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”.

MONSANTO IN LA MIXTECA ALTA, MEXICO

© Phil Dahl-Bredine

A few months ago my friend Pedro called me over to his computer to see a video. To my surprise I saw Mixtec campesino farmers thanking a regional foundation and the “Fundacion Monsanto” for gifts of vegetable seeds, dip irrigation systems and chickens. As the video extolled the work of these foundations in assisting poor indigenous farmers, it displayed signs from the Monsanto Foundation in the background and at the end of the video simply the well known “Monsanto” logo.

I have spent the last 11 years working with Pedro and an organization of Mixtec campesinos on sustainable agriculture projects, the promotion and protection of the vast native seed heritage of this center of origin of corn, and the revival and promotion of traditional Mixtec farming techniques such as the Milpa. I found the video surprising given the rather isolated character of the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico where we work. But in the busyness of more pressing work I passed over the disturbing character of the video until a neighbor in our small village announced one day that she had found a foundation willing to help villagers with vegetable growing and small animal production. Indeed, it was the foundation in the video.

“What would have attracted the largest seed and agricultural chemical company of the world to the isolated mountains of the Mixteca Alta and to our little village? And what did they have in mind by being here?”, I wondered. I remembered the recent scandal caused by the revelation that the Walmart Corporation, now with one of every five of its international stores in Mexico, had bribed officials throughout the country to get permits and environmental impact studies. Even more striking for me were its techniques of bribing local community leaders to undercut community opposition to new stores in environmentally, historically or commercially sensitive sites.

A few months ago the Mexican government approved planting of genetically modified corn varieties on a pre-marketing basis on thousands of acres in the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. Part of the process that led up to these approvals after years of moratoria on GE corn in this center of origin of the world´s most popular grain involved a scientific mapping of the areas in the country that still possessed native corn varieties. In these areas planting of GE corn would be “restricted”.  Oddly enough, the mapping claimed that two small areas of this state of Oaxaca no longer used native corn. Friends from these communities expressed great surprise that the studies inaccurately claimed they no longer planted native varieties.

Not known for its philanthropic concerns, the Monsanto Corporation has reaped large profits from collecting on crops contaminated by its modified genes and even by the “illegal” introduction of its modified seeds across the Americas. The illegal or “unintended” spread of its genes has become both a marketing and a patent revenue strategy in places like Brazil and Paraguay. Could the open doors of the Oaxacan communities Mexican government studies claim no longer use native corn varieties be part of a contamination strategy? Recent discoveries of ancient corn remains indicate that the state of Oaxaca is the center of origin of corn. Hundreds of native corn varieties resistant to drought, flooding, wind, insect pests and poor soils still flourish in the communities of the Mixteca Alta. Is Monsanto looking for such rich biodiversity to modify and patent , a practice for which the government of India is presently suing the company?

And is the company buying friends, a la Walmart, in the campesino communities of the Mixteca Alta so that when the contamination and/or biopiracy of native varieties becomes a scandal it can divide and undermine the opposition?

Here in the village we asked ourselves what we could do in the face of much needed free handouts given by a corporation whose expressed aim is nothing less than to control the agricultural systems of the world for its corporate profit. We speeded up our own non-profit efforts to create small, integrated, diverse, sustainable, family farms to head off the Monsanto attraction in our small village. But we can only do that on a very limited scale. And what is at stake is vast.

According to U.N. special rapportuer, Oliver De Schutter, there are still 1.6 billion people on the planet who live by being subsistence farmers producing, above all, the majority of their own food needs. Here in Oaxaca most of our subsistence farmers own most of their input needs to keep farming. They use animal traction, make their own plows, access natural fertilizers from animal manure, collectively own a richly biodiverse native seed heritage, and possess an agricultural tradition and collective know-how that serves them well. Enterprising international and national businesses such as Monsanto naturally long to replace these independent tools and techniques owned by indigenous farming communities with commodities that they can supply at a profit. Where possible they would also like to create new “necessities” for this subsistent farmer sector; new machines, new pest control products…new patented genetically modified seeds that can only be planted once before having to be purchased once again. In short, they would like to turn all of these collective needs into commodities which farmers would need to buy to continue planting.

But here in the Mixteca Alta and around the world 1.6 billion subsistence farmers succeed because they practice a low-input farming which needs very little cash input to yield food for the family. “Commodify” this subsistence sector and you will unleash, among other drastic results, a wave of migration as we have never before witnessed.

Doing this with genetically modified seeds here in the center of origin of corn will, in addition, threaten the future existence of corn for us all.

That´s why a few weeks ago 300 campesino men and women from across Oaxaca met in the beautiful  ethno-botanical gardens of Oaxaca city to strategize about promoting and defending the incredibly rich biodiversity of native corn varieties in this state where more than 36 of the original 56-60 land races of native corn are still planted along with hundreds of varieties of each race, each adapted to the challenges of the growing conditions of its specific region. With this incredible biodiversity and these rich genetic resistances we hold the future of corn on the planet in our hands.

