to “exert a fertilizing, seminal influence,” just as maize does in Vargas Arce’s poem.

The wordplay of quyu (verdes; green), in reference to the leaves (rapraykikuna), and quya quya (every morning) can be interpreted as emphasizing the cyclical rejuvenation of the landscape. Given the punning, the allusion to play (pukllay) is self-referential. Susan Ross (Reference Ross2020), commenting on a study among the Peruvian Q’ero community, describes how her research participants viewed pukllay as a “natural state” (4) that cultivates a “union between self and other through direct reciprocal relationship” (5). As a “biopsychospiritual relational activity,” pukllay “causes the individual to heal, mature, and learn in order to become a fully developed human” (4) and manifests most frequently through ritual and creative activities (4), within which poetry can certainly be included.

In this way, pukllay helps eliminate hucha, the negative, heavy energy that only human beings create, restoring the light, life-enhancing energy (sami) that circulates naturally in the world (Ross Reference Ross2020, 5–6); this function bears a close resemblance to Vargas Arce’s description of maize “playing with the wind” (wayrawan pukllan). In Teuton’s (Reference Teuton2010) framework, the phrase could suggest the relative spontaneity of oral expressions, which balance the fixity of graphic representations and, in line with the argument of this article, have the potential to replace rigid models of territory with a more “playful” cartographic imaginary. Indeed, pukllay also denotes the Andean Carnival festivities that celebrate fertility and renewal.

The term wayra (wind) can also refer to the spirit or animu that Xavier Lanata (Reference Lanata2007) defines as “la fuerza de realización contenida en cada ser” (82), including features of the landscape, and that frequently manifests as air currents during shamanic rituals (162). As a ritual act, Vargas Arce’s poetic invocation of maize can be interpreted as a form of reanimating the land by participating in ancestral channels of communication, and thereby reaffirming the land’s sociocultural (not only economic) significance (Springerová and Vališková Reference Springerová and Vališková2021, 780).

The final stanza looks to the future with a vision of hope:

Following the repeated ritual invocation of maize in the first line, the parallelism of the second and third lines conveys a continual sense of growth as the stalk emerges from the seed and subsequently satisfies the thirst (yakunay) and hunger (mallaqay) of humanity, described as “niños huérfanos” in Spanish and “poor” or “abandoned” (waktsa) “children” (wamrakuna) in Quechua. At one level, the term waktsa alludes to the widespread poverty in the Andean hinterland but, as specified by the Spanish huérfanos (orphans), the word’s deeper meaning is an absence of social relations. As Estermann (Reference Estermann2013) states, “La ‘vida’ se define, en los Andes, prácticamente por la relacionalidad, y la muerte —si existiera en forma absoluta— sería la expresión de la más absoluta falta de articulación y relación, el aislamiento o solipsismo total.” In the present context of mass acculturation, migration to cities, and relentless environmental destruction, orphanage can also be interpreted in terms of the rupture from networks of meaning which, for millennia, have bound people together as communities within a sentient landscape.

By recourse to Quechua concepts such as shumaq (ethics and aesthetics), pukllay (play), and wayra (wind, animating spirit), and by evoking the reciprocal relationship between agriculture and the wider topography, Vargas Arce offers hope for the revitalization of these networks. While, like the Nahuatl and Maya poems discussed earlier, “Willka Hara” does not focus explicitly on mapping, all three evoke culturally specific notions of landscape, which, when set in a trans-Indigenous (Allen Reference Allen2012) dialogue, open the possibility for a hemispheric literary cartography that is flexible enough to include multiple geographical perspectives.

Bolivian Quechua: “Yuyasqa sarachay”

Following the rhizomatic spread of both maize and the Quechua language family, we reach the southernmost node in this article, represented by the Bolivian writer Emilio Corrales’s poem, “Yuyasqa sarachay/Maíz de mi recuerdo.” Corrales studied under Aquilino Alvarado Bonifacio in the Intercultural Bilingual Education program at the Instituto Normal Superior, Caracollo, Oruro department. His poem was originally published alongside the work of Alvarado Bonifacio (Reference Alvarado Bonifacio2006, 98–99) and his other students, then subsequently in Noriega Bernuy’s (Reference Noriega Bernuy2016, 792–793) anthology. Invoked through the Bolivian variety of Southern Quechua, a distinct language from Central Peruvian Quechua, maize transforms from hara to sara, while the diminutive suffix -cha (used in an affective sense) and the first-person possessive -y in the title indicate the species’ integration into human spheres of relationality; the word sarachay can be roughly translated as “my dear maize.”

