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---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 08:07:04 -0500 (CDT) From: IRC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: En;FPIF News | Mexico Pays Heavy Price for Imported Corn New at FPIF "A think tank without walls" http://www.fpif.org/ Introducing the latest policy analysis from Foreign Policy In Focus Mexico Pays Heavy Price for Imported Corn By John Burstein and Manuel Pe'rez Rocha Corn, the classic Mexican staple, is imbued with symbolic significance. In Indigenous religious traditions, it is quite literally the equivalent of God-given manna. Today, Mexicans depend on tortillas as they did before the Spanish Conquest. Wheat in the form of bread may have made heavy inroads into the diet of Mexico's urban middle class. But at the very least half of Mexico's 100 million not just eats tortillas, but relies on corn, together with beans, for up to half of their protein intake. This is particularly true with children. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a drastic increase in the price of tortillas. It has already provoked massive protest marches, and not surprisingly, of a fervor akin to bread riots. In Mexico, a traditional food was mass-produced at low price and lost its high quality. Small producers also lost their traditional market. Now, with the price of that food rising, low-income non-agricultural workers are hit the hardest and agribusiness is reaping huge profits. The Mexican tortilla crisis makes us wonder how many times we will have to see the same movie about agricultural globalization. Manuel Pe'rez Rocha has worked for many years with Mexican and international civil society organizations, including the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC) and currently lives in Washington DC. John Burstein is President of FORO para el Desarrollo Sustentable, A.C., an organization working on behalf of indigenous peoples in Chiapas, Mexico. They are contributors to Foreign Policy In Focus. See new FPIF article online at: http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/4108 For media inquiries Emily Schwartz Greco, [EMAIL PROTECTED], 202-297-5412 Siri Khalsa, [EMAIL PROTECTED], 505-388-0208 Produced and distributed by International Relations Center (IRC). For more information, visit http://www.irc-online.org/. If you would like to receive specific topic or regional material from either FPIF (http://www.fpif.org/) or the Americas Program (http://www.americaspolicy.org/), please email: [EMAIL PROTECTED], with "subscribe" in the subject line and giving your area of interest. If you would like to see IRC's variety of free ezines and listservs , please go to: http://www.irc-online.org/lists/. To be removed from this list, please reply to this email with "unsubscribe." Please consider becoming an IRC member or donor. You can join the IRC and make a secure donation by visiting http://www.irc-online.org/donate.php. Thank you. International Relations Center (IRC) http://www.irc-online.org/ Siri D. Khalsa Outreach Coordinator Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] PO Box 2178 Silver City, NM 88062 --MAILING%14-2210-36495%Content-Type: text/html; charset"iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit New at FPIF “A think tank without walls” http://www.fpif.org/ (http://www.fpif.org/) Introducing the latest policy analysis from Foreign Policy In Focus Mexico Pays Heavy Price for Imported Corn By John Burstein and Manuel Pe'rez Rocha Corn, the classic Mexican staple, is imbued with symbolic significance. In Indigenous religious traditions, it is quite literally the equivalent of God-given manna. Today, Mexicans depend on tortillas as they did before the Spanish Conquest. Wheat in the form of bread may have made heavy inroads into the diet of Mexico’s urban middle class. But at the very least half of Mexico’s 100 million not just eats tortillas, but relies on corn, together with beans, for up to half of their protein intake. This is particularly true with children. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a drastic increase in the price of tortillas. It has already provoked massive protest marches, and not surprisingly, of a fervor akin to bread riots. In Mexico, a traditional food was mass-produced at low price and lost its high quality. Small producers also lost their traditional market. Now, with the price of that food rising, low-income non-agricultural workers are hit the hardest and agribusiness is reaping huge profits. The Mexican tortilla crisis makes us wonder how many times we will have to see the same movie about agricultural globalization. Manuel Pérez Rocha has worked for many years with Mexican and international civil society organizations, including the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC) and currently lives in Washington DC. John Burstein is President of FORO para el Desarrollo Sustentable, A.C., an organization working on behalf of indigenous peoples in Chiapas, Mexico. They are contributors to Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org) . See new FPIF article online at: http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/4108 (http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/4108) For media inquiries Emily Schwartz Greco, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) , 202-297-5412 Siri Khalsa, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) , 505-388-0208 Produced and distributed by International Relations Center (IRC). For more information, visit http://www.irc-online.org/ (http://www.irc-online.org/) . If you would like to receive specific topic or regional material from either FPIF (http://www.fpif.org/ (http://www.fpif.org/) ) or the Americas Program (http://www.americaspolicy.org/ (http://www.americaspolicy.org/) ), please email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) , with “subscribe” in the subject line and giving your area of interest. If you would like to see IRC's variety of free ezines and listservs , please go to: http://www.irc-online.org/lists/ (http://www.irc-online.org/lists/) . To be removed from this list, please reply to this email with "unsubscribe." Please consider becoming an IRC member or donor. You can join the IRC and make a secure donation by visiting http://www.irc-online.org/donate.php (http://www.irc-online.org/donate.php) . Thank you. International Relations Center (IRC) http://www.irc-online.org/ (http://www.irc-online.org/) Siri D. Khalsa Outreach Coordinator Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) PO Box 2178 Silver City, NM 88062 --MAILING%14-2210-36495%-- -- To unsubscribe from this list send a message containing the words unsubscribe chiapas95 (or chiapas95-lite, or chiapas95-english, or chiapas95-espanol) to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Previous messages are available from http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html or gopher to Texas, University of Texas at Austin, Department of Economics, Mailing Lists.