In addition to developing plans to promote the planting and improvement of native seeds and to strengthen the custom of planting in milpa in Oaxacan communities, these 300 farmers put together a defense plan with coordinating committees in the various regions of the state. Educational “brigades” will bring information to indigenous communities and coordinate the use of traditional governance structures and appropriate formats to assist agrarian communities and cooperative landholding ejidos to declare themselves GMO free territories and pueblos independently of the federal processes that favor corporations such as Monsanto.

Meanwhile, what do we say to our neighboring communities about the Fundacion Monsanto? Perhaps, pragmatically, “Accept the gift, but don’t for a minute trust the giver?”

Fiesta Month in Oaxaca!

December is a month of fiesta in Oaxaca.  Traveling by bus recently I saw several groups of young people on bicycles traveling with a flower-bedecked truck, on bike pilgrimages to the various shrines, Guadalupe or Juquila.  Yesterday we took part in a pilgrimage from our village to the town center of Tilantongo for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Some walked down into the deep valley and up the other mountain side cross-country, while we drove our old pick-up truck for those who weren’t able to do the walk.  Then we all met outside Tilantongo and made the rest of the way all together on foot to the church, taking turns carrying the banners of our village, San Isidro, and the Virgin of Guadalupe.  There we were met by other groups arriving in pilgrimage from other, even more distant, villages across the mountains.

This Sunday will mark the beginning of the Posadas, the nine days before Christmas, with a gathering each night to reenact the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.  Families will assemble and walk with candles, singing the traditional songs as they journey each night to a different house up and down the mountainside.  Outside each house, according to custom, a group sings the verses requesting lodging for the night, then to be answered by a group inside whose song turns them away, until finally they agree to let them in, at which time all gather inside the house for prayers and then refreshments and a social time.  We will host the posada for one of the nights; other families on other nights, and on Christmas Eve, the final posada will end at the dirt-floor chapel, which will be decorated for the fiesta, with colorful streamers, balloons, plenty of fireworks, food and drink. 

These customs are an expression of faith and the joy of celebration in community, with all members young and old.  Also participating will be those extended family members who have migrated out to Mexico City or other urban centers and always love to return to their villages of origin and to the community life which is still important to them. Presents are generally not a part of the Christmas celebrations, but since most families in the village live without television, they don’t seem to feel they are missing anything.

There is much in the indigenous rural life and the values of a non-money based economy that we admire here and believe can provide some guideposts for our U.S. culture, now seemingly based on extreme consumerism. Yet at the same time there are many basic necessities here that we have been able to help with, through the generosity of many of you who have contributed to these efforts. 

We are happy to be able to report the success – finally – of the great water project which has taken nearly two years to complete.  All the labor has been done by local residents, and it has been enormous, but we now have water piped to every house in the village.  For the first time in the history of San Isidro, people will not have to make the trek with their donkeys to the spring – or some simply having to carry the heavy containers on their backs - to fill their water jugs.  Our oldest resident, 95 year-old Maria, who lives with her 94 year-old husband, Florentino, at the top of the mountain, joked recently, “Well, when are you going to get that water?  You know I don’t have much time left!”  So Maria was the first to get her water tap.

One of the needs in these communities is for some small, cooperative projects to create a modest income, needed for some of the things that people can’t grow or produce themselves.  One such project is the new nursery, started earlier this year, which will produce organic fruit trees and ornamentals.  To produce some start-up income, the participants decided to do a poinsettia project, with the first plants ready to sell for Christmas.  Poinsettias, which originated in Mexico, are always an important part of the Christmas celebrations here.  Everyone is excited that the first plants are now ready and will be on sale in the Tilantongo market this weekend! 

Another interesting project has been the carpentry training.  Some time ago, Phil started teaching one of the older boys in the neighborhood some basic carpentry skills, with his table saw and some basic tools.  That effort has now resulted in 3 older teenage boys who can make doors, tables, beds, cupboards, and book shelves, as well as complete bee boxes for starting honey projects, and the composting toilets that we’ve introduced here.  These three boys: Angel, Daniel, and Pedro are now launching into their own business, taking orders and delivering their finished projects on foot here in the village and the surrounding area.  Phil is helping them to get their own power saw and other equipment soon, so that they will be completely independent with this.  We are also making the contact with a couple of master woodworker friends in Oaxaca City, who will give some training at higher levels as well.

Our Democratic Commission of Communal Goods

AUGUST 2012.....

In the 18th century Jean Jacques Rousseau decried the chicanery of those who would stake out the

“commons” of Europe protected for use of all by the Charter of the Forest, and claim, “This is mine!”

