As long as I can remember I’ve been eating corn tortillas, as a little kid my grandmother taught me how to eat with one and would joke that we didn’t need forks to eat. Tortillas and the maiz they’re made from are one of the little things that connects us with generations of indigenous people on this continent. We eat all kinds of things made from maiz that our ancestors ate for thousands of years, and through many parts of the continent it continues to be a prominent part of people’s diets.
All of this took time to develop - maiz was first domesticated over 10,000 years ago in what is now known as Mexico, and over time it was shared with people all over the continent and helped people flourish and build amazing societies. But in the past 20 years we have seen the invention of Genetically Modified corn that was really introduced into the market bringing with it all kinds of issues and controversy. Personally, I see the genetic modifications to corn as a mutation of something that has made us who we are as a people. Taking our ancestors work and undoing the beauty of what took thousands of years to create, and all in the name of profit and capitalism. I look to all those radical farmers who continue to use unmodified maiz seeds to grow their crops, resisting companies like Monsanto who want to spread their mutant foods all over the world. Maiz es Vida and we must defend it.
