Toasted Corn-Flour Cookies

I was walking through the crowded marketplace at Juchitán, the capital of the Isthmus, when I nearly stumbled over Maria Ruiz sitting daintily on the ground with two small children in the shade of an arch, next to a basket lined with a snowy embroidered cloth. I was already attuned enough to the region to think that this pretty young woman did not look quite like the flamboyant juchitecas around her, and sure enough I learned that she was from the town of Tehuantepec some t