Mexico City – There is a popular saying in Mexico, where corn is as central to national mythology as gastronomy.
Without corn, there is no country. Without corn, there is no country.
This week, Mexico's leaders voted to consecrate that concept in the Constitution, declaring the native corn “an element of national identity” and prohibiting the plantation of genetically modified seeds.
The measure, whose objective is to protect the thousands of corn varieties from the inheritance of the engineering versions sold by US companies, has become a nationalist scream of rally. The support for the reform has only grown in recent months as Mexico has defended insults, tariff threats and even the spectrum of President Trump's US military intervention.
“Corn is Mexico,” President Claudia Sheinbaum recently said, describing reform as a way to ensure the sovereignty of Mexico. “We have to protect it for biodiversity, but also culturally, because corn is what links us intrinsically with our origins, with the resistance of indigenous peoples.”
Felipe Martínez reaps his corn on his farm in San Jerónimo Xayacatlan.
(Associated Press)
The amendment to the Constitution occurs after the defeat in December of a related effort that sought to eliminate all genetically modified corn imports. The then President Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued a presidential decree in 2023 that prohibits the use of genetically modified corn and tortillas and for the use of animals and industrial use, but a panel of commercial disputes ruled that he violated the Mexican-channel agreement of the USA.
Mexico agreed to meet the decision of the panel, and this week's action points to the seeds, not all products.
The amendment received the last necessary approval from Congress on Wednesday and has been sent to Sheinbaum for firm. It was also approved by most state legislatures.
Each year, the United States sells Mexico around $ 5 billion genetically modified corn, which has been designed to resist pests and tolerate herbicides. Most of that corn is used to feed cattle.
Even before the constitutional reform, it was mostly illegal to plant corn modified in Mexico thanks to a 2013 demand filed by farmers. But experts say it still happens. And they say that the presence of engineering and corn seeds in Mexico threatens the vast diversity of corn crops here, which cover orange burned to purple and pink and that have been adapted for centuries to cultivate in different altitudes and climates.
“There is a disturbing level of native corn contamination with genetically modified features,” said Timothy Wise, a researcher at the Global Development and Environment Institute at the University of Tufts. Some ancestral varieties of Mexican corn have already been extinguished, he said, “the product of illegal plantations and cross pollination not detected and not detected.”
That alarms many in Mexico, where corn has become a basic element of the diet, but also a symbol of Mexico.
The invention of corn by Mexicans is only comparable to the invention of man's fire
– Octavio Paz
Corn was born here about 9,000 years ago, when Mesoamerican farmers began to tame wild grass known as Theosinte.
It has been venerated here since then, with sculptors carving images of Centeot, the Aztec deity of corn, in pre -Hispanic temples and artists such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo with corn spindles, corn fields and corn plates in their paintings.
The poet Octavio Paz was one of the many to extol the virtues of the plant, saying: “The invention of Mexicans' corn is only comparable to the invention of man's fire.”
Probably no people in the world get a most of their corn calories than Mexicans, and researchers estimate that the average person here eats one or two pounds per day.
A man sells corn in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
It is crushed in mass and cooks in tortillas, tamales and tlacoyos. His grains are soaked in Fragagra Pozole and prepare in a good breakfast drink known as Atole.
“It is at the root of our culture, giving us strength and identity,” said María Elena Álvarez-Buylla, a researcher of molecular genetics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “It is our basic element. Losing sovereignty due to a fundamental aspect of our life and health is very risky. “
Álvarez-Buylla directed the National Council of Humanities, Science and Technology of Mexico until last year, and has published studies that demand risks to health and the environment of the genetically modified corn and the herbicides associated with it.
She says that American corn is less nutritious than the Mexican version and is related to liver disease and other problems. His research found that 9 out of 10 samples of several cities in Mexico had traces of genetically modified corn.
The United States, its farmers and companies that sell designed corn seeds reject Mexico's statement that their products have risks.
They celebrated the failure of commercial disputes of December, which occurred after a concerted lobbying effort of corn producers in states such as Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska. “This victory illustrates the power of defense of corn,” said Kenneth Hartman Jr. De National Corn Growers Assn.
Mexico was a corn exporter until as little as the 1980s. The approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which laid the foundations for the current commercial pact, changed that.
Many small family farms in Mexico could not compete with the great American farmers who enjoy strong federal subsidies. In the three decades since NAFTA entered into force, annual corn imports to Mexico grew from approximately 3.1 million metric tons to almost 23.4 million metric tons, according to the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Grain Council.
The change forced many Mexican farmers to change subsistence agriculture or assume seasonal works away from their homes. Many others left to find work in the United States.
Wise said it was ironic that the United States would have used the free trade agreement to oppose Mexico's efforts to prohibit corn imports at the same time as Trump imposed, and then reversed, tariffs on imports from the United States.
The United States commercial policy, he said, seems to be: “We will ignore the agreement when it is convenient for us. We will apply it when it has an impact on some biotechnology companies. “
He said that Mexicans had decided a long time since they did not want genetically modified corn, and that it was largely reduced to one thing: taste.
“Nobody wants to eat it,” he said.
The special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report.
