Ajijic Corn Festival
We gathered in a circle in the Ajijic amphitheatre and turned to each of the directions to ask blessings and honor the sacredness of corn as central to life. From speakers we learned that Mexico banned production of GMO crops in 2013. but pressure from Montsanto increases constantly. Although an exception has now been made for test plots, the ban still holds. Importation of GMO crops, however, has not been banned. Because of NAFTA and unequal corn subsidies, Mexico has become dependent on GMO white corn from the US for feeding animals.
We were urged to ask our grocery stores and restaurants to carry natural, non-modified foods. Maseca is made from GMO corn seeds modified by Montsanto. Our local restaurants and grocery stores all have tortillas made from maseca! At Tortilleria Elena just off Guadalupe Victoria and Galeana, you can still get tortillas made from nixtamal, non-modified whole ground corn. We were also urged to shop at the Tuesday organic market. However, that proposal neglects to account for the fact that the cost of shopping organic on an ongoing basis is beyond the means of a majority of local Mexican families.
Genetic modification and the patents secured for it are sometimes referred to as patenting life itself. More accurate would be to call the resulting crop monoculture, a world of death, one that can make it illegal to farm without chemicals, a world of death that creates frankenfoods, and changes the living things in the food chain, in ways completely unknown to us at this time.
I love this. Thanks for sharing.
Are the locals not interested in growing just for the local population. Maybe it’s a money problem?
A money problem, yes.
Since NAFTA, as I understand it, US corn subsidies compete to take away the market for Mexican corn, to feed livestock at any rate. Mexico grows enough yellow corn for its human consumption but that is what is endangered if Monsanto’s GMO production here happens. A separate and hugely unrecognized problem is that Montsanto’s GMO seeds are used in Maseca all over the country, the corn flour for tortillas in stores and restaurants. It’s a challenge to find nixtamal, the natural corn flour, or tortillas made from nixtamal.