What Kind of Meat?
by Zora O'Neill
On the inland roads of the Yucatan, hitchhikers are common, trying to get from the middle of
nowhere to the edge of nowhere. I pick up nice-looking women and children to break up the
monotony of the greenery and practice my Spanish.
One day, into my car climbed a little bundle of Maya cheer, clad in a traditional flowery dress
and toting three huge mesh bags. After the conversational preamble—her Spanish was
about as fluent as mine—she asked me, “So, what kind of meats do you eat in your village?”
It was such an odd question that I made her repeat it—and I’d already told her I was from New
York (“Dios mio!” she gasped), her saying “pueblito” was also confusing. Baffled, I began to
list all the meat words I could think of: pato, pavo, pollo… But she quickly interrupted—this
was a question she wanted to answer. In her village, they eat special animals that you only
find in the forest, such as…and she rattled off several of them.
To illustrate one, she reached in a bag and pulled out the back half of a forest critter’s
carcass, splayed out flat and all black from roasting. The little feet were still on, with delicate
toes and nails. This was an uhum, she said—it had (once upon a time) a long tail and pointy
nose. According to her, it was a great little animal, but they’d been hunted for so long, there
were hardly any left.
And then she encouraged me to sample some of these endangered hindquarters. A difficult
task while driving, but I got a few shreds, and it was quite tasty, though I think that had more
to do with the pit-cooking than its innate uhum-ness.
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