The Origin of Maize in Relation to the Two Genera and the Creation of the Fertile Land in the Myth of Tlaltecuhtli

Abstract

In the modern maize myths of the Mayan area and the Gulf Coast where the protagonist is a woman, it is established that her sacrifice, usually carried out by the Sun, is the necessary event to transform what she contains at the potential level into concrete goods, that is corn. However, in cases where the protagonist is male, his death, brought on by his grandmother or his mother, is what makes the young man’s transformation into the maize god possible. In a similar vein, Mexica culture establishes that it is the sacrifice of the primal female entity, performed by male deities, which creates the fertile earth in the cosmogonist myth of Tlaltecuhtli, of which a new reading is proposed. This transformation of the female telluric matter into fruitful land in the myth has a masculine valence. Congruently, it had to be a man who wore the skin of the goddess Toci after her sacrifice and flaying in the month Ochpaniztli to propitiate the periodic regeneration of vegetation and in primis of maize.