Mexico's National Day of Corn and Resistance to Silent Privatization Victor M. Quintana S. - La Jornada
go to original September 29, 2013

Mexico's 'People of Corn': In Mexico, corn is central to most people's diets, and to many farmers' livelihoods. Al Jazeera's Adam Raney reports from Tlaxcala, Mexico. (AlJazeeraEnglish)

Two basic energies for Mexico are in danger: the energy that moves machines (oil and electricity) and the energy that moves people (food). Both are essential public goods that are about to fall into private hands. To privatize oil profits and the electricity industry, the government of Enrique Peña Nieto will have to move its proposed legal reforms through blood and fire. However, there is another privatization already underway, of similar proportions, which is being carried out effectively without any consensus or any reforms: that of corn.

Corn - whose National Day is celebrated Sunday, for the fifth consecutive year through the initiative of a large number of peasant, indigenous, academic and artistic organizations of all kinds - is the basic factor and organizer of our food system and the rural economy. It is the most important vegetable raw material on the planet and the nutritional staple of Mexican families, especially those with lower incomes. In turn, it forms the core of the rural economy, especially in the center and south of the country.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

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