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I have visited many many villages and during the last ten years I have noticed the decline in planting of corn. It is hard work and many of the modern indigenous sons would rather not do it, they prefer to move away, either to the US or Mexico City to do day labor jobs and find a new life as a poor Mexican rather than a poor Indigenous person. While my focus is on documenting the traditional textiles which also represent a tie to the deep indigenous roots, to me nothing more clearly represents the indigenous ties to the earth than farming and in particular the farming of corn. Many of the holidays correspond to ancient agricultural calendars and are now called "Saints" days but are more in line with the cycle used in agriculture.

During a visit to the remote high mountain area of Mexico, In a small village I founds a poem written on the side of a building . On the other side of the building was a glyph representing a man and a woman adoring corn, with them a snake, ants and birds. The glyph was framed with the words " Indigenous communities united in defense of Corn and our culture". I hope by publishing this some how in my small way to help non indigenous people understand that progress does not have to destroy these cultures and the transgenic corn is a direct assault on the indigenous cultures of Mexico and other meso American areas

We are the Corn\

To Mi son
:
A poem - “Tata maiz” ( grandfather corn)

Corn is not to be thrown away
Nor to trample on it
Nor forget it
Because corn means our lives and the life of god
The Corn is our Father and our Mother
It is also our sons
Corn is us ( male and female)
Corn is our Father and Mother , because it gives us life
Because it gives us unity and identity
Like children from the same family and community
It shows us to love our mother earth and not to abandon her
Through corn rituals and offerings we discover God ,
Corn is our father and mother because we inherited our bodies, our blood and our heart
Through corn , we inherited our color and our language.
It shows us the universe
And to celebrate our the knowledge of our people and family
Corn is our father and mother because when we are sick it provides medicine
WE have to treat it like a son, we have to take care of it
We have to cultivate it, so it is always with us and never leaves
We have to give it our respect

to My son – respect it , because there ( in the Corn) are your grandparents and there you are too.

Crisis in Mexico’s indigenous communities-

Who are the Cholos , no it is not another indigenous group, well not a historical one, they are young men and women who have left the village to work either in Mexico City or the US and return dressed as gang members who resent or hate their culture. They influence the younger kids by bad example. Recently in some Totonacan towns in the Sierra Norte of Mexico I saw a group of 20, spiked hair dressed in black with pierce tongues and noses, they seem like they landed there from another planet. A village elder said to me that they come home and act badly and “se sienten hombre” which means they feel like men.

But why? It is not enough to say that these young men and women HAD to leave their villages to find work. Did they really have to leave? The answer lay in the statistics from many municipalities in 2005. They are alarming in one typical municipality, 280 children born 28 persons die, this is a receipt for immigration or civil war and for sure poverty. What is Mexico going to do with all these young people? America get ready for massive immigration from Mexico.

Among the older generations there is desperation because they are unable to get the kids to work in the fields. This is not simple a economic activity, the world revolves around the earth and the cycles of agriculture, the weather and religious festivals. It is all part of a greater view of the world. Many “religious” festivals are based on traditional agricultural ceremonies. I recently witnessed the 12 Prayers ceremony in a Totonacan village in Veracruz. The women prayer for 12 days that nothing would happen to them ( not for bigger houses or a large screen TV) during the year and them placed all the prayers ( in the form of eggs) into a hole in the ground along with offerings. Is the land important you bet it is?

The land in many indigenous villages is very rugged and there is no way to plant except do every thing by hand. Even if the terrain was flat the prices paid for agricultural commodities does work to accumulate wealth. In the past subsistence farming was enough, grow what you need and if there is some left, over trade it for something that you need. This worked for thousands of years. Suddenly there are more mouths than the land can support. Not all that is learned is bad but the net result is that these people who were satisfied with a way of life that was based on agricultural cycles and inter relationships in the village has been gradually eroded by materialism and economic necessity based on over population.

Let’s add another nail in the coffin of agricultural indigenous Mexico, NAFTA, in 2008 the Indians will have to compete with American and Canadian commercial farming. The tariff free entry of grains will crush the prices of corn. Corn is the traditional food in the communities, Mexicans are the people of corn. So the peasant the is working a parcel of land on a steep hill side with a hoe is now being asked to compete with 40 square miles of land cultivated with genetically modified seeds and agricultural machinery that cost more than an entire village makes in a year.

In the next years we are going to see increased immigration to the cities, continued population growth, the gradual and certain erosion of indigenous values and agricultural way of life. There are efforts to replace agriculture with other forms of livelihoods these are going to take time and do not help protect indigenous culture. What does a trout farm have to do with the cycle that indigenous people live by? Nothing…