Community workdays in Imi start with a handful of men sitting on the ground, smoking and chewing coca. This peaceful time is how Guaraní traditionally acknowledged the ‘iya’ (spirit owners of the forest and the corn) and got permission to work the land. Of course, no one is really thinking about iya right now. Don Ernesto and Don Abel talk about how and when to plant sweet potatoes. The rest of us enjoy the quiet, the blue sky, and the way last night’s frost is slowly receding as dawn peaks through the mountains. Then we get to work.

Everyone sets out across the field, hauling down the dry stalks two rows at a time and snapping off the corn. It takes strength and a clever twist: done right the ears simply pop out of their outer sheathes. Don Benito tries to teach me but I’m a slow learner and soon lag behind. My hands ache, too, though this “soft” corn doesn’t shred them like the “hard” corn will, tomorrow. Finally reaching the far trees, we turn around and harvest another two rows back, leaving neat plaits and scattered small heaps of corn behind us.

By nine, we’ve finished a hectare and turn to husking and shelling the corn under a huge, leafless tree in the middle of the field. By ten, many women have joined us. The sun is fierce and flies are biting my ankles. First, we stab the ear open with a thumb or a sharp stick, and then fling the husk over our shoulders. Next, we pinch or wrench the hard grain off the cob and pile it on a huge blue tarp. I watch Doña Flora’s hands wistfully; I’m using a screwdriver, but she still gets through twice as much corn as I do.

Just past noon, Doña Marta leads in a train of women, each balancing a plastic bucket of mbaipi (thick, tasteless corn and bean soup) on their heads. By two, school is out and the kids join us. Most of the community (eighty or ninety people) is now here: gathering, husking, bagging, playing, swapping stories, and laughing. Girls parade tiny babies about on their hips. Young Alvaro has stuffed two of his little brothers, and a fair amount of corn, into a grain sack. We work hard, but the mood is festive and our mountain of gold gets bigger and bigger.

Gold indeed. This land has been fallow for a decade, and it cost us weeks of machete and axe work last year to wrest it back from the forest. The pay-off is gorgeous grain and a locally impressive yield of four tons per hectare. Prices are not as healthy, having fallen 30% since last year. All the same, this and the eleven remaining hectares we’ll harvest in the coming weeks represent the community’s entire yearly budget. It will cover school, store, and health costs, loans and interest, marriage and birth certificates, and new sandals for everyone.

The heaviest work comes as the sun sinks and the cold returns. We hoist the hundred pound bags of corn on our shoulders and carry them five kilometers back to the village, along a steep and narrow path through the mountains. Women and children carry less, but I notice Silvio, who is eight, has at least 40 pounds on his back. It’s a trip we’ll all make many times. I’m thinking it’s also one chore where I can hold my own, until Faustino and Anastasio shout their greetings as they pass by. They’re racing each other, almost running.

The Guaraní tradition of planting fields in common was all but lost in the century of their captivity. Its resumption in new independent communities like Imi has been a bumpy process. Large families put more effort into their own land, and have less time for the community. Others resent the imposition, or don’t feel the benefits justify the extra labor. For me, though, frost and coca, aching hands and backs, lukewarm mbaipi, a hundred people working and laughing under a tree, Alvaro’s brothers in a sack, and mountains of red and yellow corn on a blue tarp, are worth any trouble.