In this post I will be commenting a bit on the history of the machine to grind corn in Venezuela and the times in the normal time, the use of it to be able to eat the arepas, the anecdotes that my parents told me about the times and contexts in which it is used. The machine and today many years returned to the circumstance of having to grind corn to be able to eat arepas, besides my example it has been a few months since I had to grind corn for arepas.
In Venezuela according to testimonies that he heard, the grinding machine was used since the Gomecista era, between the 1930s and the 1960s. My father told me that during those decades he only ate arepa de maiz pilado, that is to say with which the arepa It is yellow and feels more the taste of corn, for those 3 decades, it is common for a child from 8 or 9 years and up to refer to the machine on the machine to help their families eat arepas since the kitchen , after it is ground and then it is loved. What was done was on December 10, 1960 according to https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harina_P.A.N the market product Harina P.A.N. which is a brand created by the Venezuelan corporation Empresas Polares, to identify the early corn flour with which arepas, hallacas, cachapas, hallaquitas, buns and other typical Venezuelan dishes are prepared.
That's why, since 1960, when that product existed in the markets, little by little and progressively people no longer needed to depend on the machine to grind corn to eat arepas, and only by buying and having access to that product is that from the 60's onwards is that only the brand was bought, the precooked corn was made in the cup, with water, mixing it with salt and butter, it was loved and cooked, without as much effort as when it depended on the grinding machine, although it should be noted that at the beginning when the PAN Flour is founded not all families got the product because at first only wealthy families could pay the price, it was little by little that all or the vast majority of families in the country, already bought the product in the market, at least my dad tells me that he had to grind corn in his childhood until 1965 because it was like from there that his family was already buying the product and my mom, despite being born a year before the PAN Flour was founded, she says that she saw my maternal grandmother grinding corn when she was about 5 years old, but of course like her if she was born almost in the 60s, she never had to grind maize unlike my dad who was born in the early 50's he had to grind corn in his childhood.
I want to tell you that today due to the economic crisis that exists in Venezuela, as there has been a shortage of products in the markets, unfortunately we can not always buy PAN flour, which is why some families are again in need of using the machine to grind corn to eat arepas, as they were done from the 1930s to the 1960s and to the generations of today in our youth we live the experiences that our parents and grandparents lived when they had to grind the corn with the machine, requiring of physical effort. I say goodbye to this post referring to the comments of my father who believes that he never imagined that a government like Chavism would back us down in quality of life to the point of making us use the grinding machine again, when that stage had already evolved. Today at age 24 I have to live what my father did in his childhood to eat arepas, although in reality I started to grind as at 22 or 23 years since for some time ago we were in the need to use the machine, only that every once in a while we could give ourselves the happiness of returning to eat precooked corn meal since sometimes the market product was obtained, it is when the product in the market that uses the machine is scarce, since we had a good time consuming PAN arepas PAN
I want to tell you all that because it seems quite ironic and regrettable that having spent generations of years ago that machine was used to grind and having passed this stage, again today's young people live what our parents and grandparents did to eat arepas, that is, as if we had gone back to those decades due to the economic situation that my country Venezuela is experiencing today and this should not continue, because I think that each generation should or should be able to live better than the previous ones and not return to what they had to be done in the past to have quality of life that today could be better and more evolved