He called on the people of his time not to be duped by the “imposters” of privatization.

Yet a few decades ago, by accepting the self-serving concept of the “tragedy of the commons”, invented

to support the radical privatization agenda of the Reagan/Clinton/Bush free market politics, it seems we

have let ourselves be duped once again. The fictitious “tragedy of the commons” (if it doesn’t belong to somebody, it will get trashed) does not exist. What does exist is the tragedy of an unmanaged and unregulated “commons” (our air, water, oceans and biodiversity) innan era that prizes unlimited individual and corporate greed.

Here in Santiago Tilantongo, Oaxaca, we have the privilege of taking part in one of the relatively few managed commons that the followers of Rousseau’s “imposters” have not yet been able to enclose. And it is instructive to see how well it works.

As in most indigenous communities of Oaxaca, here there are two parallel governments, the municipal and the Commission of “Bienes Comunales”, or communal goods. As the name indicates, it is the responsibility of the Commission of Communal Goods to regulate the use of the forests, grazing lands, and, when appropriate, agricultural lands that families have abandoned, in the name of the community. All of this is the commons of Tilantongo. The Director and Vigilance Committee of bienes comunales are democratically elected in town meetings of the entire pueblo of Tilantongo, including its 17 different communities. For any major decisions the entire pueblo needs to be convoked to approve or disapprove. Meanwhile, it is the task of the director and bienes comunales committee to regulate and manage the common resources of the village, approving permits for harvesting trees for building and firewood, and medicinal plants, for use of gravel and sand, water, and minerals, as well as for fining abuses. Although the serious deforestation that marks the post-conquest history of Tilantongo is testimony to lapses and abuses of the trust placed in the commission of common goods, the system has and continues to successfully govern the commons of Tilantongo and hundreds of other indigenous communities of the state of Oaxaca.

Nevertheless, Rousseau’s “imposters” have not given up. Mexican government free market advocates

promote programs to privatize common lands and revoke constitutional provisions that protected them

from sale or use as collateral. Foreign corporations are anxious to patent indigenous biodiversity and

reduce the rich commons of indigenous native seeds to dependency on imported genetically modified

seeds.

And now, in the name of conservation of the planet’s resources, contaminated and made scarce by the excesses of the Global North, international environmental groups and commercial corporations wish to take control of indigenous resources – the indigenous commons – by putting a monetary value on the forests, biodiversity, water, and even the wildlife of theindigenous South. Through contracts for “environmental services”, and investments in commodified biodiversity, water, and biological resources, they intend to effectively transfer control of the commons of the South to private corporations and speculators, using tools such as bio-reserves and carbon sequestration projects that exclude indigenous peoples from access to their own lands. In essence they propose to solve the problems that attachment to money (greed) has created, with more money. Are we naïve enough to be duped once again by the new form of enclosure of the commons proposed by the radical privatization politics of Rousseau’s 21st century “imposters”? Or are we ready to learn something about the management of the commons of the planet from the indigenous communities of Oaxaca?

Blessings,

©Kathy and Phil Dahl Bredine, Tilantongo, Oaxaca August 2012

(P.S. We just finished learning even more from our local contributing industrious Mixtecan chefs this August, how to make a Dried Shrimp Mole, and Amaranth Seed Cookies.......all while chatting, weaving and cooking in our instant kitchen! ) 

©Judith Cooper Haden Photography

CHILEATOLE

FRESH CORN AND CHILE SOUP

This récipe was one of several that Catalina Lopez Maldonaldo taught us while we were in her kitchen in Noxchitlan. With her parrot Hector, overlooking on her shoulder, she made several dishes based on young sweet corn called elote tierna.  She showed us if you put your thumb nail into the kernels, milk squirts out, to ensure freshness.  I found if I used the chiles guajillos instead of their hotter counterpart, the chile pulla that is so popular in the Mixteca, I needed to add some chile de arbol to give it the right heat. . She spoke of learning dishes from her mother in the traditional village of San Miguel Huatla, where she grew up.

Yields 3 quarts

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons sea salt

12 elotes, or fresh young corn, kernels removed

40 squash blossoms, stems and pistils, stamens removed

2 cups fresh epazote leaves

8 chile guajillos (90 grams) and 3 chile arbol OR 10 chile pulla, stemmed

3 garlic cloves, roasted

1/2 medium white onion, roasted

7 ounces prepared masa

METHOD

In a soup or stock pot, heat 2 quarts water (reserving one cup of the water for later) to boil over high heat. When it has come to a boil add the salt and the corn kernels. As the corn is cooking add the squash flowers, lower heat to medium and stir lightly, trying not to break up all the flowers.

On a comal, griddle or a dry frying pan over medium to high heat, roast the chiles until the color changes and the scent is released on both sides. Remove from the comal and place in a small bowl. Add hot water to cover.  Roast the garlic and onions until translucent making sure they do not burn.