The term yuyasqa (remembered) indicates a retrospective focus, recalling Dzul Barboza’s Maya work “Ixi’im.” Rosaleen Howard (Reference Howard, Quilter and Urton2002, 46) notes how the “cultural function of remembering in Andean ways of thinking is a regenerative one, whereby the past provides the symbolic resources for making sense of the present and projecting toward the future, in a way that allows at once for continuity and change.” Storytelling and festivals are crucial for the maintenance of such historical continuity (Howard Reference Howard, Quilter and Urton2002, 29–30), and like the other poems discussed in this article, “Yuyasqa sarachay” can be read as a continuation of this originally oral tradition, recalling Teuton’s (Reference Teuton2010) discussion of the necessary balance between the “oral” and “graphic” impulses to sustain the dynamism of cultural innovation.

In a similar vein to Xochitiotzin Pérez’s allusion to the many colors of maize, Corrales highlights the crop’s diversity by invoking chuspillo, a specific variety:

While the past participle suffix -sqa in yuyasqa (remembered) hints at the loss of traditional maize varieties and their associated cultural meanings, the very act of remembering offers hope for their resurgence. Indeed, the mention of the colors red and white recalls Oswaldo Torres Rodríguez’s (Reference Torres Rodríguez2015, 32) description of healing rituals in the central Peruvian Andes: red (puka) indicated love, happiness, strength, and courage, while white (yuraq) bestowed health, peace and a change of destiny (29). The term sunqu, commonly translated as “corazón” (heart), though incorporating a wider semantic orbit, was traditionally considered a source of consciousness, reason, memory, judgment, willfulness and understanding during the colonial period (González Holguín [1608] 1989, 328). This relates to the description of “long hair” (chukchasapa), which Allison Caine (Reference Caine2019, 84) found to be associated with stubbornness in the Cordillera Vilcanota, southern Peru, with the hair-cutting ceremony of chukcha rutukuy constituting “a significant milestone in a child’s development as a social being” (Caine Reference Caine2019, 84). In conjunction, these elements all suggest youthfulness yet resilience, the capacity for regeneration.

The expression “watamanta wata” (year on year) conveys the cyclical nature of this process of continual rejuvenation, rooted in the agricultural calendar, as does the wordplay between the near homophones, p’acha (clothes) and pacha (relationality, spacetime) in Pachamamayki (your Pachamama). Given the polysemy of pacha, which, as discussed earlier, includes both space and time, it would be misleading to view Pachamama as an Andean equivalent of “Mother Earth.” Daniela Di Salvia (Reference Di Salvia2011) describes the concept as “una esencia anímica materna” that perpetuates “los ritmos biológicos de nacimiento, crecimiento y regeneración vegetal y agrícola.” The Quechua second-person possessive suffix (-yki) indicates a personal relationship with the land that varies between individuals (“your Pachamama”), in contrast to the Spanish version, which defines it as objective and singular (“la Pachamama”). The possessive suffix thereby reveals a more perspectival understanding that recalls the multifaceted nature of deep map writing, while the allusions to regeneration hint at the revival of traditional Andean conceptions of landscape.

The second stanza continues these themes:

The reference to being “querido por todos” (tukuypaq munasqa; loved by everyone) recalls Sarah Kollnig’s (2020, 34) discussion of how the Morales government (2006–2019) used “culturally engrained food habits, such as eating chuspillo (dried maize), as symbols to evoke national unity”; in this light, the phrase can perhaps be interpreted as a nod to the “plurinational state.” This interpretation would illustrate another aspect of the deep map invoked by Corrales’s poem, one that is inscribed within national borders but reconceptualizes the state in terms of a plurality of cultural perspectives, in a similar way to Xochitiotzin Pérez’s listing of maize terms in several Indigenous languages of Mexico.

