Quite how long it takes a woman to grind for a family, apart from the time husking and shucking the maize, collecting the cooking water, and shaping and cooking the tortillas, depends on her skill and strength, the age and number of family members, the type of masa, and the quality of the metate. My estimate is that it takes about five hours a day to make enough masa for a family of five. This may seem incredible but it is in line with other estimates for contemporary Mexico and Guatemala collected by Michael Searcy, with Arnold Bauer’s estimate for Mexico, and experimental estimates for Europe collected in David Peacock’s in The Stone of Life (2013), 127. Since five hours is about as much as anyone can grind, the labor of one in five adults has to be devoted to making the staple bread.
The Daily Grind (Works in Progress)
Image: Magnus Ingvar Agustsson
