‘The Quantity that Ënaa Wants’: Establishing Maize Quantities in Ritual and Agricultural Practices in the Mixe Highlands (Oaxaca)

This article examines maize counting and quantity determination among the highland Mixe (Ëyuujk) people of Oaxaca, Mexico. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it analyses the restrictions on the measurement of seeds, relating them to cosmological proscriptions that emerge in ritual practices. Through detailed accounts of maize consultation, ritual preparation, and sacrificial deposit, I distinguish between two operations: delimiting (establishing a totality) and counting (enumerating elements within a given totality). I demonstrate that the restrictions are only imposed on delimitations, not counting. These rules stem from reciprocal and hierarchical relations between humans and deities in the Mixe cosmos, activated through the circulation of maize. Moving beyond symbolic interpretations of ritual numbers in Mesoamerica, the article sheds light on how, for Mixe maize to flourish, cultivators must surrender the power to intentionally delimit quantities to the deities.