On Sept. 17, activist Luz Rivera Martinez delivered a speech in Hackerman Hall. The speech, titled “Sowing Struggle: Urban and Rural Social Movements in Tlaxcala, Mexico,” was promoted by the Hopkins Program in Latin American Studies.
Martinez traveled from her home in Tlaxaca in coordination with the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at Loyola University, to the Homewood Campus on Tuesday evening to speak with students about the struggles of her people, the peasants of Tlaxaca.
Luz founded the Consejo Nacional Urbano y Campesino (CNUC) organization in 1993, which organizes peasants in grassroots urban and social movements.
Martinez, in partnership with the Mexico Solidarity Network (MSN), has presented this speech throughout the United States to raise awareness of issues surrounding the production of maize. She speaks only Spanish, but was accompanied by a translator.
“How do we make a change?” Martinez said to begin her speech.
To Martinez and the people of Tlaxcala, change is a necessary and urgent goal, and it must be achieved through the communities themselves. She began to explain the current situation in her state by returning to its history, fondly nicknaming it “The Rhode Island of Mexico.”
Though Tlaxcala is the smallest state in the republic, she contended that it has an important history and an important role in the agriculture of the entire country.
Before today, Tlaxcala’s people were the same that fought in the Mexican Revolution for their independence. After these battles, the peasants were given certain rights to work and own and live on the “ejidos,” which are areas of communal land used for agriculture. They have been farming organic corn for as long as anyone can remember.
“The seed is part of our culture. It’s part of our lives. It’s not just corn; It’s the corn in our weddings. It’s the corn at our funerals. It’s the corn we eat with mole, in quesadillas, and not just burritos,” Martinez said.
The corn that is so important to the people of Tlaxcala is being threatened today, she said, by the government, corporations and laboratories that are more powerful than the farmers in her home country.
Genetically modified corn has begun being introduced in Mexico. Scientists are taking certain seeds, changing their genetic make-up to be resistant to certain diseases, and selling them back to the farmers. Pesticides and harmful chemicals are sprayed to protect the crops from other diseases and insects. Because of their genetic modifications, each crop can no longer yield new seeds. They are sterile, which forces farmers to purchase new seeds for every harvest.
A cycle of dependency then forms. Farmers who cannot afford this process — who make up a majority in Mexico — are being forced to sell, rent or leave their land permanently.
Rivera said the Free Trade Agreement of 1997 was to blame. She said it promised things like equality, work for everyone and overall justice, but in her opinion instead was instrumental in the removal of peasants from their land.
“The land belongs to those who work it,” Rivera said. “Together we can defend ourselves, but today that’s not happening.”
Rivera also told a story of natural resources being robbed from the people. Watersheds in Mexico were bought up by massive corporations like Coca Cola and Bonafont Water about 20 years ago.
The companies used the water from the pure watersheds for bottled water, essentially leaving communities without their only source of clean fresh water and forcing everyone to pay them for it. The people would attempt to stop these companies from passing through by blocking the roads with their trucks, but they were labeled as criminals for doing so.
The people Rivera works with today are also labeled as criminals — the people who try to resist the genetically modified seeds of corn and farm their own organic, sustainable crops. She argued that the companies buying up the corn industry are just like those that took the water; they just have different names — Monsanto and Bayer among them.
These companies are the ones that create the genetically modified corn, force the peasants to purchase it and even fly planes dropping pesticides over fields of previously organic corn. Rivera said that despite experiments indicating that genetically modified products cause those that eat it harm, she feels that there is no doubt that the practice will continue in Mexico.
This is because these companies are in collaboration with the Mexican government, which Rivera claimed is not only very corrupt and hungry for profit. The “revolving door” between the private sector and the public sector keeps power in the same hands, she said, citing that people who once worked for Monsanto are now working for the government — the Secretary of Health being a key example. The labs and the state are working together to get as much profit from the land as possible, she contended.
Rivera compared what’s happening in Mexico to what has happened to the soy seeds in Argentina and the rice crop in India: They’ve been genetically modified, milked of profit and the farmers robbed. Rivera believes that the president, Enrique Peña Nieto, will not hesitate to allow this to continue.
Because there is no support in the country’s government, Rivera argued that the fight for justice belongs to the people. In Tlaxcala, Rivera and her community are still farming organically and sustainably away from the laboratories. However, this process is incredibly challenging and has faced many setbacks.
Rivera and the CNUC are making 200 tons of their own fertilizer, sowing their own seeds and battling the brutal weather of one of Mexico’s highest altitude states. They battle droughts, frost, hurricanes and hale. In a recent season, frost wiped out their entire crop, and they were forced to drive to the coastal state of Veracruz to find new seeds. However, with every new crop there are new seeds — unlike with the transgenic corn.
These farmers were even forced to resist direct attacks on their farms. Rivera recalled a strange man coming to visit the ejido she was working on many years ago carrying large bags.
Those bags were filled with grasshoppers, which the man released onto the crops, creating a plague of sorts. But the peasants were smarter than that; they released their chickens onto the field, and the chickens ate the grasshoppers. They even began cooking the grasshoppers and eating them themselves, learning to love the taste.
“Anything that crawls, walks or flies — it’s going in the pot,” Rivera said, laughing at this typical Tlaxcalan phrase.
When asked what college students can do in the United States to raise awareness for these issues, Rivera had several answers.
“Look at labels,” Rivera said. “Take care of yourselves, and we can take care of each other.”
She stressed the immediate importance of people in the United States taking notice of these genetically modified products in the market and making the choice to buy something organic instead.
“We respect nature, and we respect our corn,” Rivera said.
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