Monsanto in Mexico | Who are the Mayan beekeepers? What do they claim? What do they want?

Artwork courtesy of Pagina Abierta.

Indigenous beekeepers face ruin despite
supposed rule of law

MEXICAN
AUTHORITIES COLLUDE WITH TRANSNATIONALS TO UNDERMINE COURT RULINGS

Devon G.
Peña | Seattle, WA | July 4, 2016

Who are the
Mayan beekeepers leading the struggle against Monsanto’s GMO soybean plantings
in the Mexican state of Campeche? This question is the most important one we can
ask and answer in order to arrive at a deeper appreciation of the depth and
historical nature of the challenges facing the indigenous consultation process
that was ordered by the Supreme Court last year to resolve the dispute over the
planting of transgenic soybeans in a core culture area of Mexican indigenous autonomy.

The scientific
claims articulated by the Indigenous beekeepers of Campeche are well-grounded
and derive from thousands of years of actual observation, practice, and
experimentation. Moreover, a growing body of scientific research directly and
indirectly links a wide range of pesticides and herbicides, used alongside GMO
crops, with colony collapse disorder or CCD (see, Oldroyd
2007; also see, Beeinformed; USDA 2016). We also know that GM soy is but a small part of a neoliberal global
economy that is ruining the livelihoods and autonomy of indigenous peoples
alongside a wider range of actions and policies that constitute an anti-indigenous
form of structural violence by, in this case, corrupt Mexican governmental
authorities and growers planting GMOs with impunity.

In a recent
story appearing in the Mexico City-based online daily news magazine, Sin Embargo (June 29, 2016), the investigative journalist,
Ivette Lira, notes how “Experts, NGOs and residents of indigenous communities
in Campeche argue that the government’s consultation process, to determine if [the
beekeepers] agree or not with the planting of transgenic soy, is only a
simulation: The authorities do not see the destruction it causes and support
transnational corporations that produce it.” Unlike too many Westernized authorities,
indigenous people seldom confuse simulacra with reality.

According
to Lira, the cultivation of GM soya is negatively impacting cultural identity, the
local economy, and the health of indigenous communities in various parts of the
country, mainly Peninsular Yucatán, without the authorities acting to prevent
it. On the contrary, the authorities support transnational corporations by working
jointly to achieve their tasks by denouncing opposition experts, civil society
organizations, and representatives of the indigenous peoples concerned.

Who are the
indigenous people concerned? One of them is the Mayan beekeeper and respected
elder, Gustavo Huchín Cauich of the Collectiva Apícola Chenes in Campeche. Mr. Huchín
recently declared:

Los mayas no queremos cultivos transgénicos que envenenen
nuestros suelos y aguas, que terminen con la selva y con la apicultura, que
forma parte de nuestra cultura y modo de vida.

[Translation: The Maya do not want GM crops to poison our
soil and water, ending the jungle and beekeeping, that are part of our culture
and way of life.]

This
eloquent statement was made during a discussion forum on the subject of
genetically modified soybeans, conducted at the Institute of Legal Research of
the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), this past month. Huchín also
noted how ever since Monsanto began planting genetically modified soybeans in
the region, the beekeepers have observed a precipitous drop in honey production
and an excessive mortality of bees.

Mayan elders
are quick to explain that the problem is not just the GMOs, and associated agro-industrial
chemicals, but rather how these are embedded as part of a broader neoliberal economic
invasion that is degrading the larger ecosystem and environmental values of
place. The cultural and biological diversity is needed to nurture and support the
health of the native bee colonies and indigenous autonomy, which focuses on the
ability of the community to fulfill obligations to take care of the land and
all the organisms in their natural interconnectedness.

There is a
widespread ongoing process of deforestation of the Mayan jungles and this is part
of the invasive disruption by a government-imposed transition to larger scaled monoculture
plantations sown with GMO crops like soybean and corn. The problem
of deforestation was the focus of discussions held in October 2015 during a
gathering of the beekeepers’ cooperative and allied groups. As reported in Pagina Abierta by Ronny Aguilar (October 24, 2015), Irma Gómez González, a
research associate of the cooperative, reported on this issue, noting:

There are communities where the airplanes [spraying fields] are
down to 400 meters from the village. In San Juan Bautista Sacabchén, in recent
weeks, pesticide applications are witnessed daily. The issue of deforestation
and changes in land use is a threat to the earth, there is growing pressure to
rent, to sell, driven by the issue of low corn prices, which leaves no
possibility to farmers to sow, forcing them to rent…studies reveal that most
deforestation in the country has been generated in the Yucatán Peninsula and…Campeche
is the most deforested State, and the municipality in first place of
deforestation is our community, Hopelchén, followed by Candelaria. It is
estimated that in Campeche, between 2001 and 2013, 60 thousand hectares,
representing 10 percent of the total area of ​​the municipality, were lost.
Data taken from Sagarpa [Agricultural Secretary], found online, it says that
between 2012 and 2014, the area planted with soybeans increased 14 thousand
hectares in two years and during that same period, deforestation increased by
18,500 hectares. These trends coincide, and we see increases in the soybean
planted area alongside increases in the area of ​​deforestation…

Deforestation is as much
a part of the current destruction as is the threat of gene flow posed by the
planting of the transgenic crops themselves.  This view has long been supported by researchers
including a team from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute as was
reported more than ten years ago in Science
Daily (June 16, 2005). The researchers
in that study make the following astute observation:

Long before Europeans brought honey bees (Apis mellifera) to the Americas, Mayan
bee keepers harvested honey from the log nests of stingless bees native to
tropical forests. Now, colleagues from the Colegio de la Frontera Sur in
Quintana Roo, Mexico and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI)
warn of the imminent demise of stingless bee keeping on the Yucatan – a result
of ongoing cultural change and habitat loss.

