Mexico: Celebrating Indigenous Culture, Zapotec Autonomy and Uncontaminated Corn
source: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2364-mexico-celebrating-onfogenous-cultur...
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This year´s theme was focused on the dangers of contamination from Genetically Modified (GM) Corn, with a showcase of indigenous corn based culture and food sovereignty.
“We plant corn for the well-being of the communities,” said community leader, Rodrigo Santiago Hernandez during the opening plenary, emphasizing the importance of the culture of corn for the Zapotecs.“If we don’t cultivate corn, we have no life. It is central to our existence. We are the people of corn.”
Or as the old saying goes – no hay pais, sin maiz (there is no country without maize).
Community President, Baltazar Felix, elaborated, “To be a campesino or campesina allows us to respect and understand the profound worth of our madre tierra (mother earth). Corn is the basis for our expression of autonomy and central to our usos y costumbres (practices and customs), which represent our Zapotec culture and indigenous way of life. “
Contaminated maize was first detected in Oaxaca in 2001, resulting in a serious threat to the biodiversity of the native species, because, as explained by Ana de Ita from CECCAM (Center of Studies for Change in the Mexican Countryside), “ genetically-modified crops have the potential to cross-breed with native crops, altering the evolution of the entire population”.
Pandering to the lobbyists from the bio-tech and agricultural industry interests like Cargill Corporation and Monsanto, the Neo-liberal PAN government of President Calderon reversed the 1998 ban on genetically-engineered seeds this March. Twenty-five pilot projects sowing transgenic seeds were begun in Northern Mexico. Genetically modified pollen has the capacity to travel great distances via wind or water sources, thereby threatening to contaminate the whole Mexican corn race.
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- Community, Green, Earth and Science, Sustainable Agriculture, 2 more
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- Culture, Environment, Mexico, Monsanto, 9 more
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JanforGore
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Excerpt:
"The highlight of Day Three was a tour of a cornfield and an exhibition of traditional small scale agricultural methods.
“The government would prefer that we all emigrated or worked in maquiladoras,” said Don Carlos, proudly showing the visitors his family corn patch, straddling the side of a steep mountain side, every inch of which he had patiently and painfully worked with machete and hoe. “They don’t want us to remain as campesinos. They say we are unproductive and useless. But we are going to stay here, in our cornfields, in our communities because this is what we want; this is what the people want.”
Back at the plenum, Zapotec leader Aldo Gonzalez of UNOSJO sums up the themes of the feria and articulates the conclusions of the event.
“The contamination of corn by means of transgenic seeds is a crime, because in this way, not only the food chain, but also our culture is contaminated. Corn is the base of resistance; it is water, land, culture. We have an intimate relationship with the land. That’s why we protect and conserve the diverse varieties of criolla maize which we have improved over the length of history and in this manner, we are defending our ancestral knowledge.”
____"We are defending our ancestral knowledge." This is also the crux of why we must stand up for food sovereignty and against corporate ownership of seeds.
- 2 years ago
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JanforGore