Place the chiles, garlic and onion in a blender jar and add water to cover. Blend well for several minutes until smooth, and then pass this puree thru a sieve or a food mill. Add this mixture to the cooking corn and heat through for 10 minutes.

In the same blender, add the masa, broken up in pieces the size of golf balls and cover with the reserved 1 cup of water.  Blend until very smooth, and add to the bubbling soup, stirring constantly.

Add the epazote leaves and heat through, adjust the salt, if needed, and serve.

© Susana Trilling Oaxaca, Mexico 
  SeasonsOfMyHeart.com     sustainablemilpa.blogspot.com

Photography © Judith Cooper Haden

Al Jazeera/English Reports on CEDICAM in the Mixteca!!!!

Mexican farmers sow seeds of productivity - Americas - Al Jazeera English

Click on this link.....it's a great story. Amazing that word has traveled so far.

Learning From Our Neighbors in The Mixteca

Life here in Yucuyoco is often an experience of being out of control. The neighbors’ bulls got into our corn and destroyed a good bit of the work of the spring, the electricity has been off and on… off principally when we needed power tools to make a door or internet to finish an important communication. Getting an electrical connection from the Electrical Commission has delayed the completion of the water system for the village.

Yet even though the consequences of lack of control in our societies of the North may not be as drastic as the hunger it can cause here, we tend to be a civilization obsessed with having power and control. Nationally and individually we struggle to defend ourselves from threats real and imagined with more arms, more insurance, greater production and consumption of goods and an ever faster race to secure more comfort and security. Paradoxically, our fixation on control seems to have made us more vulnerable in many ways.  

Laundry Day

              

Much in the way our efforts for control in the “war against terror” have made us less secure, our efforts to defend ourselves against the uncertainties of the world through a growing cycle of production and consumption and by ever greater energy use, have also made us more vulnerable. Prolonged power outages, which are a bother in San Isidro, cause major disasters in the highly artificial, energy-dependent urban centers of the North. Our growing consumption patterns threaten the very biological systems of the planet which provide us with clean air, fresh water, rich soils, diverse marine life, etc. Morover, the waste generated by our energy use is making the very planetary environment in which we live more dangerous. In most of the oceans of the earth the incidence of severe hurricanes has doubled in the last 20 years and increased 7-fold in the Indian Ocean. Severe floods have followed a similar pattern, all attested to by skyrocketing disaster payments by the world’s insurance industries.

Perhaps worst of all, the pace at which we work to build safe spaces through increased consumption of goods, energy, and information tends to deactivate the reflective side of our personalities. As indigenous activists from Bolivia put it, “disinformation by over-information deactivates the reflective modes by which we appropriate information and construct our world.”

Preparing the Soil for Planting

Yesterday Don Narciso, one of the wise ones of the pueblo, stopped us on the street and said:

“I have been watching how you interact in our pueblo and take part as representatives of your village of San Isidro. And I really appreciate the kind of sharing that is happening between our two cultures. “   Clearly he had been doing some reflecting, and so had we.

“And we have learned that you, the Mixtec people, have something important to teach us in the North about community and individualism and about how to live well,” we replied. 

Typical Home in the Mixteca Alta

What a privilege we enjoy to be able to 
reflect together with our indigenous neighbors! Perhaps if we are to save ourselves -- we the human family -- in this time of epic crises, we need to become reflective enough to hear the voices around us, the voices of the cultures which can still reveal to us that there are alternatives to our civilization of control that is in crisis.

                                                                                                                                  
In such a time of crisis perhaps we need to cultivate what we could call a “dialogue of knowings”, listening and sharing with the cultures that still have not internalized the fatal flaws of our civilization of control and with the ancestors of the human family who perhaps knew more than we thought about how to live well on the planet. Perhaps we could even reestablish a dialogue with the other species in this living planet to see if they have something to tell us …if we were to listen.

With your contributions we have been able to start a kind of revolving store of corn, which we buy locally and make available to the community to buy at a much-reduced price, thus protecting their dignity, and providing local residents with food, since virtually everyone’s stock of corn was destroyed, both by the erratic weather last fall and by the Great Storm this spring.  Thank you!!


September 2011

We thank you for your letters, your prayers, and your donations, which continue to help to make this work possible.   Our aim for these letters is to share our view from this vantage point of the world.  But if you do wish to contribute to this work, you can send a tax-deductible donation to: 

Instituto Paz en las Américas, 2645 Mountain View Rd. Silver City, NM 88061.                                      Please write on the memo of the check: “for Dahl-Bredine projects”.    



                                                  We thank you very much, and we always love hearing from you.                                                           

Peace and Blessings to you all.

Phil and Kathy    
seedtosalsa@googlegroups.com

Photos © Judith Cooper Haden                                                                                                                                      

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