Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 2 (2006), p. 356

Indigenous systems of subsistence agriculture, especially the slash and burn system, have often been misunderstood and criticized by agricultural scientists. Chevalier and Sánchez Bain argue that to understand the agricultural system practised by the Nahua and Popoluca peasants of southern Vera Cruz in Mexico, one needs to know about the cultural context in which it is enmeshed, especially the world view and underlying principles that are based on the hot-cold principle or what has been called humoural medicine. Their analysis reveals the extensive knowledge of crops, especially maize, the agricultural cycle, and the environment that are part of this system.

The first chapter places this study against a background of an ongoing debate in anthropology and the history of medicine concerning humoural medicine in Latin America. One side of the debate, as represented by the anthropologist George Foster, argues that the Greek Hippocratic system diffused from Spain during the conquest. The system is based on a classification of all things (plants, medicines, bodily states) into qualities of hot and cold, which includes both physical temperature and innate or metaphorical qualities. Health is based on a balance of hot and cold and illness is caused by an imbalance. Treatment is usually based on a principle of opposition. Although the Greek system included qualities of wet and dry as well as hot and cold, Foster argues that these have largely dropped out of the Latin American versions. The other side, as represented by the Mexican anthropologist and Nahuatl scholar, Lopez Austin, argues that a pre-Hispanic system of hot-cold thinking existed and pervaded people’s world view, not only of their health but also their relationship with the land and its inhabitants, including plants, animals and spirits. Chevalier and Sánchez Bain deconstruct and critique the assumptions of Foster’s argument and support the existence of a pre-Hispanic indigenous system of hot-cold reasoning, as well as wet-dry categories, with which the Spanish system became syncretized, and which continues to persist in contemporary life.

In Chapter two, the authors review various studies that have been made of hot-cold systems in Mesoamerica. One criticism of these studies is that they view hot and cold categories as a system of classification, which implies that a hot or cold value is a static property of the item and in turn cannot account for inconsistencies in the classification. They propose a different dynamic model based on an indigenous perspective of three principles: equilibrium, periodicity or cyclic movement, and solar-driven growth. Equilibrium refers to balance and moderation of hot and cold things and avoidance of extremes. Cyclic movement involves the heating and cooling that form part of the daily activities and bodily rhythms (for example, blood and the body heat up during the day when one is working and cools off at night when one is resting or sleeping) and alternation between wetness and dryness. The third involves heliotropic or solar-driven movement implicated in daily cycles and the life cycle, moving from aquatic beginnings at birth, which is cold, through stages of reproductive heat and finally death, which is hot. These three principles govern not only the ills of the body, but also those of the land, including milpa (maize plots). Furthermore, they interact and influence each other.

Chapters three to six elaborate on these principles through a sophisticated ethnographic study of the Nahua and Popoluca. The authors document how the hot and cold qualities permeate the world view, the agricultural system, and mythology, as well as the health system, and how all these interact with each other. It is the pervasiveness of these qualities through so many aspects of life that support Austin’s argument for the pre-Hispanic existence of the hot-cold system. Chevalier and Sánchez Bain’s significant contribution is showing how the hot-cold principle underpins the agricultural system as well. ‘Ills of the body and land are governed by the same principles and also interact: growth and health factors among humans affect and are affected by the milpa condition’. (p.167). These chapters are perhaps the most interesting ones to agricultural scientists and historians. The agricultural cycle is accompanied by various ritual measures some of which involve food and sex prescriptions related to qualities of hot and cold. For example, a man must not sleep with his wife for seven nights before planting. This abstinence will increase the heat in one’s body, which in turn affects the seeds and the soil.

Chapters seven and eight are explications of the mythology of the birth and life of the corn god, who people believe ‘secures the sustenance and well-being of humans and to whom prayers are still recited’ (p.173). Cycles of corn planting and harvesting as well as the cutting, burning, and drying processes of slash and burn are synchronized by hot and cold characteristics of both human and divine bodies that are spelled out in the myths. The stories trace the deity’s birth as a child, his pilgrimage to the burial ground of his father and his quest for immortality. The authors analyze these myths using what they call the ‘interpretive method’, which is based on semantic and linguistic analysis of the terms used in the myths and of informants’ statements. Through the extensions of these terms as tropes and metaphors the myths are shown to symbolize the agricultural cycle. The myths replicate the basic three principles explored in previous chapters: those of thermal balance, cyclic periodicity and the ‘progressive movement of life from its aquatic beginnings toward later stages of reproductive health, old age, and death’ (p.173). The hot-cold balance is not only a naturalistic system as Foster has proposed but is also a spiritual one. Hot-cold reasoning is manifested in healing rituals, agricultural practices, and mythology. Furthermore, the conduct of the corn god exemplifies the moral values that humans must follow which involve hard work and sacrifice. The corn god will provide food for humans, who in turn must feed and reproduce the corn. The authors extend their analysis with comparisons of terms and myths to classical Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, to suggest that some of the themes explored through myth may be variations on linguistic usages dating back to pre-Hispanic times.

Chapter nine returns to a further critique of Foster and the debate on the origins of the hot-cold system as manifested in Mesoamerica. The authors propose that the syncretic process which occurred during the Spanish conquest continues today in encounters with biomedicine where the resilience and adaptability of the indigenous culture is manifested and hot-cold reasoning ‘continues to shape people’s ideas about health and illness’ (p.244). Will hot-cold reasoning continue to shape peoples’ ideas about agriculture? Although the authors do not do so, the argument could be extended to the confrontation with scientific and commercial agriculture. Will these syncretic processes permit both traditional agricultural practices and the hot-cold reasoning underlying them to survive, enabling Mexican peasants to deal not only with conflicts with biomedicine, but with the agricultural changes occurring today in Mexico?

This book is a rich ethnographic study which will be rewarding reading for graduate students and specialists in the fields of culture and agriculture, medical anthropology, and Latin Americanists.