SACRED CORN and the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNAL in OAXACA

As the struggle heightened across the U.S. to require labeling of genetically modified foods, with victories in Connecticut and Main, French researchers found cancerous tumors in rats fed GM corn, while Japan and Russia shut the door on U.S. rice and wheat imports after discovering GM contamination. Here the native peoples of Mexico rallied in Oaxaca to protest GM contamination of their native corns. With your help, we of the Collective for the Defense of Indigenous Territories and 10 other organizations sponsored the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal here in Oaxaca. The People’s Tribunal is a world-wide organization begun by Bertrand Russell, which hears the protests of peoples who are the victims of governmental and corporate abuse of power.

Native corn seeds, saved from year to year.

Almost 600 campesinos from across Mexico, representing most of the indigenous peoples of the country, gathered with international figures such as Drs. Ignacio Chapela and Vandana Shiva to demand redress for contamination of their native corn varieties before a panel of international and local “judges”. The two day event in late April began with colorful processions led by a village brass band, indigenous women in traditional dress, and a Mayan priestess who led a special rite of blessing of the four directions and of an altar prepared on the ground of the myriad colors of native corn arranged in a
special pattern in the center of the gathering. Sacredness and fiesta illustrated how deep the culture of corn, of community, and of celebration is embedded in the indigenous pueblos, even in time of struggle and protest.

Declaring that “it is the sacred corn that takes care of our communities and is the one who has permitted us to live and resist during thousands of years”, speaker after speaker, all campesino women and men, denounced the efforts of governments to reduce corn to a thing, into merchandise, an object which is merely bought and sold to the highest bidder. They recounted how patented genes of GM corn have caused deformations in their native corn varieties and how these corns threatened not only to destroy the biodiversity represented by native corn, but to displace native corn from the market.

Pedro and Catalina at the CEDICAM experimental
 gardens, Nochixtlan, Oaxaca 

Scientists such as Chapela and Elena Alvarez-Buylla recounted how their research into the effects of genetically modified crops led to funding cuts, academic censorship, and threats to their academic careers. Meanwhile Indian physicist Vandana Shiva recounted how Monsanto in coordination with the origin of cotton, occasioning, in the process, the suicides of 100,00 small farmers of India. Though this court has no legal standing, the moral authority of its decisions has been part of what has delayed the Mexican government’s approval for planting of millions of acres of genetically modified corn in the northern states of Sinaloa and Tamaulipas, the distribution points for most commercial Mexican corn. 

Your financial assistance fed most of these 600 people during the two days of the tribunal.

Augustin, planting heritage corn in Tilantongo, Oaxaca.

PHOTOS: © Judith Cooper Haden

TEXT: © Phil and Kathy Dahl-Bredine

If you wish to contribute to this work, you can send a much-appreciated tax-deductible donation to:Instituto Paz en las Americas, 2645 Mountain View Rd. Silver City, NM 88061. Please write onthe memo of the check: “for Dahl-Bredine projects”.