Mukbil pollo Period COrigin theory CVerified

Mukbil pollo is a large ceremonial tamal offered on the Day of the Dead, known in Yucatan as Hanal Pixán, in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Nixtamalized corn masa is filled with chicken and achiote, wrapped in leaves, and steamed in an underground oven called a pib. It is a food made once a year, prepared by whole households and communities together for the festival.

Corn, the heart of the dish, is a crop long rooted in this land. Steaming a great tamal in an earth oven, making masa through nixtamalization, coloring with achiote, and preparing ceremonial food with turkey are all forms that reach back to the pre-Hispanic Maya. At El Mirador, turkeys are known to have been kept as early as the Late Preclassic, between roughly 300 BCE and 100 CE. To these older forms were joined the chicken and pork lard that came after the conquest, and the mukbil pollo of today took shape. The Spanish word pollo, "chicken," preserved in its name, is the mark of that history.

The first record to name the dish in that present form comes nearly three centuries after the conquest. In Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, published in 1843, the traveler John L. Stephens wrote of the Fiesta de Todos los Santos as it was kept in Mérida and of a dish he called "Mukbipoyo," a great tamal baked in an earth oven with pork and chicken inside. Somewhere between the sixteenth century, when Old World chicken reached Yucatan, and Stephens's account of 1843, the mukbil pollo of today took shape. The year 1843 is when the dish stepped into writing, not when it was born.

Two readings stand side by side over how mukbil pollo came to be, but both catch the same picture of history from different angles.

One holds that colonial-era elements fused onto a pre-Hispanic Maya ceremonial tamal baked in the pib. The great ceremonial tamal in the earth oven, the nixtamalized masa, the turkey, and the achiote are pre-Hispanic Maya forms; onto them were grafted the chicken, pork, and lard that arrived after the conquest of Yucatan, between 1527 and 1546. The very name, joining the Maya mukbil, "to bury," with the Spanish pollo, "chicken," mirrors that fusion. As the offering food of the Day of the Dead, its lineage continues to this day. The years in which turkeys were kept come from the work of Thornton and colleagues, who placed the remains found at El Mirador in the Late Preclassic.

The other reading attends to the present dish itself, the one that carries "chicken" in its name, and sees it as a dish that came into being in the colonial period. It treats the pre-Hispanic Maya ceremonial tamal of the pib as something separate, and holds that the present form arose by taking in the chicken, pork, and lard the Spanish brought.

The two readings are only telling the same story of a Maya original and a colonial fusion, one stressing the form from before the Spanish arrived and the other the name of the present form. The most concrete trace of that story turns up nearly three centuries after the conquest. In Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, published in 1843, the traveler John L. Stephens described a Fiesta de Todos los Santos he attended in Mérida, and with it a dish he called "Mukbipoyo," a great tamal baked in an earth oven with pork and chicken inside. This is, so far, the earliest record to call the dish by name. Somewhere between the sixteenth century, when Old World chicken crossed to the peninsula, and the festival Stephens described in his book of 1843, chicken and pork settled onto the Maya form and made it what it is now. The year 1843 marks the dish's entrance into writing, not its birth.