So, it’s
not like we have not seen this coming. One implication of the Smithsonian study
suggests beekeeping is in danger of becoming an industrialized monoculture just
like other ‘modernizing’ sectors of agriculture. The Mayan beekeepers have
tended stingless bees for more than a thousand years and Mayan glyphs anointing
bees as strong relations are as ancient as the oldest stelas (see the depiction
below).

 

Ancient Mayan bee glyph (ca. 1200CE).

One YouTube
clip of the leaders of the indigenous beekeepers’ collective opens with a
statement from one of the women leaders, Leydi Aracely Pech Martín. She explains
how the government is pressuring the Mayan farmers to stop planting traditional
crops and to instead rent their milpas out to industrial operations and
developers. Like much of the rest of the country, the privatization of the
ejido has been fiercely resisted in Campeche and this marks another key focal
point in the current cycle of struggles. Go to: Colectivo
Apícola de los Chenes (uploaded to YouTube July 22, 2015).

It is too
easy to forget history: The neoliberal reforms started with the Salinas de Gortari
regime (1988-1994) and were designed to terminate agrarian reform (land redistribution
to the landless). These ‘reforms’ also set in motion policies designed to privatize
the indigenous land holdings known as “ejidos” and it was this process that the
beekeepers identify as paving the way to the entry of transnational capital
into Campeche and other indigenous rural enclaves across Mexico.

The arrival
of transnational capitalists into ‘free trade’ Mexico signaled the opening of
the window that led to the current GMO threat. Indigenous people believe we have
a moral obligation to understand the deeper source of the threat. It is not
just the GMOs but the colonization of indigenous territories by settler colonial
empires and this goes back 500 years. We must assist in this struggle today by actively
calling for the revocation of ‘investor-state’ trade treaties like NAFTA and continuing
to oppose anti-democratic trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP);
see our post of November 18, 2013.

Leydi Aracely Pech Martín. Courtesy
of Pagina
Abierta.

Ms. Pech
Martín notes how deforestation is only the most visible threat facing the
beekeepers. The unregulated industrial exploitation of “pozos” – water wells
that mine the region’s subsurface aquifers, is another grave threat. The effects
of the industrial mining of water in Campeche is recognized by the indigenous
farmers and they point to evidence such as the drying out of springs and higher
water tables of the famed rejolladas
and bajadas that are scattered across
undisturbed rainforests and are part of the famous “Maya managed mosaic” that
scientists have long documented and celebrated as an example of an especially
well-adapted and sustainable inhabitation of this type of rainforest ecosystem
(Fedick 1996).

Very little
research has been done to document the ecological devastation associated with
this activity in Campeche but the infamous “cone of depression” caused by the
extraction of water from aquifers has been widely studied in the USA: The
effects are indeed devastating to the environment and farmers who rely on
surface water supplies impacted by underground mining of the aquifers; the
infamous case of center-pivot sprinklers across the Great Plains illustrates this
in a compelling manner as illustrated by an article appearing in Scientific American (March 1,
2009).

In an
interview appearing in Pagina Abierta
(October 4, 2015), Pech Martín explains how
she is part of a community whose beekeeping traditions go back generations:

Aquí en la zona de Hopelchén, nosotros las comunidades mayas,
la mayoría somos apicultores; es una actividad que nuestros abuelos nos
heredaron y la apicultura no afecta al medio ambiente, es una actividad que
ayuda, que beneficia, la polinización de las plantas. 

[Translation: Here in the area of Hopelchén, we Mayan communities,
most are beekeepers; it is an activity that our grandparents left us and
beekeeping does not affect the environment, is an activity that helps, benefits,
pollinating plants.]

This
awareness of bees as beneficial pollinators and as the source of indigenous knowledge
and livelihoods is deeply rooted and common to the Mayan community, even if it is
ignored and dismissed by corrupt governmental authorities and corporate growers.

How deep,
you may be wondering? According to one recent report by archaeologists,
beekeeping in the Yucatán dates back to at least the Postclassic Period (1000-1520
CE). This research integrates sixteenth century and later written descriptions
of the people of the Maya lowlands with archaeological evidence from sites in
the Yucatán to examine the significance of beekeeping in the ancient Mayan
world. The authors conclude: “These various lines of evidence illustrate the
numerous connections between the production of honey, religious practices,
beliefs, and trade
between Mayan centers.” (Imri, Young, and
Marcus 2010). At stake in this struggle, in other words, is a thousand
year-old cultural system and not just some shallow economic interests albeit in
a vibrant local economy with increasingly globalized linkages.

At the UNAM
symposium covered by Lira’s report, Irma Gomez Gonzalez, of the Collective No
GMO Transgenic Maize, recalled that in 2001 the experimental planting of
transgenic soybeans in Campeche started and nobody knew. Finally, in 2011, an
official pilot program was approved and 30 thousand hectares were allocated for
the peninsula; finally, in 2012 the commercial license for 253,ooo hectares for the
whole country was authorized.

That same
year, two injunctions were filed and eventually resulted in the first
suspension of the permits for the planting of genetically modified. However, many
growers continue to plant the GMO soybeans despite the decision last year by the
Supreme Court of Justice banning such plantings during the indigenous
consultation process that should determine the ultimate fate of transgenic
soybean in the Campeche beekeepers’ bioregion.



UPDATE July 6, 2016. I invite readers and followers to view this YouTube clip, presenting visual evidence of the spraying and deforestation reported above.