The expression “makimanta maki” (de mano en mano; hand in hand) likewise evokes maize as a symbol of unity through diversity. Combined with the phrase “watamanta wata” (de año en año; year on year) in the previous stanza, it complements spatial expansion with temporal cyclicity, reflecting the inseparability of space and time in pacha. The verb puriy (in puriykacharinki) is frequently translated as “caminar” (to walk), but as Bruce Mannheim (Reference Mannheim1998, 256) explains, has “a semantic range from ‘to travel’ to ‘to function,’” denoting “a kinetic form of existence, one that cancels the notion of ‘boundedness’ and implies either motion or the interaction of parts.” Corrales’s use of this verb for a plant is highly marked and, in combination with the iterative suffix -ykacha, which indicates repeated action such as the swaying of leaves in the breeze, creates the possibility for a new way of conceptualizing the landscape as freed from the confines of static cartographic representations. The sense of movement and expansion resonates with Maher’s (Reference Maher2014, 23) description of the deep map as “a rhizomatic genre, extending in infinite ways” that “resists any master paradigm.”

While not obvious at first, a similar interpretation can also be argued for the phrase, wirayachisqayki (I will fatten you), which contains the root, wira (fat), and, in the poem, may also denote pregnancy. Francis Ferrié (Reference Ferrié2015, 110) describes how, for people in the Apolo region of western Bolivia, to “eat and drink fat substances maintains the vital force and prevents diseases.” Wira, moreover, circulates “between animal, plant, human, and non-human entities” (113) in such a way that “physiology and cosmology are connected” (105). From this perspective, Corrales’s allusion to wira, a life-giving substance that integrates the individual with the wider world, suggests the reemergence of a more intimate and evolving relationship with the landscape.

The final stanza returns to the theme of memory:

The rhetorical question can be read as a jolt to the reader’s conscience, recalling Dzul Barboza’s Maya poem, which laments the decline of traditional agricultural practices. To quote Rosaleen Howard (Reference Howard, Quilter and Urton2002, 30), in Andean philosophy, forgetting “is the way that neglect of social and ritual obligations is described, and it is punishable in the form of sickness, crop failure, even death.” Despite the explicit mention of loss in the third line, grammatical agency rests with maize, perhaps serving as a counterpoint to the widespread presumption of human dominance. The word ñañitay (hermanita) is used as a general term of affection in the Andes, but its suggestion of kinship is also significant.

The parallelism of the last two lines enacts a complementary relationship between jallp’a (earth) and yaku (agua; water), as well as between puñuy (dormir; to sleep) and tusuy (bailar; to dance). Mary Strong (Reference Strong2012, 166) describes how dance “was one of the highest forms of prayer” in the pre-Columbian Andes; commenting specifically on the “scissor dance,” still performed today, Strong explains that the “basic purpose is to ensure a good water supply” (167) for agriculture. Indeed, the lines suggest both sowing and irrigation, while sleeping evokes dreaming, which, in Andean thought, is related to divination and revelation (Cecconi Reference Cecconi2011, 404). Literature, another artistic genre that has its roots in ancient rituals, can likewise be considered a form of cultivation, and Corrales’s bilingual poem a kind of irrigation that revives buried memories and, in so doing, opens the path to alternative ways of imagining geography.

Corrales’s focus on memory as a means of inspiration for the future recalls the Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s (Reference Rivera Cusicanqui2010, 54–55) insight, “El mundo indígena no concibe a la historia linealmente, y el pasado-futuro están contenidos en el presente”; this opens the possibility for an alternative, Indigenous take on modernity as “un continuo retroalimentarse del pasado sobre el futuro” (55). In these ways, Corrales, like Vargas Arce, draws on ancestral Quechua concepts to reawaken more reciprocal modes of understanding and engaging with the landscape. Some examples included color symbolism, Pachamama, puriy, wira, and the regenerative role of memory. While “Yuyasqa sarachay” is not overtly cartographic in nature, the effect is to open the door to alternative geographical imaginaries, out of which “new cartographic narratives” (Cruz Reference Cruz, Sletto, Bryan, Wagner and Hale2020, 22) can arise. In combination with the three other poems discussed in this article, Corrales’s work forms another thread of a multiperspectival deep map at a hemispheric scale.