On Corn and Culture

Indeed, it has become impossible to talk about corn in Oaxaca independent of a cultural context. In March 2004, Oaxaca City organizers together with indigenous farmers conducted a militant Forum in Defense of Our Corn, in which they demanded the closing of the Mexican border to U.S. corn shipments, increased testing of crops, and the continued maintenance of community seed banks. In this way, the fight against transgenic corn has become a global issue of the highest order while relying on traditional local customs to sustain resistance. 

Fittingly, Chapela’s arrival in Oaxaca City on February 9 as host of an earlier conference entitled Genetic Survival and Independence: Oaxaca in the Transgenic World resembled as much a cultural heritage celebration as an academic affair. In his keynote address to an audience of several hundred students, concerned city dwellers, and campesinos, Chapela stressed the gravity of the potential threat of genetically modified crops to consumer health and indigenous livelihoods while drawing eerie parallels between multinationals and Spanish conquistadors. Although his displays at times resembled a sordidly entertaining science fair DNA experiment, he made his point unequivocally: “Transgenics will threaten human survival. I don’t think I’m exaggerating.” 

Despite the implications of Chapela’s message, perhaps the most powerful moment of the conference occurred when a representative from an indigenous organization approached the stage with several bags of corn and methodically laid each husk on a table in a symbolic display of Oaxaca’s agricultural richness. Another farmer summarized the situation effectively: “If we’ve been growing corn for thousands of years, I think we own it.” 

Cultural fanfare aside, the main thrust of the conference was clearly toward a legislative statement on the federal level banning imports of transgenic food products to Mexico. Chapela cited anti-GMO initiatives in Mendocino County, California and the state of Vermont as potential examples for the Mexican Congress. 

The conference couldn’t have come at a more ironic legislative moment. On February 15, over the objection of approximately 100 scientists, academics, and organizations, the Mexican Congress passed a new biosecurity law. Despite its hopeful name, the law calls for an unprecedented deregulation of genetically modified food imports to Mexico and hints at the possibility that multinationals like Monsanto will eventually be permitted to sell seeds directly to Mexican farmers, as they already do in the U.S., Canada, Argentina, and much of the developing world. 

On March 7, amid indignant fallout from the biosecurity law, I attended a small, high profile conference on Oaxacan agriculture at the State Institute of Ecology in Oaxaca City. While the local politicians in attendance were opposed to the provisions of the federal law, they had come primarily to brainstorm potential local measures to resist transgenics, among them a state-level biosecurity law that better protects Oaxacan farmers, an educational campaign to train farmers how to patent their crops, and a government-sponsored seed bank initiative. 

Still, according to Issa Hinó- gosa, a grassroots organizer for the Oaxaca City-based Society for the Defense of Our Corn, the apparent greenness of an Oaxacan politician doesn’t necessarily reveal his or her true colors: “Now that the issue has become fashionable, some politicians have gotten involved for the publicity. When another issue comes along, they’ll forget about corn. Things are uncertain, but what’s clear is that government policy always ignores campesinos.” Indeed, since the early 1980s, rural Oaxacan peasants have become increasingly disillusioned with both federal- and state-level government policy. This recent case appears to be no exception. 

But do Oaxacan farmers have the power to beat Monsanto on the cultural strength of their tortilla, or are they destined to become the next collective Percy Schmeisser, a Canadian farmer sued by Monsanto after genetically modified canola seeds had floated onto his land? I asked Gustavo Esteva, one of Oaxaca’s most respected intellectuals and a fierce development critic, if there was any hope in fighting for the future of Mexican corn without the government’s help. 

He pointed out that many successful cases of grassroots resistance have transpired in recent Mexican memory. In 2002 residents of San Salvador Atenco blocked government plans to construct an airport in their municipality for nearby Mexico City. Later that year in Oaxaca City, organizers defeated a proposition to open a McDonald’s in their central plaza. “Such hope in ourselves is not an illusion,” he asserted. “David can win over Goliath if he fights him in his own territory.”