Vitamin T

“’Yesterday these cost me six pesos. Today, it’s eight. Tomorrow, who knows, ten?’ complained Rodrigo, pointing at the three greasy tacos on his paper plate. ‘Vitamin T is rich man’s food now,’ he adds. Vitamin T, a staple of urban diet [in Mexico], includes tacos, tostadas, tamales, tortillas, and most any kind of street food concocted from corn.” -The Plot Against Mexican Maíz

The corn crisis may not be the fastest vehicle towards global hunger, but it is definitely at the front of the caravan – or funeral procession. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) could be argued as the imperialist autobahn towards an already dire issue.

Our blog and powerpoint presentation are meant to bring awareness and education on ethanol and the inadvertent effects on world hunger. I don’t think any of my group mates suspect any level of the feds locked themselves up in a cellar, twisted their fu manchus and inked out a treaty that has also served as an obituary to so many. I seriously think it just happened that way. We can’t be too shocked that our nation found a quick fix and didn’t think of how others would be affected by our actions in the long term. Something like the corn crisis in Latin America could have easily been cast by the wayside since the lack of corn doesn’t affect us so drastically as much as it has hurt them. Not having such a painful and adverse effect on our own nation, can we discount the theory that the continuing such laws may invoke genocide?

NAFTA, enacted by the Clinton administration, was implemented through Canada, the United States of America and Mexico on January 1, 1994. It was the first agreement that gave equal agreements between two developed countries and a developing country. It immediately eliminated many tariffs and ended all non-tariff barriers to agricultural trade between the USA and Mexico. There was a phase out period of 5 to 15 years making full implementation on January 1, 2008. Compared to USA and Canadian agricultural sectors, Mexico’s developing technologies, economics and policies are not as equal and therefore not equally utilized or served in such a pact.

“We are the corn! If it is poisoned, then so are we!”
-Zapatista Anti-NAFTA Chant

There is an uprising in our neighboring country and they are decrying a pact we authored and sold throughout North America by promising economic surges of capitalist proportions. Seventeen Mexican non-governmental organizations have brought allegations to NAFTA biotech scientists that genetically modified corn, which is being pushed by USA monopolies in answer to the Latin American corn shortage, is threatening Mexico’s 57 indigenous peoples. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation ( Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) is a revolutionary militia out of the state of Chiapas in Mexico, one of the nation’s poorest and southernmost states, bordering Central America. They are no stranger to protests and the very fiber of their being is agriculture. They are Mayans – a people indigenous to Mexico and Central America who claim to be the People of the Corn and whose sacred texts say that the gods created the Mayans from maíz. At a NAFTA meeting addressing the allegations, an indigent farmer echoed the threat Zapatistas say they must rally against – genocide. Seizing the mic, the farmer stated that the NAFTA scientists are guilty of genocide due to their endorsing of transgenics. The Zapatistas have begun freezing their seed corn in an effort to preserve pure Mayan germ plasma and to ensure its – and their own – survival. The farmer screamed at the USA scientist, accusing them of killing first their own native people, and now Mexico’s.

This may all seem like unnecessary drama or foreign rantings to most of us. But we can be assured that it is very real to a nation of millions who are dependent on a food staple that we treat as a commodity and experiment with in an attempt for cheaper gasoline. So what does this mean to us? How are we affected? The answer may be uncomfortable as it makes us the enforcer of something we would not want to be on the receiving side of.