This Sunday, early in the morning, we follow Sara (10 years old) as she shows us the traditional way to make tortillas. Tortillas have been made this way since remote times in the communities and towns of this region and throughout our country. Tortillas are the base of our meals in México, as you probably know.

Sara gets up very early in the morning and comes down to town to a corn mill (molino) of which only two exist in Angangueo. She carries her bucket of a cooked, moist, corn we call nixtamal. To make it, the corn was boiled the previous morning with only water and a soup-spoonful of lime powder. Once at the mill, Sara's turn comes and the corn in her bucket is ground. She pays 6 pesos for it and starts her way home. The walk will take about a half-hour.

Observe the very special way in which Sara and the girl walking in front of her tie their chal to their shoulders and then down to their low back adjusting it and tying it into a big strong knot, so that the main weight of the bucket rests on the strong knot and their shoulders hanging part of it.

On the way, Sara shows us the way an old river lies dry between two of our nearest, low mountains.

Estela: "Sara, is there plenty of water up here where you and your family live?"

Sara: "No, there is little water."

Estela: "Why do you think our small rivers like this are drying?"

Sara: "Because they say there is no rain anymore and there are fewer trees all the time."

Some meters ahead:

Sara: "Look, these are the flowers where butterflies stop during these days when they start to leave. We see 'bunches' of them during these days".

Perhaps more that 30 minutes later, we reach Sara's home. At the kitchen, fire is ready for tortillas to be cooked.

First, the dough is softened with little drops of water and 're-ground' in the metate. Then, a testal is taken and laid in the Tortilla hand machine. The testal is pressed down hard in the machine to get flat and the dough tortilla must be unwrapped from the fine plastic covers (always inside the machine). Last, the tortilla is laid onto the hot comal (to which cover a dense liquid cover of lime was applied to the cover to avoid tortillas sticking to it) to get cooked on both sides. Within one minute, the first delicious, genuine, nixtamal tortilla is ready to be eaten.

I left Sara's family home and thanked them for their hospitality.

Sara was by then, nowhere then to bid her good-bye. To my very good luck that morning, some of Sara's younger brothers, mother and father were coming back home after being in the forest since still dark in the morning:

Father and Mother: _"We have been since early collecting some earth, vegetal coal (previously baked by ourselves) and wild tea to be sold later in town. This is the way we partly make a living from".

Estela: _"Can you during these early March days see any Monarch butterflies flying over here?

Father: "_Of course, they are coming later from the back-right side of those mountains at the back to drink some water from a little river flowing down there". If come next year with your Seniors (from Journey North), I myself will take you to a way from over here where hundreds of butterflies lay in the ocotes (we call the Pine trees that way too), and from where no restriction or guarding or visitors are".

We said good-bye to each other, and a little far in front I shot a photo from Sara's school. She told me she is in the 4th grade now, and all of her seven left brothers and sisters attend the same school.

Estela: _"Back to town, I took an impression of one of our streets. Less and less today you will see this picture of a man walking with his horses -he should have come to town with his horses loaded with rests of woods or coal-- in our streets when they were every-day images in my life when a little girl."

Belive it or not, and to my surprise, our story today closes with the visit --much later, after noon time--, of one of Sara's little brothers, José Manuel, coming into my family's store selling some of the wild tea he was cutting off early that same morning with his parents in the forest. I paid 10 pesos for it. The smell and flavor of wild tea is undescribable.

This afternoon, Sara will come to church with some of her brothers or sisters because they are getting instructed to get their "First Communion" in the Catholic Church, and on the way back home she will drop by our family store and I will give her some cookies and candies as a gift for her time with her family this morning.

IMPORTANT OBSERVATIONS:

The following words in Italics contained in our story are coming from our Pre-Hispanic Nahua/Náhuatl language. It is the most spoken Pre-hispanic language throughout México nowadays with around 1,500 000 speakers. It's followed by the Maya language --second most spoken pre-hispanic language in what was considered to be Meso-America--, Southern Mexico (850,000 speakers), besides Guatemala and Belice.

We use these words written in Italics in our history today as part of our every-day speaking and traditions and we have no equivalent or synonym for them in today's Spanish. They have been integrated to our Real Academy Spanish Dictionary:

• Metate (from the Nahua meta-tl)
• Testal (I could not find it in the dictionary. It might be a Mazahua or Otomí term --also prehispanic languages of less importance and official dialects spoken in this region of the Monarch butterfly.

• Comal (comalli)
• Ocote (ocote)

Some other Nahua/Náhuatl terms of common use spread around the world:

• Chocolate (xocola-tl)
• Jitomate (xitoma-tl)
• Chile (chilli)

Today, the Local Goverment of the Capital City in our country, México City, has decreed as mandatory the teaching of the Nahua/Náhuatl language in all Elementary, Secondary and Preparatory government schools in the city as a way to rescue it.

So as soon as I reached home, Laura Emilia, my daughter (whose only little hands appear in the photos) made a tortilla step by step with all genuine instruments and exact way to hold instruments for making a tortilla as any of our housewives would do. My mother makes tortillas very often at home too. I also know how to make them although mother still has to correct me on the right amount of water, lime powder and exact cooking time (extremely important) I should take care of, otherwise the dough will just not respond at the time of getting the testal flattened and cooked. E N D .

Angangueo, Michoacán, México, March 03, 2009.

This is Nixtamal
Corn that is ready to be ground into tortilla dough is called nixtamal.

Nixtamal is made by soaking and boiling corn

Women take nixtamal to the corn mill in buckets. The mill grinds the corn into tortilla dough.

Sara carries the dough on her back in the bucket
Notice the how Sara uses the knot in her shawl to hold the heavy bucket in place.

Sara Walks Home Carrying the Dough Going up the mountain from Angangueo
It's about a half hour walk home from town.

The Streambed Above Angangueo is Dry
Sara says water is scarce where she lives in the mountains .

Sara often sees monarchs beside the path at this time of year.

Sara's finally home!

In the Kitchen
The fire is ready for tortillas to be cooked. Sara cooks with her younger brothers and sister.

Sara's School

Sara's parents and two more brothers are coming home from the forest.

Sara's Brother Sells Wild Tea
Belive it or not, and to my surprise, one of Sara's little brothers, José Manuel, coming into my family's store selling some of the wild tea he was cutting off early that same morning with his parents in the forest. I paid 10 pesos for it. The smell and flavor of wild tea is undescribable.

These photos show how most people in town now buy tortillas. They are made in mechanized machines with a totally different flavor and much less nutritious contents. A kilo of tortilla is today 8.50 pesos.