A Conference on Tamales and Atoles: All You Ever Wanted to Know about Them
There’s a conference today on tamales and atoles. Tamales, dumplings of ground corn (maize), usually enclosing a tasty little morsel, and usually wrapped in corn husks or banana leaves, have a history stretching back millennia in Mesoamerica. So, too, do atoles, warming drinks of maize or other carbohydrates, often with intriguing flavorings, though they are less well known in the United States.
The conference on tamales and atoles is taking place in the Institute for Anthropological Investigations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. And it’s accessible to anyone who wants to listen on Youtube. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, it might be worth a few minutes of your time to enjoy watching the discussion.
Here’s the link. https://www.youtube.com/iiaunam (10:30 am-4:00 pm in Mexico, 12:30 pm-6 pm ET, 4:30 pm to 10 pm GMT. And it will be recorded so you can watch any time.
And here is the program.
I should have said “almost all you want to know” because this is the tenth of such programs. The instigator is Beatriz Woolrich Ramírez. Beatriz’s mother Doña Amelia played a major role in the history of tamales. It’s a very intriguing story that I tell in the link so do take a look.
Beatriz too is a tireless advocate for tamales. The tamales she makes are exceptional. And now she has a book too. I am proud to call her my friend.
I’ve always been fascinated by how some words evolve in very different places but still sound similar. Went to a lecture once the focused on how surprisingly common this is. For example, nulla is the Australian Aboriginal word for “nothing” and nul is Latin for “nothing.” In the case of the topic above, I always thought it interesting that Mesoamerica has atole, a grain-based drink (maize in this case) and Scotland as atholl, a grain-based drink (in this case, oatmeal).
As for tamales, when I was helping Maria Baez Kijac with her book, The South American Table, she maintained that tamales pretty much existed throughout Latin American, though not everyone used maize. Of course, it’s easier to understand variations in foods across a continent where trade was widespread. Not quite as weird as the language similarities. But so much to learn about everything we eat.
Yes, hard to imagine any account of migration that explains nulla and null.
On tamales, I think Maria Baez Kijac is right. I haven’t pursued this systematically but from personal experience and things I have read, it’s clear that tamales are by no means confined to Mexico.
I loved our-thentic. It points up the fact that anyone’s idea of the authenticity of another culture has to realize that their own opinion is filtered through their own experience.
Thank you Kay. that’s something you know a whole lot about.